Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Dirk Zimoch <[email protected]> · Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:33:41 +0100

Pavel,

I don't know the TDS 5054, but most oscilloscopes come with GPIB, RS232,

or VXI11 (="GPIB over TCP") network interface and are controlled with

text commands. In that case the combination asynDriver/StreamDevice will

do the job.

http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/modules/soft/asyn/
http://epics.web.psi.ch/software/streamdevice/

If you are lucky, someone has already written a StreamDevice protocol

file for it. But if not, it is not difficult.

Here at PSI, we also run EPICS directly on some oscilloscopes. Many

oscilloscopes nowadays use Windows as the operating system and come with

an API to get direct access to the oscilloscope functions. This allows

to write an EPICS device driver. Running the IOC directly on the

oscilloscope saves some network traffic. With an external IOC, the data

is first transferred from the oscilloscope to the IOC (e.g. via VXI11)

and then from the IOC to the client via Channel Access. With an IOC

integrated into the oscilloscope, you only have Channel Access. But

writing such a driver is somewhat sophisticated.

Dirk

Pavel Masloff wrote:

Hey Andrew!!! Hi Dirk!

It worked :))

This was my first introduction to Epics. Andrew, Dirk, guys! What would

you recommend me to do next? I mean, we have a Tektronix oscilloscope at

work, namely TDS 5054, I guess. And I've read there's a driver written

to hook it up to EPICS. How can I do it? Perhaps, I could try your PLC

driver, Dirk as the next step in mastering Epics. What do you guys think?

Thanks,

Paul

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 9:42 PM, Andrew Johnson <[email protected]

<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    Hi Pavel,

    On 2011-12-05 Pavel Masloff wrote:
     >
     > D:\>softIoc -h
     > Usage: softIoc [-D softIoc.dbd] [-h] [-S] [-a ascf]
     >         [-m macro=value,macro2=value2] [-d file.db]
     >         [-x prefix] [st.cmd]
     > Compiled-in path to softIoc.dbd is:
     >         'D:\baseR3.14.12.1\new'/dbd/softIoc.dbd

    Forget my last message, the quotes are coming from this Makefile rule:

    epicsInstallDir.h:
           $(ECHO) "FINAL_LOCATION=$(FINAL_LOCATION)"
           $(PERL) ../makeInstallDir.pl '$(FINAL_LOCATION)' > $@

    On Unix the shell strips out those single quotes, but evidently
    yours is not
    doing so (my win32-x86-mingw build does strip them, but not my win32-x86
    build).  You can add two lines to the
    base/src/softIoc/makeInstallDir.pl file
    to fix this:

    === modified file 'src/softIoc/makeInstallDir.pl'
    --- src/softIoc/makeInstallDir.pl       2010-09-27 22:42:42 +0000
    +++ src/softIoc/makeInstallDir.pl       2011-12-05 18:33:24 +0000
    @@ -14,6 +14,8 @@
     my $path = shift;

     $path =~ s/\\/\\\\/gx;
    +$path =~ s/^'//x;
    +$path =~ s/'$//x;

     print "/* THIS IS A GENERATED FILE. DO NOT EDIT! */\n",
          "\n",

    I will add this change to the 3.14.12.2 release of Base.

    HTH,

    - Andrew
    --
    Optimization is the process of taking something that works and
    replacing it with something that almost works, but costs less.
    -- Roger Needham

--
Sincerely,

Pavel Maslov, MSc
R&D Institute for Electro-Physical Apparatus

Mobile: +7 (951) 672 22 19
Phone: +7 (812) 461 01 01

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System