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Subject: Re: Porting EPICS to NetBSD
From: Andrew Johnson <[email protected]>
To: David Dudley <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:55:58 -0500
David Dudley wrote:
Just out of curiosity, are there any Industrial sites that use EPICS?
I see lots of labs and observatorys and other academic environments,
but don't think I've ever seen an industrial type site.

The EPICS website has a page that does list some industrial users at http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/projects.php but that list is rather old now and I'm not sure how we got the information.


Also, I've seen information on a MODBUS/TCP interface being
available, and stuff for VME boxes (or "crates", I think you call
them), but very little as far as actual industrial I/O interface
availability.

An industrial site (at least us), uses PLC networks traditionally
with MODBUS being a favorite (not MODBUS/TCP, but just serial
MODBUS). In addition, we have Allen Bradley Data Highway, Siemens
TIWAY or TI505, DirectNet for the DirectLogic systems we use, DNP for
a couple of our other PLC systems, and various other hardware
interfaces like FieldBus or HART, and on, and on, and on.....  I
haven't seen any of that level of flexibility in the stuff I've seen
on EPICS as of yet.

Have you studied http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/modules/index.php the support module pages yet? Under the hardware support we list some of those serial protocols -- I know that there are sites using serial Modbus, we use DirectNet here, and there are many others. For RS232 and other messagaging type support you should favor anything that says it uses Asyn, which is a fairly recent and flexible framework for doing this kind of I/O. You should ask specific questions on tech-talk before starting on a driver, since someone else may have at least part of your solution already written.


Don't get me wrong, I'm planning on writing a fair bundle of software
that I'm actually going to download into some of our PLC equipment in
order to convert them into IOC's themselves. We have roughly 40
Motorola MOSCAD remote systems that I can download custom 'C'
programs into, and I'm planning on making good use of that for IOC
interaces, but at least a normal  MODBUS interface would be helpful
in order to get things started easily (MODBUS is sort of the
"universal" PLC interface, that practially everyone in the industry
talks).  There are a lot of much better ones, but serial MODBUS is
usually a 'least common denominator'.

IIRC that's also part of its downfall, and may be why we don't have it prominently listed - people have written an interface to 'their' PLC, but it doesn't work with someone else's without modification because of the lack of a rigid standard. It would certainly be worth posting a tech-talk question with Modbus in the subject line to see how many solutions there are out there.


HTH,

- Andrew
--
Not everything that can be counted counts,
and not everything that counts can be counted.
  -- Albert Einstein

References:
Re: Porting EPICS to NetBSD David Dudley

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