37th Tango Community meeting at SKAO in Jodrell Bank, England

Europe/London
Council Chamber (SKAO)

Council Chamber

SKAO

Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
Description

The 37th Tango Community meeting will be hosted as an hybrid meeting by SKAO on the 27-29 June 2023.

Remote attendance is free of charge and you will still need to register.

Joining in person requires the registration and the payment of the fee - via the below link.

https://buy.stripe.com/7sI5mc28L7Xk1hu5kl

Alternatively you can pay via bank transfer to the following details, please put your name as the reference. 

Account Name: SKA Observatory
Sortcode: 60-15-29
Account Number: 76650642
IBAN: GB98NWBK60152976650642

The deadline for in person registrations is 20 June 2023. If you are joining remotely you can still register up to and including the first day.

The venue is SKAO at Jodrell Bank, Cheshire UK.

 

Rhian Beer
    • 9:00 AM 9:20 AM
      Coffee and welcome 20m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 9:20 AM 10:50 AM
      Facility Status Update: Facility status update 1 Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Roundtable update from the different projects in the TANGO collaboration

      Convener: Lorenzo Pivetta (ELETTRA Sincrotrone Trieste)
      • 9:20 AM
        Welcome and introduction to the Meeting 20m

        Welcome and introduction to the Meeting

        Speaker: Marco Bartolini (SKAO)
      • 9:40 AM
        Status report DESY 18m

        Includes
        - Status Petra III
        - Plans for Petra IV
        - Transition VME -> MicroTCA
        - Evaluate Bluesky

        Speaker: Thorsten Kracht (DESY)
      • 9:58 AM
        A Control System for Helmholtz Institute Jena 18m

        The Helmholtz Institute Jena is a physics research institue that operates two High-Power Lasers, JETi200 and POLARIS, to study laser driven particle acceleration, laser matter interactions and QED phenomena. With a new extension building completed in 2022, a new Target Area is availiable to perform experiments with both lasers together for the first time. Due to this increased complexity, a common control system is needed. We evaluated Tango Controls as a candidate and want to share our first time user experience.

        Speaker: Dominik Hollatz (Helmholtz-Institute Jena)
      • 10:16 AM
        Synchrotron SOLEIL status 18m

        A quick overview of latest news from SOLEIL

        Speaker: Mr Yves-Marie Abiven (Synchrotron SOLEIL)
      • 10:34 AM
        Apollon Control System Status 16m

        APOLLON is a research infrastructure (RI) under the supervision of CNRS and École polytechnique, which is operated by the LULI. It is located on the site Orme des merisiers, Saint-Aubin. The RI APOLLON is listed on the 2018 National Roadmap of the Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur, de la recherche et de l’innovation (Mesri). This registration represents a recognition of its value in the Stratégie nationale de recherche.

        The APOLLON laser facility is designed to reach an exceptional multipetawatt laser peak power, paving the way for many unexplored research’s areas in physics, chemistry, astrophysics, biology and medicine.

        Speaker: Stéphane Marchand (CNRS/LULI)
    • 10:50 AM 11:10 AM
      Coffee break 20m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 11:10 AM 12:30 PM
      Facility Status Update: Facility Status update 2 Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Roundtable update from the different projects in the TANGO collaboration

      Convener: Sonja Vrcic (SKA Organisation)
    • 12:30 PM 1:30 PM
      lunch break 1h Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 1:30 PM 3:30 PM
      TANGO Ecosystem Updates Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Recent and upcoming updates in the TANGO tools

      “Kernel news”, C++ 9.4.1 and IDLv6, PyTango features, Java roadmap, HDB++, PyTangoArchiving, PANIC, Sardana Taurus status, DatabaseDS

      Convener: Nicolas Leclercq (ESRF)
    • 3:30 PM 5:00 PM
      Visit to Jodrell Bank Observatory 1h 30m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 9:00 AM 10:30 AM
      TANGO Community Devices and Tools Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      TANGO devices and other tools developed by the community

      Convener: Gwenaëlle Abeillé (Synchrotron SOLEIL)
      • 9:00 AM
        Showcase of tools and solutions for the Tango infrastructure at the CALA laser centre 20m

        The Centre for Advanced Laser Applications (CALA) near Munich, Germany, is a university laser laboratory operating a high-power laser system and several experiment endstations. Although the system is quite large, resources are limited compared to a user facility both in budget and workforce. Our Tango based control system used for machine control and data acquisition is therefore often driven by the need for simple solutions and minimum complexity. After a general overview of our facility I will present some solutions to address these requirements, e.g. a simple alternative to using „nssm“ for Starter hosts in Windows, a Git monitor for easy deployment, and some first experiences with Taranta dashboards mixed with a custom synoptic view.

