PLC - PlasmaLabControl (Python3)

PLC is a software package to control the experiment setup of Plasmalab.

This is a reborn in Python3.

What's there and what we need:

What's there:

• many controlling and measuring boxes (digital controller, camera, ...)

What we need:

• software component for every box (IO communication, logging)
• one software component for controlling (human interface)

What was there:

• stubs of software for some boxes

Software Concept:

Many processes with threads communicating over TCP (socket communication)

• flexible

• every process can run on own cpu core (automatically or manually)

• threading prevents unnecessary blockings of the whole system while IO communication

• every process can run on different boxes/computers

  • small processes can go to own boxes in future

  • heavy processes can get their own computers in future

  • controlling interface (human interface) can run on separated location (e. g. near the scientist and not near the experiment setup)

  • living in the cloud, e. g.:

    • experiment setup on the A300-ZERO-G (or ISS)
    • logging somewhere in Bordeaux (or Garching)
    • controlling from the Dune of Pyla (or Ringberg)

• iff running on one Linux system (computer):

  • loopback interface is fast
  • kernel can do the load sharing

Implementation and Development:

• Python3 (at the moment also C++; as far as possible this will be changed in future)

• popular and suitable operating system: UNIX (Linux, MacOS)

Human Interface:

• GUI

  • Tkinter (Tcl/Tk)
  • mostly platform indepent (at the moment some controlling parts are integrated; and therefore only complete funtionable on POSIX systems; this will be changend in near future)

• config files

  • style of RFC 822

    • mostly human readable
    • platform indepent

• Batch Controlling:

  • list of setpoints in a config file, which can be loaded and set in the GUI

Server Components:

For every controlling and measuring box we write some components: (at the moment heavy development)

• server program

  • IO to the device
  • logging
  • socket communication for controlling

• client program (for debugging)

  • human interface (at the moment only GUI)
  • socket communication with the server program

• integration of a useful API in the human interface GUI

Other Parts:

plc contains some extra tools for viewing/analysing the measurements. For example:

• rawmovieviewer.py (player for the img-files (PAM format))

  • quick viewing of the measured/recorded movies

• rawmovies2recordings.py (converts img-files (PAM format) to zip-archives with png graphics)

  • img-files in the PAM format are large and structured to 1 GB files
  • resulting zip-archives are smaller and structured in recordings (parabolas)

• plc_viewer.py (viewer of the movies and other measurements)

  • assignment of the frames to other measurements

Copyright + License

=================== Author: Daniel Mohr.

License: GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, Version 3, 29 June 2007

Copyright (C) 2012, 2013, 2014 Daniel Mohr and PlasmaLab (FKZ 50WP0700 and FKZ 50WM1401) and Max-Planck-Institut fuer extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstrasse, D-85740 Garching and Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V., D-51170 Koeln Copyright (C) 2023 Perevoshchikov Egor