Blocks

Blocks

The IBEX concept of a block is similar to SECI, in that it is a relevant piece of information chosen by the scientist that will be displayed on the instrument dashboard and, if required, can be logged into the datafile.

In IBEX, a block is, to all intents and purposes, an alias to a process variable. For example, the block Chop1Freq on LARMOR is defined to be the process variable IN:LARMOR:CS:SB:Chop1Freq. It is much simpler to refer to a block than to refer to a process variable. Utilities like genie_python know about blocks and you can use commands such as cset to access Chop1Freq. However you can access blocks using the name IN:LARMOR:CS:SB:Chop1Freq with any standard EPICS tool.

Process variables are defined in more detail on the ProcessVariables page.