- Email: [email protected]
Remote experiment participation on Tore-Supra
Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
Remote experiment participation on Tore-Supra J.-M. Theis a,∗ , J.-M. Larsen b a
Association EURATOM-CEA, CEA/DSM/Département de Recherches sur la Fusion Contrˆolée DRFC, CEA-Cadarache, 13108 St Paul-Lez-Durance, France b INRS-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Varennes, Que., Canada J3X 1S2 Available online 5 June 2004
Abstract The DRFC has traditionally had a very large external collaboration involvement. In particular, 15% of the DRFC work is directed towards the JET programme. As a consequence substantial telecommunications facilities have been installed [F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 449; F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 459]. A specific station for remote communication has been set up in the Tore-Supra control room, closely coupled to a collaborating team at INRS Que., Canada. This paper describes our pilot experience with the Canadian participation, which gives details of the communication and data sharing tools used to fully work on Tore-Supra. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Remote participation; Tore-Supra; Video conference; VRVS; VNC
1. Introduction One of the most complete scenarios of “Remote Participation” (RP) is the real-time participation directly with the experiment as it involves almost all the Remote Participation tools [1,2]. The goal is to give to a remote physicist the feeling of being side by side with a local physicist in the control room and have the same tools available.
plicit request concerning its use, from where, and who is responsible for it. Depending on the level of security needed on each service, ranges of addresses of trusted remote sites are filtered, if necessary encryption and user authentication are used. The choices of RP communication tools have been considerably influenced by cost and availability to many platforms, such that they are affordable and can be easily implemented by all associations.
2. Network security and implementation costs 3. “Travesso”, the double PC station General CEA network security relies on strict network port filtering; each incoming port needs an ex∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33-4-4225-7721; fax: +33-4-4225-2661. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.-M. Theis).
The remote participation unit in the Tore-Supra control room is named “Travesso”. Its main functionalities are shared between two PCs, not only because a comfortable bi-directional screen sharing can only be achieved with two screens, but also because all
0920-3796/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2004.04.043
258
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
necessary software does not coexist easily on the same Windows machine. The left station “travesso-1” drives all audio and video communications via the well-known VRVS video-conferencing software and its associated worldwide infrastructure. It drives also either an independent screen sharing software (“VNC” client) [3] or the VNC embedded in VRVS to show an exact copy of the remote physicist’s screen. The right station “travesso-2” is the normal local working station of our local physicist. It is generally used as a Unix terminal. Its screen can be mirrored in the other direction at any time via a VNC run as a server, then relayed and secured by an intermediate Unix system (this type of service is generally named a VNC proxy) to which the remote physicist can connect.
as we use client address filtering plus strong encryption to be in conformance with the CEA rules. Once logged on a Citrix server, a user finds a familiar and standard Windows environment that gives transparent access to his Unix account via an Exceed emulator. Alternate solutions such as SSH are less expensive provided that the X11 protocol (encapsulated or not) is allowed by security regulations. 4.2. Give familiar access to local data: remote data access via MDSPlus [5] We have implemented a MDSPlus “bridge” to Tslib, our local data access library. Work on this interface is ongoing, with suggestions and help from our Canadian and Italian collaborators (Fig. 1). 4.3. Give to remote applications the way to synchronize with experiment: real-time acquisition system messages and MDSPlus events
4. Related functionalities 4.1. Give the distant physicist the same tools: remote computer access The Citrix Metaframe server [4] solution has been implemented for a few years now, following JET’s example. However security methods are different
Using an application written by Canadian collaborators (RtwsyncTS), our real-time acquisition messages are interfaced on MDSPlus events so that remote MDS applications are now able to wait for different phases of the experiment: beginning of pulse, end of
Fig. 1. MDSPlus and MDS events (size 1/6 pp).
