EPICS Collaboration
Organizer: Andrew Johnson (ANL)
Date: Saturday 9/20/2025
Duration: Full-day
Description: EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System) is a set of Open-Source software tools, libraries, and applications developed collaboratively and used worldwide to create distributed soft real-time control systems for scientific instruments such as particle accelerators, telescopes, experiment beamlines and other large scientific experiments. As a 1-day EPICS Collaboration Meeting, this workshop will provide developers and managers from EPICS sites an opportunity to discuss contributions to shared projects and consider future developments. Attendees can see what other organizations are doing, hear about new EPICS tools, and propose enhancements to existing ones, with the aim of maximizing their usefulness to the whole community and avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort.
Tango
Organizer: Thomas Juerges (SKAO)
Date: Saturday 9/20/2025
Duration: Full-day
Description: This workshop is a continuation in the series of ICALEPCS workshops on Tango. Tango is a toolkit for building modern distributed control systems in C++, Python, and/or Java. It is prepared for people who are new to Tango but also for those who want to get an update on the latest tools in Tango. The workshop provides hands-on exercises and examples which attendees can try during or after the workshop. Attendees will acquire a good understanding of the concepts of Tango and its tools for building an object oriented distributed control system.
PBCS: PLC Based Control Systems
Hyperlink: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1514024/
Organizer: Enrique Blanco (CERN)
Date: Saturday 9/20/2025
Duration: Full-day
Description: This ICALEPCS 2025 conference workshop intends to create a collaborative space where attendees will show and exchange their best practices, tools employed and return of experience when engineering PLC based control systems. Discussions will focus on:
- Specification and design methodologies for control applications.
- Software development under industry standards and frameworks.
- Capabilities of PLC suppliers' IDEs, including advanced software engineering features.
- Emerging paradigms, such as automatic code generation and object-oriented approaches.
- New technology trends, including embedded OPC-UA, MQTT, and modern communication protocols.
- Best practices for programming languages and coding conventions in PLC environments.
- Application lifecycle management, including source control and deployment strategies.
- Testing and verification methodologies, covering FAT, SAT, virtual commissioning, and formal methods.
- Strategies for upgrading and reengineering existing applications to enhance performance and maintainability.
- Comprehensive documentation approaches to ensure knowledge transfer and compliance.
Towards Efficiency and Long-term Sustainability
Hyperlink: https://indico.cern.ch/event/1514023/
Organizer: Lukasz Burdzanowski (CERN)
Date: Saturday 9/20/2025
Duration: Full-day
Description: The continuing evolution of large-scale control systems in operating facilities presents a wide range of challenges, from day-to-day operational management to long-term strategic planning. This workshop seeks to identify key inefficiencies and explore actionable strategies for improvements. Participants will engage in discussions on operational and technical management, state assessment, strategic planning, standardization, automation, maintainability, workflows, and more - all with an emphasis on increasing efficiency and ensuring long-term sustainability. We will examine case studies from accelerator and experimental physics facilities, showcasing practical solutions within existing infrastructures.
Building on the success of the first edition, "Efficiency through Automation" at ICALEPCS 2023, this highly interactive workshop continues the conversation with fresh insights and tangible tools. Join us to explore strategies, share challenges, exchange experiences, and gain valuable ideas for driving efficiency and sustainability improvements in your facility.
Controls GUI Strategies
Hyperlink: https://indico.cern.ch/e/controls-guis-2025
Organizer: Chris Roderick (CERN)
Date: Saturday 9/20/2025
Duration: Full-day
Description: Are you struggling with a GUI strategy for your Controls? Wondering which direction and technology to choose? Java? Web? Python? Qt? Do you have people responsible for application development as a secondary activity, who can't or won't follow the technology evolution? Come along to this workshop to learn and discuss the latest status and plans around the GUI solutions used in Control systems across the world. Explore some of the more key technical aspects, ask your questions and make new contacts.
