Collaborative development of the EPICS Qt framework

Lyncean Technologies proposes to spearhead a collaboration effort among DOE facilities and private industry to develop accelerator control system tools for EPICS using the Qt framework. EPICS Qt is an alternative to Control System Studio (CSS) and will provide an improved platform for rapid development of high-level applications. EPICS is a software environment used to develop and implement distributed control systems to operate devices such as particle accelerators, telescopes, and other large experiments. EPICS, in terms of collaborative development, is widely regarded as a model of success. EPICS is used at 15 DOE facilities and 20 others abroad. The reason EPICS is so successful is that a large community of developers adhere to a philosophy of code re-use, in which entire control systems can be developed at a much lower cost and on a much shorter schedule. However, a serious drawback that exists today is the lack of comprehensive frameworks on which to develop high level applications on top of EPICS. The lack of modern alternatives to antiquated codes has stalled progress in control systems development and presents impending difficulties for both private and public users to maintain EPICS. This SBIR project will extend code-reuse to higher level applications by advocating a modern framework, Qt. The primary goal of this project is to spearhead the collaborative development of the EPICS Qt framework. EPICS Qt, based on C/C++, is an alternative to Control System Studio (CSS), which is based on Java and Eclipse. Unlike MEDM and EDM, EPICS Qt is modern, well-documented, and backed by a healthy community. Like Tk, EPICS Qt is free and open source. EPICS Qt offers the potential of seamless integration of MATLAB-like software. Like LabVIEW, EPICS Qt allows for fast prototyping. EPICS Qt & apos;s many- language bindings offer existing facilities a smooth transition to a modern high-level framework. EPICS Qt will be viable alternative to CSS through the involvement of the EPICS community and the development of open source tools, ultimately providing a strong foundation for many types of control systems across DOE labs as well as private industries that use DOE accelerator technology.