PiGLET

Raspberry PI open_GL_ _E_pics _T_oolkit

PiGLET is a live graphing tool for EPICS PVs for the Raspberry Pi (but compiles also on normal PCs). It uses OpenGL for drawing.

Building and Dependencies

To build it, you need on your system (names are Debian packages):

• build-essential, cmake (i.e. a sane development environment)
• Magick Wand Library and Headers (libmagickwand-dev)
• PulseAudio Library and Headers (libpulse-dev)
• Sndfile Library and Headers (libsndfile-dev)
• (Free)GLUT (for PC)
• /opt/vc headers (for the PI, shipped with raspbian)
• EPICS, preferrably in /opt/epics, but cmake finds it via EPICS_BASE environment variable (tested with 3.14.12.3 and 3.15.0.1, for the latter see below)

Then, do a nice "out-of-source" build of the code, e.g.:

mkdir build && cd build && cmake ..

Watch for errors of cmake, usually it tells you that you have missed some dependency. Then

make

Grab a coffee, it takes 10mins on the Pi! In the end, run

./PiGLET

It should output something (on ssh) and then open up a blank black empty fullscreen! See below what to do now.

How to use?

PiGLET is configured via

telnet localhost 1337

Of course, replace localhost with the host of the Pi if needed. Then type List in the terminal to see the first Commands. To add a PlotWindow, which displays an EPICS record, use:

AddPlotWindow MyReallyCoolRecord

There is also a little EPICS IOC provided with a simple database for playing around with caput and caget, but you probably want to edit the hard-coded path in the Run.sh script and/or source thisEPICS.sh in your shell.

You can also use the PiGLETManager in scripts, which issues the telnet commands for you. Try

./scripts/PiGLETManager activate Test

Then, if you want to develop with us, we highly recommend using QtCreator, although nothing Qt-related is done here.

Troubleshooting Quirks

• In EPICS 3.15.01 (not EPICS 3.14.x), the PERL library is not correctly named (extraneous . in filename). See Known Problems. Thus in order to correctly run the PERL scripts below scripts/ you must apply this Patch before building.

• If you experience weird linker problems during development (e.g. after a git pull), run cmake again to update the files.