Design of a control system for the LECR3

The Lanzhou Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source No. 3 (LECR3) plays an important role in supplying many kinds of ion beams to the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL). In this paper, we provide a detailed description of a new remote control system for the LECR3 that we designed and implemented. This system uses typical distribution control for both the LECR3 and the newly-built Lanzhou All Permanent Magnet ECR Ion Source No. 1 (LAPECR1). The entire project, including the construction of hardware and the software, was completed in September 2012. The hardware consists of an industry computer (IPC), an intranet composed of a switch, and various controllers with Ethernet access functions. The software is written in C++ and is used to control all of the respective equipment through the intranet to ensure that the useful information is stored in a database for later analysis. The entire system can efficiently acquire the necessary data from the respective equipment at a speed of 3 times per second, after which the data is stored in the database. The system can also complete the interlock protection and alarm process in one second. •Many methods were used to reduce damage to the devices and the controllers.•An interlock function was incorporated for device protection.•A SQLite database was included to store important data.•A C++ program was used to solve network connection problems.