        Speaker: Leonard Doyle (Faculty of Physics, LMU Munich, Germany)
      • 9:20 AM
        New generation Qt control components for HLS 20m

        A new generation of Qt graphical components, namely cumbia-qtcontrols-ng is under development at ELETTRA. A common engine allows each component to be rendered on traditional QWidgets and scalable QGraphicsItems alike. The latter technology makes it possible to integrate live controls with static SVG in order to realize any kind of synoptic with touch and scaling capabilities. A pluggable zoomer can be installed on any widget or graphics item. Apply numeric controls, Cartesian and Circular (Radar) plots are the first components realized.

        Speaker: Giacomo Strangolino (Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste)
      • 9:40 AM
        LaVue - Live Image Viewer 20m

        LaVue is Live Image Viewer GUI application for 2D detector images. It can display live images from various image sources, e.g. image Tango Attributes. The additional LavueController tango server allows to control LaVue GUI widgets remotely. Moreover, specialized image tools of LaVue application communicate via Tango interface with Sardana MacroServer, Tango motors or the LambdaOnlineAnalisys RoIs servers which improves image visualization and provides important feedback to the control system during the experiment.

        Speaker: Dr Jan Kotanski (DESY)
      • 10:00 AM
        PLC emulation for Tango Devices testing purposes 15m

        PLC controllers are crucial elements in communication between Tango devices and physical devices.
        This area is also important in case of testing device servers' communication and logic.
        In SOLARIS we found this fact as a good anchor point for develop a new way of testing our code.
        We would like to present the mechanism of emulation PLC controller for creating virtual devices in a process of testing tango devices.

        Speaker: Maciej Mleczko (National Synchrotron Radiation Center)
      • 10:15 AM
        Tango device server for ion pump controller 10m

        SIP POWER is the name of the new power supply at NSRC SOLARIS, which is responsible for controlling the ion pump of the NEXTorr family. The presentation provides an overview of the Tango device server for the SIP POWER ion pump controller. It contains description of the ion pump controller, methods of connecting to the device, attributes reading and writing using logical shift and control of the device using Python libraries such as pymodbus and asyncio.

        Speaker: Mateusz Floras (NSRC SOLARIS)
      • 10:25 AM
        ReferenceFiles: A Tango Device to store references in files 5m

        A very simple Tango device to store references data, typically Spectrum or Image attributes, to be retrieved later, without having to setup databases and without running special configurations.
        For persistence data are saved in files.

        Speaker: Graziano Scalamera (Elettra)
    • 10:30 AM 11:00 AM
      Coffee Break 30m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 11:00 AM 12:30 PM
      TANGO Web Tools Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Special focus on tools that enable the use of TANGO Controls in a web based environment

      Convener: Vincent Hardion (MAXIV Laboratory)
      • 11:00 AM
        Taranta status report 20m

        Taranta is a web-based software developed by MaxIV and SKAO. It is used to interface with Tango devices and create custom dashboards. The continuous development of new features, improvements, and optimizations has brought the software to a good level of maturity and increased its usage among community users. In this talk, we will present the newly added and upcoming features, code quality improvements, community requests, and the exploration of new functionalities to be added.

        Speaker: Matteo Canzari (INAF - OAAb)
      • 11:20 AM
        SOLARIS State Grid Web Migration 20m

        Introduce the initial migration concept of State Grid application to web technology based on the TangoGQL Interface:
        - Introduction of State Grid and United States applications,
        - Present results of performance tests of querying multiple devices using the TangoGQL Interface. Discuss scaling possibilities and limitations,
        - A few words about the choice of frontend technologies,
        - Possibilities of cooperation.