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
pulse, end of diagnostic acquisition, etc. Thus, giving the possibility to transfer and process immediately new data (Fig. 1). 4.4. See each other’s screen: RealVNC [3] and TStv channels RealVNC or VNC are well known open-source multi-platform freeware programs originally devoted to remote-maintenance. A VNC server is able to intercept the graphical protocol of a physical “Windows” display or of a “virtual” X11 “Unix” screen, to transmit it via TCP/IP to one or many thin VNC clients able to reproduce the screen with exactly the same resolution and quality. This should not be confused with active video transmission, which sends analogue, imperfect, small frames with a speed for animation.
259
Screen broadcast of “travesso-2“—the local physicist’s station—towards the outside world is relayed by a VNC proxy channel installed on our Unix server “Rigel”; such channels are very versatile and are locally named “TStv”. On the other hand, “travesso-1” shows the remote screen with the same tools (Fig. 2). 4.5. Viewing the experimental state and machine parameters: TStv and PanoWeb (Panorama) TStv is based on the same open source VNC as Jtv of JET but adapted to a different operating system (Compaq Unix). TStv views or channels are accessible via any Java-enabled web browser and also via the very light client VNCviewer. They contain either the mirror of a PC’s screen or can contain an Unix
Fig. 2. The mutual screen sharing (size 1/2 pp).
260
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
embedded graphic application showing graphics of the experiment. Panorama is a software package for building man-machines interfaces. It is mainly used for control-command and machine parameter displays (mimics). Panorama’s Panoweb views are accessible via an internet explorer plus a small client software application. They contains passive views of various control command panels directly related to the control and states of the machine: cryogenics, calorimetric parameters, valves, pressure, etc.
5. Practical hardware implementation 5.1. Stations The minimum configuration for “ travesso 1” is CPU 900 MHz, 256 Mbytes mem., Windows 2000 pro, USB camera, i.e. Logitech Quickcam 4000 gives good results. Screen 1024 × 768, using rescale option of VNC permits to obtain a miniaturised view of remote screen leaving space for videoconferencing tools. The use of a TFT vertical flat screen of 1024 × 1280 has proved to be very convenient because it allows to show in its lower part the reflected image of the remote screen on a width of 1024 and 768 height, and the remaining upper part fits to VRVS video panels and control. The minimum configuration for “travesso-2” is CPU 500 MHz, 128 Mbytes mem., screen 1024×768, Windows 2000 Pro. As it is used locally only as a Unix terminal via Exceed and runs a VNC server, its workload is much less. 5.2. Video Video is generally only useful for situations where human contact is the priority, for instance negotiations where it is important to see each other. In our case, there are two further reasons for using video. When experiments start in France it is 2 a.m. in Canada, so all that can give life to the work session is welcome. Another reason is that a remote controllable camera via VRVS gives the possibility to see all the information displays of the control room.
The Sony EVI-D100 Remote controllable camera is a high performance camera with an optical zoom 40×. It is connected on a Winnov “Videum 1000 VO Plus” capture card. It is remotely controllable on pan, tilt and zoom and also locally with an infrared remote control giving also six preset positions. 5.3. Audio It is the most critical and difficult part of videoconferencing: audio solutions other than headset can represent a non-negligible cost in an installation. Difficulties arise from ambient background noises which are often not noticeable because the ear and brain “filter” them automatically, but an ordinary microphone catches and transmits them perfectly. Background noise acts also as a “carrier” which promote echoes and disturbs silent suppression or anti echo devices, it is also sent as irrelevant data consuming bandwidth. Echo is the second problem: when the remote voice coming from the PC speakers is caught by the local microphone it is fed back to all other participants which then hear back their own voice with a disturbing delay. The only participant who does not suffer from echo is the one who generates it. This explains why echo cancellation problems take a long time to resolve. Ordinary computer microphones used in conjunction with PC speakers should be banned. The Plantronics CA40 wireless station and Duopro headset are very convenient and designed to be used for hours with minimum fatigue. Thanks to the long range, the physicist is free to go anywhere in control room. From the Canadian site, a good sound solution is based on a “Polycom” sound-station with echo cancellation and background noise filters. The simplest solution is the use of one or more headsets such as “Plantronics Audio 90” which have a good noise filtering.
