QT EPICS DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK
A. Rhyder, A. Owen, G. Jackson · 2010
QCa is a layered software framework based on Qt for accessing EPICS data using Channel Access on a range of platforms. It is used on several beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron. The QCa framework provides object oriented C++ access to control systems using EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System). It is based on Qt, a widely used cross-platform application development framework. GUI or console based applications can be written that use QCa at several levels. QCa includes Qt plugin libraries, EPICS aware widgets, data formatting classes, and classes for accessing raw EPICS data in a Qt friendly way. QCa also includes an application for displaying forms produced by the Qt development tool ‘Designer’. Using this application a complete EPICS GUI system can be generated without writing any code. A GUI system produced in this way can interact with existing EPICS display tools such as EDM. QCa handles much of the complexities of Channel Access including initiating and managing a channel. Applications using QCa can interact with Channel Access using Qt based classes and data types. Channel Access updates are delivered using Qt’s signals and slots mechanism.