A Cost-Efficient PC Based Frame Grabber as Beam Diagnostic Tool in an EPICS Environment

Analysis of video images is a common way to determine the properties of an electron or synchrotron radiation beam. At BESSY a cost-efficient frame grabber hardware controlled by a Windows PC allows one to perform such an analysis in real-time. Live video images on the PC monitor give operators a direct view of the beam, optionally enhanced by artificial coloring and graphical overlays. The application software has been integrated into the EPICS environment by including a Channel Access (CA) server. Thus the numerical results and the application's control commands are accessible over a network through CA Process Variables. A newly developed C++ class library is used to provide the variables with the usual attributes required by advanced CA clients such as graphical display managers.