        Speaker: Joanna Wajda (National Synchrotron Radiation Centre SOLARIS)
      • 11:40 AM
        Polka - web-based Astor 15m

        Polka is a web-based application that supports most of the basic functionalities of the well-known Astor. Our team is proud to use TangoGQL as the backend and Taranta Auth as the security layer to promote the idea of Zero Code-Waste.

        The frontend was built with JavaScript and React, and supports mobile view.

        During the presentation, I would like to demonstrate all the capabilities of Polka and show potential future additions.

        Speaker: Jakub Kowalczyk (S2Innovation)
      • 11:55 AM
        Deployment of IC@MS - web-based alarm system 15m

        IC@MS is a web-based application that supports functionalities of well known Panic GUI. Frontend was built with JavaScript and React. For backend, we used Python and Flask.

        For purpose of IC@MS, we created our own Kubernetes instance and CI/CD model to deploy over 10 containers that are part of IC@MS system.

        During the presentation, I would like to demonstrate functionalities of IC@MS in nutshell and show deployment process to our Kubernetes instance.

        Speaker: Jakub Kowalczyk (S2Innovation)
      • 12:10 PM
        The refurbishment of the ESRF Machine Status 20m

        This presentation aims to share with the audience about the current refurbishment of the so-called "Machine Status" web application currently in progress at the ESRF.

        Speaker: Axel Bocciarelli
    • 12:30 PM 1:25 PM
      Lunch break 55m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 1:25 PM 3:15 PM
      TANGO Ecosystem Updates: Contingency session Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Recent and upcoming updates in the TANGO tools

      “Kernel news”, C++ 9.4.1 and IDLv6, PyTango features, Java roadmap, HDB++, PyTangoArchiving, PANIC, Sardana Taurus status, DatabaseDS

      • 1:25 PM
        PyTango Status Report 20m

        Latest news from the PyTango project.

        Speaker: Anton Joubert (MAX IV Laboratory)
      • 1:45 PM
        IDL6 SIG Meeting 20m

        A summary of the IDL6 SIG Meeting and its derived actions

        Speaker: Sergi Rubio Manrique (ALBA Synchotron)
      • 2:05 PM
        Panic/Fandango python3 migration 20m

        Panic and Fandango have been migrated to python3 along its dependencies

        Speaker: Sergi Rubio Manrique (ALBA Synchotron)
      • 2:25 PM
        Taurus Status Report 15m

        Taurus is a framework for creating GUIs and CLIs for the Control System using Python and PyQt. This talk is a very quick status report on its latest developments. Initially developed at ALBA, it is now used in several institutions inside the Tango Community.
        A brief introduction of the project, together with the current status and
        latest developments is presented in this contribution.

        Speaker: Zbigniew Reszela (ALBA)
      • 2:40 PM
        Sardana Status Report 15m

        Sardana is a software suite built on top of Tango for Supervision, Control and
        Data Acquisition in scientific installations. Initially developed at ALBA, it
        is now used in several institutions inside the Tango Community.
        A brief introduction of the project, together with the current status and
        latest developments is presented in this contribution.

        Speaker: Zbigniew Reszela (ALBA)
      • 2:55 PM
        SKA Tango Operator 20m

        The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an international effort to build two radio interferometers in South Africa and Australia forming one Observatory monitored and controlled from global headquarters (GHQ) based in the United Kingdom at Jodrell Bank. The software for the monitoring and control system is developed based on the TANGO-controls framework which provides a distributed framework for driving software and hardware using CORBA distributed objects that represent devices that communicate with zeroMQ events internally. This system runs in a conteinerised environment managed by Kubernetes (k8s). k8s provides primitive resource types for the abstract management of compute, network and storage, as well as a comprehensive set of APIs for customising the all aspects of cluster behaviour. These capabilities are encapsulated in a framework (Operator SDK) which enables the creation of higher order resources types assembled out of the k8s primitives (Pods, Services, PersistentVolumes), so that abstract resources can be managed as first class ctizens within k8s. These methods of resource assembly and management have proven useful for reconciling some of the differences between the TANGO world and the world of Cloud Native computing where the use of Custom Resource Definitions (CRD i.e. Device Server and Databaseds) and a supporting Operator developed in the k8s framework has given rise to better usage of TANGO-controls in kubernetes. Keywords: kubernetes, controller, tango, operator SDK

