Speaker
Description
EPICS stands for "Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System" but the physics in that name is doing more assuming than it should. Small chemistry laboratories gas-handling rigs, catalytic reactors, surface-science setups face exactly the same operational reality as small physics beamlines: one or two people covering controls part-time, hardware expected to run for 10 years, no dedicated software team, and a strong preference for reusing proven components over building bespoke software.
This talk asks what changes, and what doesn't, when EPICS moves from a beamline to a chemistry bench. Much carries over directly: serial instrument integration via asyn/StreamDevice, a compiled and long-lived IOC as the core control process, Python kept above that layer rather than replacing it.
What's different is the weight chemistry puts on the IOC as a safety layer, not just a data-acquisition layer. Interlocking gas supplies against pressure and leak detection, guarding ignition sources, and closing control loops on reactions rather than just logging them.
Rather than a finished case study, this is a discussion-opener: a survey of where chemistry-lab control genuinely needs new device support or new patterns, and where it's simply relabeling a problem EPICS has already solved.
The talk closes with concrete questions for the collaboration and an invitation to compare notes with anyone already running EPICS on a chemistry experiment.
