Testing a single hardware unit of an accelerator control system often requires the setup of a program with graphical user interface. Developing a dedicated application for a specific hardware unit test could be time consuming and the application may become obsolete after the unit tests. This paper documents a methodology for quick design and setup of an interface focused on performing unit tests of accelerator equipment with minimum programming work. The method has three components. The first is a generic accelerator device object (ADO) manager which can be used to setup, store, and log testing controls parameters for any unit testing system. The second involves the design of a TAPE (Tool for Automated Procedure Execution) sequence file that specifies and implements all te testing and control logic. The sting third is the design of a PET (parameter editing tool) page that provides the unit tester with all the necessary control parameters required for testing. This approach has been used for testing the horizontal plane of the Stochastic Cooling Motion Control System at RHIC

D'Ottavio, T.

Fu, W.

Gassner, D.

Morris, J.

Nemesure, S.

UNT Digital Library

    BNL-94244-2011-CP       Quick setup of unit test for accelerator                           control system   W. Fu, T. D’Ottavio, D. Gassner, S. Nemesure, J. Morris   Presented at the 2011 Particle Accelerator Conference (PAC’11) New York, N.Y.  March 28 – April 1, 2011        Collider-Accelerator Department  Brookhaven National Laboratory     U.S. Department of Energy                                     Office of Science    Notice: This manuscript has been authored by employees of Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The publisher by accepting the manuscript for publication acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.  This preprint is intended for publication in a journal or proceedings.  Since changes may be made before publication, it may not be cited or reproduced without the author’s permission.     DISCLAIMER  This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government.  Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, nor any of their contractors, subcontractors, or their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or any third party’s use or the results of such use of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof or its contractors or subcontractors.  The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.                                   Quick Setup of Unit Test For Accelerator Control System*Wenge Fu, Ted D'Ottavio, David Gassner,  Seth Nemesure, John Morris Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11793, USAAbstract    Testing a single hardware unit of an accelerator control system  often  requires  the  setup  of  a    program  with graphical  user  interface.  Developing  a  dedicated application for a specific hardware unit test could be time consuming and the application may become obsolete after the unit tests. This paper documents a methodology for quick  design  and  setup  of  an  interface  focused  on performing  unit  tests  of  accelerator  equipment  with minimum  programming  work.  The  method  has  three components.  The  first  is  a  generic  accelerator  device object (ADO) manager which can be used to setup, store, and log testing controls parameters  for  any unit  testing system. The second involves the design of a TAPE (Tool for  Automated  Procedure  Execution)  sequence  file  that specifies and implements all testing and control logic. The third is the design of a PET (parameter editing tool) page that provides the unit tester with all the necessary control parameters required for testing. This approach has been used  for  testing  the  horizontal  plane  of  the  Stochastic Cooling Motion Control System at RHIC.INTRODUCTIONAccelerator  control  systems   are   complicated  and consists of many subsystems, and each subsystem is also consist  of  many  single  control  units  of   hardware  or software.  In the RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) control system, they are often controlled directly by a set of ADOs (accelerator device objects).  When setup such a sub-control  system,   it  is  often necessary   to  test  each control unit individually before assembling each unit into the control system to ensure each control unit  works  the way  as  designed  and  has  a  good  reliability.  For  some controls systems,  this kind of tests maybe easy, but for some other systems, this may not be easy to do without a reasonable software with a graphical user interface (GUI). Setup a  program with GUI for a single control unit  is probably  a time consuming task,  this is especially true if the controls logic of the unit test is complicated. Often, such an unit testing program may not be useful any more for the operation  controls of the entire system after the unit testing is completed.   In RHIC,  we have many powerful generic software systems and applications which work well with single or complicated accelerator control system units through the standard ADOs.  Two of these generic applications can be used to setup a quick unit  control  system  with proper organization and configuration.   One of the application is:  Tool for Automated Procedure Execution (TAPE) [1]. This generic program is used to run previously generated sequences of control commands in a previously defined orders  and  with   defined  control   logic.    The  other application  is   Parameter  Editing  Tool (pet)[2].   This program  a  general  purpose  program  for  viewing  and editing control parameters for ADOs.      This article outlines a method  to use these two generic applications with another generic ADO ---a  MiddleMan ADO,  to  setup  an  unit  control  system with  minimum programming.   