IOC for the Pfefiffer TPG-366 Pressure Gauge

This in an unofficial, as-simple-as-it-gets IOC for the Pfeiffer TPG-366 pressure gauge.

It does nothing else except reading out temperatrue and status data, publishing them via PV suffixes .VALUE and .STATUS for each gauge. The exact format of the PVs is {prefix}G{cnt}:STATUS, respectively {prefix}G{gauge}:VALUE with {prefix} as the EPICS prefix (e.g. "DOODLE:") and {cnt} as the gauge counter, starting at 1. For instance:

• DOODLE:G1:VALUE
• DOODLE:G1:STATUS
• DOODLE:G2:VALUE
• DOODLE:G2:STATUS ...

Obtaining & Running

Via Pip:

$ pip install tpg366-ioc
$ export PFEIFFER_EPICS_PREFIX=DOODLE:
$ export PFEIFFER_VISA_DEVICE=TCPIP::192.168.1.17::8000::SOCKET
$ tpg-366-ioc

Or via Podman:

$ podman run -ti --rm \
     -e PFEIFFER_EPICS_PREFIX=DOODLE: \
     -e PFEIFFER_VISA_DEVICE=TCPIP::192.168.1.17::8000::SOCKET
     registry.gitlab.com/kmc3-xpp/tpg366-ioc:latest

Or directly from source, via git clone:

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/kmc3-xpp/tpg366-ioc
$ pip install -e tpg366-ioc[all]
$ export PFEIFFER_EPICS_PREFIX=DOODLE:
$ export PFEIFFER_VISA_DEVICE=TCPIP::192.168.1.17::8000::SOCKET
$ tpg-366-ioc

Environment Variables

TPG-IOC is controlled via environment variables:

• PFEIFFER_EPICS_PREFIX EPICS prefix including the trailing ":"
• PFEIFFER_VISA_DEVICE VISA device address specification. Note that anything other than TCPIP-schemes may cause problems currently. Typically, the default port for these devices is 8000, so your TCP/IP VISA device would be something like: "TCPIP::<host>::8000::SOCKET".
• PFEIFFER_VISA_RMAN VISA resource manager, defaults to "@py"
• PREIFFER_NR_GAUGES number of gauges to query / display, defaults to 6.

Bugs & Caveats

Async operation, which the EPICS PV part depends on, only seems to work fine with TCP/IP VISA devices. This is owing to bugs within the VISA framework. Could be worked around, but it isn't a priority currently (contact us if you have a use case).

The IOC is very, very simple -- just reading pressure values. No configuration, no advaced features.

Normally there would be unit tests and a sim-mode prior to building the image -- this time there aren't. Eventually they'll get retrofitted (there is a test harness in place). But for now, be careful with upgrades.