6. Human considerations Remote work between people is a particular type of data processing because it implies many techniques we are not familiar with: sound, video and especially human behaviour and ergonomic considerations. The
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
tool must be accepted and also be light, in order to concentrate on the work itself.
7. Conclusions This installation has been intensively used between DRFC France and INRS Canada during July 2003 experiments. The stability has been proved, the cost of use is null, the network bandwidth used is low (approximately 200 kbits/s provided that the video frame rate is reduced). Once initialised the mutual screen sharing solution associated with VRVS needs no more additional operations, letting effectively the participants forget these tool and work together during hours. It is very long and difficult to obtain authorizations to install permanently a camera, in case of set-back we will accelerate the development of Panorama and TStv views. Remote access via Citrix is very reliable and user friendly but licenses are expensive, a new study will start to evaluate other alternatives. MDSPlus events names are different between fusion associations, a standard should be implemented.
261
Acknowledgements Thanks to: P. Lebourg, S. Balme, J. How, J. Signoret, H. Parrat and J. Gunn (DRFC), O. Hemming and M. Rainford (JET), C. Boucher (INRS ), G. Manducchi and V. Schmidt (RFX Padova), for their support and development.
References [1] V. Schmidt, J. How, Remote participation technical infrastructure for the JET facilities under EFDA, F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 449–457. [2] W. Suttrop, D. Kinna, J. Farthing, O. Hemming, J. How, Remote participation at JET Task Force work: user’s experience, F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 459–465. [3] RealVNC is the official home of VNC, staffed by the original team who created and developed it whilst at AT&T. http://www.realvnc.com/. [4] Citrix metaframe of Citrix Systems Inc. http://www.citrix.com. [5] MDSPlus: http://www.mdsplus.org.
Remote experiment participation on Tore-Supra J.-M. Theis a,∗ , J.-M. Larsen b a
Association EURATOM-CEA, CEA/DSM/Département de Recherches sur la Fusion Contrˆolée DRFC, CEA-Cadarache, 13108 St Paul-Lez-Durance, France b INRS-Energie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Varennes, Que., Canada J3X 1S2 Available online 5 June 2004
Abstract The DRFC has traditionally had a very large external collaboration involvement. In particular, 15% of the DRFC work is directed towards the JET programme. As a consequence substantial telecommunications facilities have been installed [F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 449; F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 459]. A specific station for remote communication has been set up in the Tore-Supra control room, closely coupled to a collaborating team at INRS Que., Canada. This paper describes our pilot experience with the Canadian participation, which gives details of the communication and data sharing tools used to fully work on Tore-Supra. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Remote participation; Tore-Supra; Video conference; VRVS; VNC
1. Introduction One of the most complete scenarios of “Remote Participation” (RP) is the real-time participation directly with the experiment as it involves almost all the Remote Participation tools [1,2]. The goal is to give to a remote physicist the feeling of being side by side with a local physicist in the control room and have the same tools available.
plicit request concerning its use, from where, and who is responsible for it. Depending on the level of security needed on each service, ranges of addresses of trusted remote sites are filtered, if necessary encryption and user authentication are used. The choices of RP communication tools have been considerably influenced by cost and availability to many platforms, such that they are affordable and can be easily implemented by all associations.
2. Network security and implementation costs 3. “Travesso”, the double PC station General CEA network security relies on strict network port filtering; each incoming port needs an ex∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33-4-4225-7721; fax: +33-4-4225-2661. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.-M. Theis).