The MiddleMan ADO is a very simple dummy ADO which can be used to set, update, store, or display all middle values used for the unit control system. This MiddleMan ADO can be easily setup with a rich sets of   ADO parameters  to  satisfy the needs of  any single control unit test.METHOD OF UNIT TEST SETUP In RHIC control systems, a  typical accelerator control unit consists three components:1. A  hardware  control  unit.   The  controls  of  a hardware unit  typically can be  done through the accelerator  device  object  (ADO)  with  various kind of controls parameters (such as temperature, pressure, current,  etc.);2. A software control  unit.   This part implements the control logic:  how the control unit  supposed to be working: automatically,  event triggered , or interactively etc.3. An user interface unit. This is for either taking user's inputs, trigger control actions,  or display device statuses and event message  etc.By  utilizing  the  generic  applications  we  already  have, and  with  minimum programming  in  the  tape  sequence language,  a  typical unit test system can be setup quickly as  shown  in  Figure  1.   The  Figure  1  outlines  the components for an  unit test system: • “Hardware Control Unit”:  this is the hardware unit to be tested;• “Hardware Control ADO”: this  is the ADO for the direct control of the hardware; It is part of the software control  unit.______________________________________________*  Work supported by  the U.S. Department of Energy.• “Middle Man ADO”: this  is a generic purposed ADO which serve as a middle man between the “Hardware  Control  ADO”  and  the  rest  of  the software system.  It is a dummy ADO with a rich set of ADO parameters which can be used  for storing,    setting,  displaying,  or  logging   any control  parameters,   middle  values,  or  status buffers  etc.   during  the  unit  testing.     These middle  man  ADO  parameters   can  be  easily accessed  or  changed  by  other   generic application such as pet and Tape  etc.     When a new middle man ADO is needed, it can be easily created simply by adding the new ADO into the configuration  database  and  Controls  Name Server  (CNS)  system,  and  restart  the  Middle Man ADO Manager.   • “Pet Page ...”: this  is the user interface where users can set all required unit testing parameters, check system statuses,  manually trigger testing actions,  or conduct the unit testing and checking the progress of the testing etc.; This is the user interface unit.• “TAPE  Sequence  File...”:   This  is  the  place where  the  control  logic  of  the  unit  testing  is defined and implemented.  This is the olny place requires  minimum  programming  with  tape sequence language[1].  During the execution of this  file,  the  GUI of  the Tape application  also shows the progress of the  unit test. • “Data Logger”:  This is an optional component. It is only needed if any testing data need to be logged for future data analysis. A DEMO UNIT TEST SYSTEMAn  unit  testing  system  was  setup  with  the  method described  above  for  testing  the  reliability  of  motion control in a single stochastic cooling kicker unit which is planned to be used in the new RHIC stochastic cooling system.    In this unit testing system, the hardware unit are two stochastic cooling kickers which are going to be installed in  the RHIC ring from opposite  sides  of  the ring pipe. There are several FEC ADOs for the motion controls of the kickers.  The goals of the unit test are: • Moving  in  and  out  the  kickers  with  different motor  speeds,  close  positions,  kicker  moving orders, and repeat times of the motion controls. These  testing parameters are similar to these of using in the real operations.  • Find out the good control parameters and test the reliability of the unit. Figure 1. Diagram of Unit Testing System  A  Middle  Man  ADO  with  many  desired  ADO parameters  is  created to hold all testing parameters and messages  during the tests.     A pet page is created for the unit test. The pet page serves as an user interface for the unit test.  User can use the pet page to set or get the values of control parameters, to view intermediate results, to trigger control actions, to display testing event or program generated messages, to store control parameters, and to monitor the progress of the test  etc.     A  tape sequence file is created for the unit test. The Tape  application executes this tape sequence file for the unit test. (show as in Figure 2.)  The tape sequence file implemented all control logic of the unit control test. This   Figure 2. Tape sequence of the unit test system is the only place where minimum programming with tape sequence language is required.  The Tape also provides an additional GUI to monitor  the progress of the test,  and enable tester to pause or resume  the test if needed.  This make the unit test even more flexible.     All parameters  used in this unit test can be  logged with standard RHIC control logging system.  This makes the data analysis of the unit test very easy.  The unit  test system  even  be  able  to  handle  system  errors   by automatically checking middle results and  error message, and handle them accordingly.  SUMMARY   A method of  quick  setup  graphic  user  interface  for single control unit test in accelerator control systems with existing applications and minimum programming effort is described  and  a  demo   application  of  the  method  is presented.   The method can be  easily  applied to  many single unit test systems or  used to get optimized control parameters for an individual control units in accelerator control systems.REFERENCES[1]   T.  D'Ottavio,  et  al.   Description  of  the  RHIC Sequencer  System,   THAP062,    proceedings  of ICALEPCS 2001. San Jose.[2]   D.  Barton  et  al.,  RHIC  Control  System,  Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A:  Accelerators,  Spectrometers,  Detectors  and  Associated  Equipment,  Volume 499,  Issues  2-3,  2003,  Pages  356-371.

Quick setup of unit test for accelerator controls system

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Quick setup of unit test for accelerator controls system

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