The 13th Symposium on Accelerator Science and Technology, Suita, Osakn, Japan, October 2001

New Control System for the RIKEN Ring Cyclotron Using EPICS
Misaki KOMIYAMA, Ichiro YOKOYAMA, Makoto NAGASE, Eiji IKEZAWA, Masaki FUJIMAKI, Ryo ABE,Toshiya TANABE, and Masayuki KASE
RIKEN (The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research)
2-1, Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama, 351-0198 Japan

Abstract
The control system of the RIKEN Ring Cyclotron(RRC) has been replaced to the new system using theExperimental Physics and Industrial Control System(EPICS) 1) since this April. The status of the system and its
extension plan to the RIKEN Linear Accelerator (RILAC)
control will be reported in this paper.
1 Introduction

The project of renewing the RRC control system has
been started since three years before. One reason for thenecessity of the system replacement was some operational
problems mainly occurring around the touch panel, manmachine interface, and the other reason was the request toexpand the system to achieve compatibility with the RIKEN
RI Beam Factory (RIBF) project. 2) The former one is due tothe oldness of the system; the last control system had keptworking for more than 13 years till this March. To maintaincompatibility between the old and the new control system, apartial system replacement plan was investigated, andfinally, we employed the EPICS as the next control system.
Considering the fact that the RRC is constantly in operation,
the system replacement must be carried out in stages. Under
the present condition of the RRC operation, we cannot takea sufficiently long period at any one time to replace thelarge quantity of low level control parts. Therefore, we areattempting to replace only the high level control parts of thesystem, including the touch panel as the first stage, and thelow level control parts are being left as they are. However,by this replacement method, the maximum control ability ofthe present equipment is expected to be realized.
The preliminary system which controlled some kind of
devices of the RRC was tested two years ago, and we
obtained results which indicated that the fundamental
operations could be performed using EPICS. 3) Therefore,
we extended the system to be able to control all theaccelerator devices which were controlled by the CAMACCIM/DIM system. The outline of the RRC control system isshown in the following section.

Partial Replacement Plan Using EPICS~--~~------~-----~-~T-------~--1

RRC

NEW!

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Vacuum, Cooling, RFFig. I New control system using the EPICS.

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The 13th Symposium on Accelerator Science and Technology, Suita, Osaka, Japan, October 2001

2 New control system and its status
2.1 The control system of the RRC and its status
In Fig .1, the part surrounded by the dashed line is
newly introduced to the system to replace the minicomputer, Mitsubishi M601AR, which is the host computerin the last system. Our system is based on a CAMAC serial
crate network and is supported by two types of modules,
communication interface modules (CIMs) and device
interface modules (DIMs). These modules were originallydeveloped by RIKEN in order to assist the main computerin its tasks. Almost all magnet power supplies and beamdiagnostic devices such as beam profile monitors, beam
baffles, beam slits, main differential probes and Faraday
cups are controlled by them.
As mentioned in the last section, only high level control
parts are replaced in the first stage of the system
replacement. This means that the low level control parts
including a CAMAC loop are left as they are and they must
be controlled by EPICS. One of the advantages of using
EPICS is many hardwares are already supported by EPICS
Collaboration. For example, the CAMAC system supportedin EPICS. Therefore, we developed the device supports tocontrol the CIMIDIM system using CAMAC library inEPICS.
On the other hand, we created graphic user interfaces(GUis) for operation on the EPICS workstation which wereused as the operator interface. Another advantage of using
EPICS is that many standard host softwares are prepared by
EPICS Collaboration such as Motif-based Editor I Display
Manager (MEDM) and so on. The GUis were created byusing MEDM I DM2K if our objective operations wererealized using the objects prepared in them (DM2K is theupgraded version of MEDM, which was developed by
BESSY4l). When we required more complex functions onGUI, we had to create them by writing programs in C. In thenew system, we prepared programs to show the graph ofdata measured by a profile monitor, a Faraday cup and amain ditferential probe. Though DM2K has a graph object,
it has functions which are too simple for our requirements.
However, for the present, almost all operation windows
were created by DM2K. Figure 2 is a sample GUI createdby DM2K for the control of beam attenuaters.
In our system, one HP-UX 10.20 machine works as aserver and two Windows machines work as clients. All
EPICS database and EPICS sequencers which are written in
the state notation language for sequential operations areloaded on one VME computer from the server computer. An
operator connects his Windows machine to the HP-UX
server machine, and controls devices by communication
with objected EPICS records on the VME computer. Thereare more than 20,000 EPICS records on the VME computer
now. This number is too big in comparison with the control
system of KEK-B, for example. However, it is difficult toseparate these records and to load them to plural VME
computers, because it is difficult to divide the CAMAC

