Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Glen Wright <[email protected]> · Tue, 24 Sep 2002 10:49:25 -0600

Actually, the knob server program is the 'km' program, modified to handle 16 
knobs, to take the knob value from an EPICS PV rather than the SUN dials 
device, and to display PV info on the plasma display (using stringout PV's).

Glen Wright

On September 24, 2002 07:48 am, Eric Norum wrote:
> I designed the knob boxes now in use at the CLS so I can provide some
> information about them.
>
> The knob boxes were in use at the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory
> before the CLS project began.  Each box contained four shaft encoders
> (2000 steps/revolution), an 8x40 plasma display, and an Intel
> 8051-family microprocessor which monitored the encoders and sent the
> data to the control system microVAX over an RS-232 serial line.  There
> were also a couple of 'toggle' boxes with 4 center-off momentary-action
> toggle switches in place of the shaft encoders.
>
> The knob boxes were incorporated into the CLS EPICS control system by
> connecting the serial lines from the knob boxes to one of the MC68360
> embedded IOCs developed at the CLS.  The MC68360 embedded IOC has four
> unassigned serial I/O ports so we could have up to 16 knobs on one
> embedded IOC.
> Glen Wright at the CLS has written a very nice knob server program to
> couple the EPICS records in the embedded IOC to the desired target
> EPICS PVs.

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System