The remote participation unit in the Tore-Supra control room is named “Travesso”. Its main functionalities are shared between two PCs, not only because a comfortable bi-directional screen sharing can only be achieved with two screens, but also because all
0920-3796/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.fusengdes.2004.04.043
258
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
necessary software does not coexist easily on the same Windows machine. The left station “travesso-1” drives all audio and video communications via the well-known VRVS video-conferencing software and its associated worldwide infrastructure. It drives also either an independent screen sharing software (“VNC” client) [3] or the VNC embedded in VRVS to show an exact copy of the remote physicist’s screen. The right station “travesso-2” is the normal local working station of our local physicist. It is generally used as a Unix terminal. Its screen can be mirrored in the other direction at any time via a VNC run as a server, then relayed and secured by an intermediate Unix system (this type of service is generally named a VNC proxy) to which the remote physicist can connect.
as we use client address filtering plus strong encryption to be in conformance with the CEA rules. Once logged on a Citrix server, a user finds a familiar and standard Windows environment that gives transparent access to his Unix account via an Exceed emulator. Alternate solutions such as SSH are less expensive provided that the X11 protocol (encapsulated or not) is allowed by security regulations. 4.2. Give familiar access to local data: remote data access via MDSPlus [5] We have implemented a MDSPlus “bridge” to Tslib, our local data access library. Work on this interface is ongoing, with suggestions and help from our Canadian and Italian collaborators (Fig. 1). 4.3. Give to remote applications the way to synchronize with experiment: real-time acquisition system messages and MDSPlus events
4. Related functionalities 4.1. Give the distant physicist the same tools: remote computer access The Citrix Metaframe server [4] solution has been implemented for a few years now, following JET’s example. However security methods are different
Using an application written by Canadian collaborators (RtwsyncTS), our real-time acquisition messages are interfaced on MDSPlus events so that remote MDS applications are now able to wait for different phases of the experiment: beginning of pulse, end of
Fig. 1. MDSPlus and MDS events (size 1/6 pp).
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
pulse, end of diagnostic acquisition, etc. Thus, giving the possibility to transfer and process immediately new data (Fig. 1). 4.4. See each other’s screen: RealVNC [3] and TStv channels RealVNC or VNC are well known open-source multi-platform freeware programs originally devoted to remote-maintenance. A VNC server is able to intercept the graphical protocol of a physical “Windows” display or of a “virtual” X11 “Unix” screen, to transmit it via TCP/IP to one or many thin VNC clients able to reproduce the screen with exactly the same resolution and quality. This should not be confused with active video transmission, which sends analogue, imperfect, small frames with a speed for animation.
259
Screen broadcast of “travesso-2“—the local physicist’s station—towards the outside world is relayed by a VNC proxy channel installed on our Unix server “Rigel”; such channels are very versatile and are locally named “TStv”. On the other hand, “travesso-1” shows the remote screen with the same tools (Fig. 2). 4.5. Viewing the experimental state and machine parameters: TStv and PanoWeb (Panorama) TStv is based on the same open source VNC as Jtv of JET but adapted to a different operating system (Compaq Unix). TStv views or channels are accessible via any Java-enabled web browser and also via the very light client VNCviewer. They contain either the mirror of a PC’s screen or can contain an Unix
Fig. 2. The mutual screen sharing (size 1/2 pp).
260
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
embedded graphic application showing graphics of the experiment. Panorama is a software package for building man-machines interfaces. It is mainly used for control-command and machine parameter displays (mimics). Panorama’s Panoweb views are accessible via an internet explorer plus a small client software application. They contains passive views of various control command panels directly related to the control and states of the machine: cryogenics, calorimetric parameters, valves, pressure, etc.
