The APS Intranet as a Man-Machine Interface*
D. Ciarlette, R. Gerig, W. McDowell
Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory
9700 South Cass AvenueArgonne, IL 60439, USAAbstract

3 APS Intranet

The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne NationalLaboratory has implemented a number of methods forpeople to interact with the accelerator systems. The
accelerator operators use Sun workstations running
MEDM and Tk/TCL to interface interactively with theaccelerator; however, many people need to view
information rather than interact with the machine. One ofthe most common interfaces for viewing information at theAdvanced Photon Source is the World Wide Web.
Information such as operations logbook entries, machine
status updates, and displays of archived and current data
are easily available to APS personnel. This interface
between people and the accelerator has proven to be quite
useful.
Because the Intranet is operating-system
independent and inherently unidirectional, ensuring theprevention of unauthorized or accidental control of theaccelerators is straightforward.

The APS Intranet is a subset of the Internet, locatedon a secure computer that is accessible only by APS
personnel. By utilizing standard Internet protocols andsoftware, APS has been able to create a World Wide Webbased environment that contains many different kinds ofaccelerator information. Some of this information requires
interactive, real-time capabilities, but much does not.
Examples of the latter are the APS on-line logbook,current and lifetime summary displays, and archived
machine status graphs.

1 Introduction
The Advanced Photon Source consists of two linear
accelerators, a positron accumulator ring, a booster
synchrotron, and an 1104-m-circumference storage ring.
The control system used for all of the machines is theExperimental Physics and Industrial Control System(EPICS). There are approximately 400 employees at APS,
many of whom need to obtain information about the statusof the various machines and systems. Due to the large
number of people needing access to the facility’s control
system information, different interfaces to the machine
were implemented. The two most common methods arethe EPICS display tool MEDM (Motif Editor and Display
Manger) and the APS Intranet.
2 MEDM
MEDM is the man-machine interface (MMI) used byoperations personnel and others that need real-time
interactive displays of machine parameters using agraphical user interface. While MEDM is a useful tool forthe operators and system maintenance people, it is not theonly interface to the machines. Due to the wide variety ofcomputer systems, connection speeds, security needs, andconnection overload needs, we have created the APSIntranet.

*3.1 On-line Logbook
The APS Operations on-line logbook is the HTML
(hypertext markup language) version of the paper logbook
used in the control room. Making the logbook available
on-line has increased its readership for two basic reasons.
First, readers are able to access the logbooks more readily
from their office computers than if they had to walk to thecontrol room to read them. Secondly, the search capabilityof the Web browser enables readers to find information in
the logbook quickly and efficiently. In fact, it has become
as much of a man-machine interface tool as any othermethod of obtaining system information. The on-line
logbook contains all of the shift entries from February
1995 to the present.
3.1.1 Internals
The Operations Group creates the logbook byentering information into a word processor document. Theword processor used, FrameMaker, is configured toautomatically save the document every 10 minutes so thata logbook update utility can convert the document toHTML and create new Web pages to point to the HTMLversion of the FrameMaker file. Any time a FrameMaker
version of a logbook file is modified, the HTML version of
the logbook is updated within 10 minutes. This is doneusing an APS-written, Perl [1]-based program called
logcron in conjunction with the freely available fm2html[2] FrameMaker-to-HTML conversion utility.
The Perl logcron program looks at the FrameMaker
files and determines if they are newer than the HTMLversions of the logbook files. If the FrameMaker files arenewer, the fm2html script is run. logcron takes care ofitems such as file locking for files currently being edited,

Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. W-31-109-ENG-38.

Web page creation for the shift listings of the past sevendays, archiving of HTML files, and Web page creation of
the monthly archives of HTML logbook files.
The on-line logbook allows people to read thelogbook in their office, from home, or while on businesstrips. Since it updates every ten minutes, the reader isalways presented with the current logbook information.
In addition, by using a standard word processor, theimpact of this interface on operations is minimized. The
operators type information into the word processor without
needing any HTML knowledge. Even the AutoSave
feature is performed without the operators having to do
anything. All processing of the documents’ updating of
hyperlinks and archiving of files is done automatically.
This allows the operators to devote more time to operating
the facility rather than managing the logbook.

view of a shift’s on-line logbook is contained in Figure 2.
Both the main logbook page and the current shift’s
logbook automatically refresh themselves every ten
minutes. The refresh command is done by including thetext <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT= 600>
as the first line of the Web page. This command instructs
the Web browser to automatically reload the Web page
every 600 seconds (10 minutes). Thus, the reader hasaccess to what appears to be a constantly updated logbook
without the threat of overloading the Web server. Inaddition, the operators get a chance to work on a problem
before people read about it in the on-line logbook.

3.1.2 Logbook as an MMIThe logbook is arranged to quickly present readerswith information. The current logbook entry is always
hyperlinked to a static Web address; this allows people tobookmark the current logbook entry and always get thecurrent logbook. The main logbook page consists of alisting of the last seven days of shift followed by themonthly archives. To read a logbook entry in a specificmonth, the reader clicks on the monthly archive hyperlink
and then on the shift they wish to read. The most usedhyperlink is the “Latest Logbook Entry” hyperlink near the
top of Figure 1.

