frappy/doc/source/introduction.rst

Introduction

Frappy - a Python Framework for SECoP

Frappy is a Python framework for creating Sample Environment Control Nodes (SEC Node) with a SECoP interface. A SEC Node is a service, running usually a computer or microcomputer, which accesses the hardware over the interfaces given by the manufacturer of the used electronic devices. It provides access to the data in an abstracted form over the SECoP interface. SECoP is a protocol for communicating with Sample Environment and other mobile devices, specified by a committee of the ISSE.

The Frappy framework deals with all the details of the SECoP protocol, so the programmer can concentrate on the details of accessing the hardware with support for different types of interfaces (TCP or Serial, ASCII or binary). However, the programmer should be aware of the basic principle of the SECoP protocol: the hardware abstraction.

Hardware Abstraction

The idea of hardware abstraction is to hide the details of hardware access from the SECoP interface. A SECoP module is a logical component of an abstract view of the sample environment. It is one independent value of measurement like a temperature or pressure or a physical output like a current or voltage. This corresponds roughly to an EPICS channel or a NICOS device. On the hardware side we may have devices with several channels, like a typical temperature controller, which will be represented individual SECoP modules. On the other hand a SECoP channel might be linked with several hardware devices, for example if you imagine a superconducting magnet controller built of separate electronic devices like a power supply, switch heater and coil temperature monitor. The latter case does not mean that we have to hide the details in the SECoP interface. For an expert it might be useful to give at least read access to hardware specific data by providing them as separate SECoP modules. But the magnet module should be usable without knowledge of all the inner details.

A SECoP module has:

• properties: static information describing the module, for example a human readable description of the module or information about the intended visibility.
• parameters: changing information about the state of a module (for example the status containing information about the state of the module) or modifiable information influencing the measurement (for example a "ramp" rate).
• commands: actions, for example stop.

A SECoP module belongs to an interface class, mainly Readable or Drivable. A Readable has at least the parameters value and status, a Drivable in addition target. value is the main value of the module and is read only. status is a tuple (status code, status text), and target is the target value. When the target parameter value of a Drivable changes, the status code changes normally to a busy code. As soon as the target value is reached, the status code changes back to an idle code, if no error occurs.

Programmers Hint: before starting to code, choose carefully the main SECoP modules you want to provide to the user.

Programming a Driver

Programming a driver <class_coding> means:

• selecting a base class to be extended (e.g. frappy.modules.Readable or frappy.modules.Drivable).
• defining the parameters
• coding the methods to retrieve and access these parameters

Support for Communication with the Hardware

Often the access to the hardware has to be done over a serial communication over LAN, RS232 or USB. The mixin frappy.io.HasIO and the classes frappy.io.StringIO and frappy.io.BytesIO have all the functionality needed for this.

Some hardware also requires calls to libraries offered by the manufacturers, certainly this is also possible. In case there is no python package for this, but a C/C++ API, you might use one of the following:

• Ctypes (A foreign function library for Python)
• CFFI (C Foreign Function Interface for Python)
• Extending Python with C or C++