Welcome to the EPICS Documentation!
The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) comprises a set of software components and tools that can be used to create distributed control systems. EPICS provides capabilities that are typically expected from a distributed control system:
Remote control & monitoring of facility equipment
Automatic sequencing of operations
Facility mode and configuration control
Management of common time across the facility
Alarm detection, reporting and logging
Closed loop (feedback) control
Modeling and simulation
Data conversions and filtering
Data acquisition including image data
Data trending, archiving, retrieval and plotting
Data analysis
Access security (basic protection against unintended manipulation)
EPICS can scale from very big to very small systems. Big systems have to be able to transport and store large amounts of data, be robust and reliable but also failure-tolerant. Failure of a single component should not bring the system down. For small installations it has to be possible to set up a control system without requiring complicated or expensive infrastructure components.
For modern applications, management of data is becoming increasingly important. It shall be possible to store acquired operational data for the long term and to retrieve it in the original form. EPICS provides the tools to achieve this and to tailor the data management to the needs of the facility.
One of the most appreciated aspects of EPICS is the lively collaboration that is spread around the globe. Members of the collaboration are happy to help other users with their issues and to discuss new ideas.
How this documentation is organized
Each page is labeled by the intended audienece. You may also directly use related links to see documents which match you the most.
Getting started
Installation
Process database
EPICS Related Software
The build system
PV Access details
Access security
System administration
Contributing