Figure 2. Sample on-line logbook.
The logbook search capability allows a reader to findmatching words in the logbook. After searching throughthe HTML archive files and creating a list of hyperlinks to
the various matches, a list of relevant logbook entries isdisplayed. This gives readers a method of looking up
information if they do not know which shift or day anevent occurred.
The on-line logbook has proven to be a popularmethod of checking the machine status at APS. It has
increased the number of readers of the logbook and has
decreased the number of phone calls to the control room
requesting the status of the machine.
3.2 Status Displays

Figure 1. Main logbook page.
Each shift creates a logbook file; therefore the on-line
logbook is arranged as shifts as shown in Figure 1. A

The logbook is one example of APS using anIntranet as a man-machine interface. APS also has
datalogging systems that interface the EPICS control
system to the Intranet. Several Web applications arecompletely software based, including the APS current andlifetime page and the technical systems status pages. Bothof these sets of Web pages present the user with Webbased, read-only machine interfaces, but they are createdusing two different methods.

3.2.1 APS Current and Lifetime Page
The APS current and lifetime Web page is used todisplay the beam current and lifetime along with a 24-hourbeam current history graph and an area for Operations todisplay messages. This page (Figure 3) is created by acron job that runs every two minutes. The cron job
captures an MEDM screen using xwd and converts it to a
GIF file. The Web page displayed by the browser includes
the GIF image and is configured to refresh itself every twominutes. This allows a viewer to keep the page on theirworkstation or PC and view the current and lifetime at any
time without having to reload the page for the latest
version. In addition, the page is set to be non-cacheable toensure the latest version is always displayed.

Development (RM&D) system; and downtime system.
Each of these is an interactive system used by theoperators and technical systems personnel.
(a)

(b)

Figure 3. APS current and lifetime page.
The current and lifetime Web page together with theoperations on-line logbook provide the reader with theinformation necessary to understand readily what the last
24 hours of operations has been. These tools this can beused from work, home, or travel quickly and efficiently.
3.2.2 Technical Status Displays
The technical status displays are used to view more
specific types of information such as water temperatures,vacuum readings, and rf power readings. Most systems
have overview displays and 24-hour stripchart plots. For
example, Figure 4(a) is an overview of the main vacuum
information Web page. Figure 4(b), Sector 2’s information,is reached by clicking on the Sector 2 hyperlink in Figure4(a).
Each of these system Web pages has data and chartsthat are created by cron jobs that run on the various
control room workstations. Both the EPICS’ channel
access and SDDS [3] programs are used to generate theWeb pages every 15 minutes.
4

Other Intranet Uses

While the above examples show how APS uses theIntranet as a man-machine interface for accelerator
operation, other uses have been created. Three of these
are the work request system; Repair, Maintenance, andFigure 4. (a) Storage ring vacuum status page, and (b)Sector 2 vacuum data plot. Clicking a link on page (a)brings up data plot on page (b).
4.1Work Request System

The work request system is used to coordinate thework done on the various technical systems at APS.
People responsible for performing or supervising work to
be done fill out a work request. The work request systemthen sends the people who can approve the work request
an e-mail message that contains a hyperlink to theapproval section of that work request. The Operations
Group reviews the work requests submitted and approves,reschedules, or denies them. Work requests can be sorted
and viewed by various fields or chronologically. When thework starts, the people performing the work go to thecontrol room with a copy of the work request and give it to
the Operations Group. When the work is completed, thecontrol room is notified so that the work request can beclosed.

4.2RM&D

The APS RM&D system is used to convey to technicalgroups any information about problems or items that need
to be investigated or worked on. The Operations Groupor others fill out RM&Ds and personnel from the affected
systems receive an e-mail containing a brief description
along with a hyperlink to the response section of theRM&D system. Multiple people can respond to anRM&D. When an RM&D has been sufficiently addressed,
it is removed from the active system.
4.3

Downtime System

Another Intranet application at APS is the downtime
system. This system tracks the various downtimes thatoccur during operation. The operators enter the downtime
information into a Web-based form that creates adowntime incident for each type of failure. A processing
program takes the downtime data and creates reports fromthe data.
In these three examples, the Intranet provides people
with the ability to interact with the databases in order toenter work or RM&Ds and respond to problems anddowntimes. While these systems do not control theaccelerators or technical systems, they do control andreport on the work that people perform on those systems.
5Machine Security

Using the APS Intranet as a man-machine interface
rather than using EPICS-based or other tools has created amore secure system for machine operations. The Webbased approach is currently a one-way method ofinterfacing with the control system. Even though APS

does use channel access security features in EPICS, it ispreferable that users access machine information via theWeb to ensure there is no chance of accidentally altering
any data.
6Intranet Security

While making all of the Intranet Web pages
available to APS personnel is desirable, we do not want tomake it available to everyone. Therefore, the Web pages
that are only for APS use have been secured. To do this,APS has put all of the logbook and machine status web
pages on a single web server that is configured to serve
only APS machines.
7Conclusion

The APS Intranet has allowed everyone at APS tomonitor the machine status without having to run the
typical EPICS-based tools. This allows people with PCs,
Unix workstations, Macintosh computers, and any otherdevice with a Web browser to access the system
information in a manner that is easy, quick, and efficient.
8References[1] Larry Wall, Programming Perl, O’Reilly & Associates,
1997.
[2] Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, “Frame to Html Filter,”
http://www.w3.org/Tools/fm2html.html.
[3] Louis Emery, “User’s Guide for SDDS-compliant
EPICS Toolkit Version 1.5,” August 1997,
http://www.aps.anl.gov/asd/oag/manuals/EPICStoolkit/
EPICStoolkit.html.