About

IOC Austin is a channel-access IOC for the Austin Universal Robot at sector 25, written in caproto (not EPICS).

This robot IOC is composed of 4 sections:

1. Dashboard Commands: Simple commands to control low-level robot features.

2. Status: Reports and controls the current position and state of the robot.

3. Gripper: Controls the gripper connect to the robot arm for manipulating objects.

4. Actions: Allows arbitrary python code to be run for complex actions by the robot.

Additionally, more information is available about using the IOC:

• A Note on Async/Await

• Extending this IOC

• caproto vs EPICS

The files pv-mappings.org contains a comprehensive list of the PVs available on the IOC and their intended function.

A Note on Async/Await

In order to stay responsive while the robot is in motion, the IOC relies heavily on python’s async/await keywords in order to pass control back to the main IOC loop while waiting on the robot to finish moving.

This IOC has adopted the practice of putting all synchronous code in the file src/austin/driver.py, and then keeping the remaining IOC files as asynchronous as possible. This is merely a convention, the violation of which may make the IOC more difficult to debug.

The IOC will not work properly if slow, synchronous functions are run directly inside of a putter or scanner (decorated by @<name>.scan or @<name>.putter). Instead, co-routines should be used, possibly by wrapping synchronous functions inside a thread to then be awaited, for example:

.. code:: python

async def move_position(self, instance, value):

# Equivalent to self.parent.driver.movej(value) await loop.run_in_executor(None, self.parent.driver.movej, value)