Note:
As of v2.0.0, development will focus on Python 3.x and
wxPython 4.0 (phoenix), the last release for wxPython 3.x (classic)
and Python 2.7 is v1.5.16.
High-level applications for the commissioning of free-electron laser facilities. Purely open-sourced, mainly developed by Python (2.7), powered by various well-benchmarked module/packages, e.g.: matplotlib (beautiful scientific plotting); numpy and scipy (scientific computing); wxPython (GUI building); PyEpics (interface with EPICS); h5py (interface with HDF5 data format), etc.
The goal of this project is to make a mature, full-fledged, friendly, beautiful and stable open source software framework/suite for the FEL commissioning (and operation), including beam tuning, parameters optimization and specific physics-related applications deployment, etc.
Documentation: http://archman.github.io/felapps/
felapps could be installed into the operating system by the following approaches:
- (Recommended) Install directly from PyPI by:
pip install felapps, the required packages (i.e. the above listed Python modules) will be pulled and installed automatically; - Clone this repo by
git clone https://github.com/archman/felapps.git.
Assuming the felapps package has been already installed by pip way, one can write Python script and run it to call methods that included by felapps, e.g.:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import felapps
felapps.imageviewer.run()Or just type imageviewer in the terminal, both do the same thing. Please note that imageviewer app would complain that it cannot find any configuration file for loading in the present working directory, then choose the configuration file as it guided, the sample configuration file could be found in the source directory: felapps/configs.
If using felapps by the git clone way, attention should be paid to make sure the compiled Python module (whl or egg) could be found when issuing import in Python. One may do as follows:
python setup.py bdist_wheel installpython setup.py bdist_wheel developpython setup.py bdist_wheel
The first approach is to generate felapps.VERSION.whl package and install it in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages by default. Since the above path is also by default included in the PYTHONPATH, nothing else is required, one can successfully import felapps in Python, i.e. felapps could be found by Python.
The second approach is similar as the first, but it does not really put the compiled Python package into system directory, but just creates a link to ensure Python knows where felapps is, this is usually for development.
The third approach only generates the Python package, which could be imported into Python provided that the correct module path be added into PYTHONPATH, e.g.:
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '../dist/felapps.VERSION.whl')
import felapps
...This Python suite is designed for the commissioning of a real FEL machine, however we can setup the virtual controls environment for the software development stage. This section shows how to deploy such kind of virtual environment on Linux workstation.
The communication between the suite and controls layer is via Channel Access (CA) protocol of EPICS; generally speaking, IOC application for the virtual machine should be built.
The EPICS base should be compiled and installed on the Linux workstation.
The built IOC application (or template) could be found in felapps/ioc, edit configure/RELEASE to make sure the EPICS_BASE path is valid, the database files (.db files) could be modified to simulate the FEL machine (please note there're not any physics issues evolved, just controls stuff), then build the IOC application; start the IOC by executing st.cmd in iocBoot directory.
The data update is simulated by Python script, thanks to the PyEpics package (which is the Python interface of EPICS), one can update some PV values at some frequency, for instance, in ioc/apps directory, gendata.py script is created to update some waveform records every second.
ImageViewer