5. Practical hardware implementation 5.1. Stations The minimum configuration for “ travesso 1” is CPU 900 MHz, 256 Mbytes mem., Windows 2000 pro, USB camera, i.e. Logitech Quickcam 4000 gives good results. Screen 1024 × 768, using rescale option of VNC permits to obtain a miniaturised view of remote screen leaving space for videoconferencing tools. The use of a TFT vertical flat screen of 1024 × 1280 has proved to be very convenient because it allows to show in its lower part the reflected image of the remote screen on a width of 1024 and 768 height, and the remaining upper part fits to VRVS video panels and control. The minimum configuration for “travesso-2” is CPU 500 MHz, 128 Mbytes mem., screen 1024×768, Windows 2000 Pro. As it is used locally only as a Unix terminal via Exceed and runs a VNC server, its workload is much less. 5.2. Video Video is generally only useful for situations where human contact is the priority, for instance negotiations where it is important to see each other. In our case, there are two further reasons for using video. When experiments start in France it is 2 a.m. in Canada, so all that can give life to the work session is welcome. Another reason is that a remote controllable camera via VRVS gives the possibility to see all the information displays of the control room.
The Sony EVI-D100 Remote controllable camera is a high performance camera with an optical zoom 40×. It is connected on a Winnov “Videum 1000 VO Plus” capture card. It is remotely controllable on pan, tilt and zoom and also locally with an infrared remote control giving also six preset positions. 5.3. Audio It is the most critical and difficult part of videoconferencing: audio solutions other than headset can represent a non-negligible cost in an installation. Difficulties arise from ambient background noises which are often not noticeable because the ear and brain “filter” them automatically, but an ordinary microphone catches and transmits them perfectly. Background noise acts also as a “carrier” which promote echoes and disturbs silent suppression or anti echo devices, it is also sent as irrelevant data consuming bandwidth. Echo is the second problem: when the remote voice coming from the PC speakers is caught by the local microphone it is fed back to all other participants which then hear back their own voice with a disturbing delay. The only participant who does not suffer from echo is the one who generates it. This explains why echo cancellation problems take a long time to resolve. Ordinary computer microphones used in conjunction with PC speakers should be banned. The Plantronics CA40 wireless station and Duopro headset are very convenient and designed to be used for hours with minimum fatigue. Thanks to the long range, the physicist is free to go anywhere in control room. From the Canadian site, a good sound solution is based on a “Polycom” sound-station with echo cancellation and background noise filters. The simplest solution is the use of one or more headsets such as “Plantronics Audio 90” which have a good noise filtering.
6. Human considerations Remote work between people is a particular type of data processing because it implies many techniques we are not familiar with: sound, video and especially human behaviour and ergonomic considerations. The
J.-M. Theis, J.-M. Larsen / Fusion Engineering and Design 71 (2004) 257–261
tool must be accepted and also be light, in order to concentrate on the work itself.
7. Conclusions This installation has been intensively used between DRFC France and INRS Canada during July 2003 experiments. The stability has been proved, the cost of use is null, the network bandwidth used is low (approximately 200 kbits/s provided that the video frame rate is reduced). Once initialised the mutual screen sharing solution associated with VRVS needs no more additional operations, letting effectively the participants forget these tool and work together during hours. It is very long and difficult to obtain authorizations to install permanently a camera, in case of set-back we will accelerate the development of Panorama and TStv views. Remote access via Citrix is very reliable and user friendly but licenses are expensive, a new study will start to evaluate other alternatives. MDSPlus events names are different between fusion associations, a standard should be implemented.
261
Acknowledgements Thanks to: P. Lebourg, S. Balme, J. How, J. Signoret, H. Parrat and J. Gunn (DRFC), O. Hemming and M. Rainford (JET), C. Boucher (INRS ), G. Manducchi and V. Schmidt (RFX Padova), for their support and development.
References [1] V. Schmidt, J. How, Remote participation technical infrastructure for the JET facilities under EFDA, F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 449–457. [2] W. Suttrop, D. Kinna, J. Farthing, O. Hemming, J. How, Remote participation at JET Task Force work: user’s experience, F.E.D. 60/3 (2002) 459–465. [3] RealVNC is the official home of VNC, staffed by the original team who created and developed it whilst at AT&T. http://www.realvnc.com/. [4] Citrix metaframe of Citrix Systems Inc. http://www.citrix.com. [5] MDSPlus: http://www.mdsplus.org.