control loop in two. Therefore, we are using the VME CPU
module which mounts 128 MByte memory to make
operation without resource troubles. About 50% of memoryis used in constant, and we can do beam operationsmoothly. Figure 3 shows the PC structure for EPICS at thecontrol room. We use only the two Windows machines
shown in the left part of the figure now. However thesystem shown in the right part, which has same ability as
the left part, will be introduced within this year for anothermode of beam operation.
At the present, almost all RRC devices connected to theCAMAC-CIM/DIM system can be controlled by EPICS.
Beam operation is done by using each GUis and thecondition of the magnet power supplies is watched every 10
seconds using one of the standard EPICS host tool, AlarmHandler (ALH). It tells us an unexpected accident on thepower supplies by beeping. Further, the beam intensity ismeasured by a Faraday cup every 200 msec and always
shown on the trend graph on the Windows machine at thecontrol desk.
2.2 Extension of the system to the RJIAC control
The present RILAC control system consists of somedifferent systems; the system controlled by a mini-computer
as well as the RRC control system, the system controlled bya PC, the devices controlled through the hard wire directly
and so on. Since the system replace of the RRC wassucceeded, we started to replace the high level control partof the RILAC control system using mini-computer by using
EPICS as well as the RRC. In the system, the minicomputer, Mitsubishi M601500, is used in the same position
as in the RRC system. It is older model of M601 AR, butthere is no difference between them in a strict sense for theactual control. Therefore, the control of the devices in theRILAC system will be made possible only by adding theoperational data into the Oracle database. However, it isavailable only for the devices controlled by the CAMACCIM/DIM system. The RILAC has a more complex controlsystem than the RRC because of its longer history. Somedevices are controlled by the CAMAC-CIM/DIM system as-412-Fig. 2 Sample of GUI created by using DM2K.

The 13th Symposium on Accelerator Science and Technology, Suita, Osaka, Japan, October 2001

RRC Control Area

AVF Cyclotron Control Area

Fig.3 PC structure for EPICS at the RRC control room.
well as the RRC system, while others are controlled by aGP-IB. The CAMAC-CIM/DIM system controls somemagnet power supplies and some beam diagnostic devices,and GP-IB controls some power supplies for the magnets
and for the rf systems of the RILAC. However, there are no
significant differences in the construction of the EPICS
database between a CAMAC-CIM/DIM system and a GPIB. The device support for the GP-IB device was developedin the same way as the device supports for the CIM/DIM.
Their operation was tested by using the same kind of GUisas the CAMAC system and it was succeeded in thissummer.
Furthermore, a network 1/0 (NIO) system5> was newly
introduced to control the new power supplies in the RILAC
system. The device supports for NIO were also developed,and we succeeded the operation of the magnet power
supplies controlled by NIO in this spring.
Now we has started to control the magnet power
supplies and beam diagnostic devices controlled by
CAMAC-CIM/DIM system and the magnet power supplies
controlled by NIO by EPICS since this spring. We are toreplace the M60/500 system to the EPICS within this year.

HP-UX server machine to more powerful one at thebeginning of this October supported by Mitsubishi ElectricCorporation. We continue the investigation of the RILAC
control system as well as the RRC control system.
References[ 1] http://www .aps.anlgov/epics/[2] Y.Yano et al.: in this proceedings.
[3] M.Kaji et al.: Proc. 12th Symp. on Accelerator Scienceand Technology, Wako, p.441 (1999).
[4] http://www-csr.bessy .de/control/[5] http://elc.aska.or.jp/denshi/system!kasokuki/

3 Summary
The RRC and a part of RILAC system have replaced tothe new system since this spring. We are to go on thissystem replacement in stages, and aim to control all beam
devices which consist in the RRC and the RILAC system byEPICS in the future. For this, there is a renewal plan of the-413-