        Speaker: Matteo Di Carlo (INAF)
    • 3:15 PM 3:30 PM
      Coffee Break 15m Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT
    • 3:30 PM 5:00 PM
      TANGO Adoptions design and techniques: TANGO adoption design and techniques Council Chamber

      Council Chamber

      SKAO

      Jodrell Bank, Macclesfield SK11 9FT

      Special focus on the design of TANGO systems:

      • how is TANGO used in context that are different from synchrotrons?
      • How is it managed the development and testing of TANGO code?
      • CICD practices and tools
      Convener: Guifre Cuni
      • 3:30 PM
        PyTango for LOFAR 2.0 stations 20m

        The use of SCADA systems is prevalent throughout scientific instruments. At
        ASTRON Our main instruments (WSRT, LOFAR) rely on them for their control &
        monitoring, including the upgraded LOFAR 2.0 telescope.

        In this presentation we will present the case of LOFAR2.0, in which PyTango
        plays a major role. We will show the software composition and the architecture
        implemented for the LOFAR 2.0 station design. Including its different components and parts of its software architecture.

        Furthermore, we will cover the challenges we overcame when using PyTango as
        well as current impediments we are still experiencing. For a better
        understanding of the scale and complexity of our instrument, we will explain
        the hardware that will be used at each of the 52 stations of LOFAR 2.0
        throughout Europe, the dataflow between stations and the central
        processing clusters.

        Speaker: Corne Lukken
      • 3:50 PM
        TANGO Driven Control System for the SKA Telescope 20m

        The Square Kilometre Array will host two radio interferometers in South Africa and Australia; each observing at a mid and low frequency respectively. The project has adopted the TANGO Controls framework for its telescope control system. In this talk we will provide a brief overview of the dishes hosted on the two sites and how we are using TANGO Contols framework to implement the control elements needed for the telescope control system

        Speaker: Samuel Twum (SKAO)
      • 4:10 PM
        Conan for building C++ Tango devices at SOLEIL 20m

        At SOLEIL, our Tango devices are mainly developed in C++, with around 460 projects for building libraries and devices for our accelerator and beamlines. We have a software factory that has enabled us to achieve continuous integration of our developments using Maven, which manages project dependencies. However, Maven is uncommon for C++. In addition, it has limitations that hinder us from supporting future platforms and new programming standards, leading us to replace it with Conan.

        Conan is a dependency and package manager for the C and C++ that works on all platforms and integrates with various build systems. Its features are designed to enable modern continuous integration workflows with C++ and are an ideal alternative to Maven for our C++ build system.

        The presentation will provide an overview of the integration process and share the status of the deployment of the new build system.

        Speaker: Patrick Madela (Soleil)
      • 4:30 PM
        CI/CD at MAX IV 15m

        The goal of this talk is to share the workflow in place at MAX IV for building and deploying Tango devices. We will focus on the use of GitLab CI templates to ensure code quality, facilitate building processes, and run tests.
        Conda has become our primary packaging tool, replacing RPM (Red Hat Package Manager). We will discuss how our GitLab CI templates seamlessly generate Conda packages for Python modules, eliminating the need to write a recipe, thanks to the grayskull tool.
        When it comes to testing PyTango devices, our preferred approach is to utilize the DeviceTestContext. However, it's also possible to run tests using a Tango Databaseds Server and MySQL/MariaDB, leveraging the capabilities provided by GitLab CI services.
        Versioning is made effortless with setuptools-scm, enabling us to seamlessly update our Ansible inventory when tagging a repository.
        To ensure up-to-date software on all beamlines, we perform deployments every Monday. Additionally, we will touch upon the possibilities of setting up continuous deployment in specific cases, enabling automatic software update.

        Speaker: Benjamin Bertrand (MAX IV Laboratory)
      • 4:45 PM
        CI/CD at the ESRF 15m

        ESRF is moving towards CI/CD for its tango ecosystem.
        Here is a report on our take on this, with our specific constraints, and the solutions we chose.

    • 7:00 PM 9:00 PM
      Social Dinner 2h