[Opensource] [Fwd: ASK-OSS April 2007 Newsletter]

[Donna Benjamin]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: The Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software
<ask-oss at melcoe.mq.edu.au>
Reply-To: The Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software
<ask-oss at melcoe.mq.edu.au>
To: donna at cc.com.au
Subject: ASK-OSS April 2007 Newsletter
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:09:50 +1000


Project News
Goodbye and thank you Pia

Since the last newsletter, Pia Waugh has left ASK-OSS to pursue other
business ventures. Taking this opportunity I would like to thank Pia for
her significant contribution to ASK-OSS from its inception in 2005 and
wish her well in her future endeavours. I am sure our paths will cross
again in the future.
 
ASK-OSS in Victoria

This month we presented at AIIA Open Source Forum in Melbourne. It was
an excellent and professional event with 80 attendees from Government,
corporate, education and community organisations all over Victoria. We
were pleased to see the interest and enthusiasm with Open Source from
the Victorian Government and business community. Many thanks to David,
Josh and Jo who involved us in the conference.

New contents on the website

We have an excellent case study published this month on The Australian
Synchrotron Project which became operational on 2nd April 2007. The
project is a Major Projects Victoria initiative and has used and built
on Open Source technologies to produce a full-scale scientific facility
that will aid scientific research in Australia.
 



Events Update
The first week of May is a busy week for ASK-OSS. We will be attending
the EDUCAUSE Conference in Melbourne and the Open CeBIT Conference in
Sydney.

The EDUCAUSE Conference is being held in Melbourne at the Melbourne
Exhibition and Convention Centre from April 29th - May 2nd. ASK-OSS will
be present as part of the MELCOE stand and ASK-OSS team leader, Ray
Warouw, will be attending at the following times if you would like to
talk:

      * Mon 30th April 2 - 3:30pm
      * Tues 1st May 10:30am! - 12pm 
Darling Harbour, Sydney will host the ! Open CeBIT Conference on May 3rd
and exhibition from May 1st - May 3rd. The conference will provide
insights into the business benefits of Open Source and assist in
understanding how an Open Source strategy can integrate with your
current business goals. Australian and International case studies will
be featured and the program has an interesting line-up of speakers
including Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems.

Recommended Reading
In each newsletter we'll mention a useful book or reference about Open
Source.

This month we are very pleased to recommend reading Choosing a Linux
Distribution , by Stuart Yeates. The article published on the OSS-Watch
website is useful in selecting a distribution for institutional use,!
with a focus on priorities and support.

Additionally, we would like to recommend reading Intellectual Property
Rights and Standard Setting, Consortium Standards Bulletin, Vol VI, No.
3, March 2007 particularly focusing on the feature article. The article
discusses current IPR issues in standards setting and has some special
comments in relation IPR policy and their interaction with Open Source
Software licensing.

The article can be downloaded at the following location:
http://consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/pdf/mar07/feature.pdf


Case study of the month
In each months case study we will publish some key points about the case
study. Please visit the website for full details of all case studies
athttp://tinyurl.com/ouyeb.
This months case study is on The Australian Synchrotron Pr! oject, a
break-through research facility utilising Open Source technologies and
contributing back to the Open Source community (EPICS). 


Project Details
Name of Open Source project: 

Australian Synchrotron Project - Instrumentation and Controls

Brief overview:

The Australian Synchrotron project required a highly sophisticated
instrumentation and control systems to be used to support the operation
of the particle accelerator, the operations of the experimental areas,
known as Beamlines and for the automation, control and monitoring of a
wide variety of plant and associated devices that make up the
full-scale, scientific facility that is the Australian Synchrotron.

The Australian Synchrotron Instrumentation and Controls is used on
almost all subsystems of the Synchrotron and includes Radio frequency
(RF) systems, a Linear accelerator, an ! electron Booster Ring, a
Synchrotron Storage ring, Magnet control, Water flow and temperature
monitoring, Personnel Safety systems, equipment protection systems, Beam
monitoring systems, Archiving, Control room and data display, Multi
terabyte data storage arrays, Robot control, Beamlines experimental
control and a large manner of detectors and motion controllers. 

The Project was constructed by Major Projects Victoria and became
operational on the 2nd April 2007.

Standards used:

A variety of standards are employed. Coding was ANSI compliant C, C++
and Borland Delphi and a variety of other languages. Programmable logic
controllers (PLC's) used IEC 6113-3 standard languages. Protocols
included Modbus/TCP and M odbus/RTU , OPC, EPICS Channel Access, Bacnet,
assorted device specific protocols and some invented for the task.
Ethernet communications was used throughout. The Linux operating systems
in various flavours (Redhat, Debian, Centos etc) where possible.
Standard PC hardware was used as much as possible. PCI and VME data
acquisition cards are used with an emphasis on PCI. Physics modelling
was implemented with Matlab commercial product and the Matlab
accelerator toolbox (Open source)

OSS technologies used:

Much use is made of the Linux operating system, with it being the
standard platform throughout. Linux Wine is used to keep the Graphical
interfaces identical across platforms.

The Australian synchrotron uses theExperimental Physics and Industrial
Controls Systems (EPICS) toolbox for as much of its control,
instrumentation and data collection as is possible. Blu-ice and synApps
are standards within the Synchrotron community and are used extensively
on the Beamlines. Bugzilla and Perforce (Free to OSS developers) are
used for version and Bug/enhancement control. 

OSS projects contributed to:

The Australian Synchrotron is a member of the EPICS co! mmunity and
while much has already been given back, all of the! develop ment work
will be available to the community when the facility reaches maturity. 

Already the Modbus drivers, the Matlab access portions and some of the
displays are used in similar facilities.

Implementors (internal, external):

Internal: The Instrumentation and Controls Team, a team of 10 Engineers

External: Contractors Cosylab, Toshiba, Oxford instruments, FMB,
Danfysik Observatory Science, Concurrent Computer, Hunt-Alceli-Beratung
and others


Conclusions
Rationale of Open Source technologies used:

The Synchrotron makes full use of EPICS, a collaborative open source
software suite, and in doing so was able to enter the Synchrotron
community and benefit greatly from this. It was able to contribute back
in a fashion, to the community, both in term of actual deliverables but
also in the choices! made by the project - for example the Australian
Synchrotron is the first Synchrotron to use Linux at all layers in the
data collection and display process.


Contact Details
Date of case study: 2-April-2007

State/s: Victoria

Name of institute: Major Projects Victoria

Contact person: Richard Farnsworth

Contact details: Richard.Farnsworth AT synchrotron DOT vic DOT gov DOT
au

URLs (project and institute): 

http://www.synchrotron.vic.gov.au

http://www.synchrotron.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=9



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E-mail: donna at cc.com.au

-- 
donna benjamin - executive director
http://www.creativecontingencies.com/
ph +61 3 9326 9985 | mob +61 418 310 414
research - facilitation - web development