Introduction

Karabo is the name of European XFEL GmbH’s homogenoeus software framework.

It essentially is a framework allowing the building of plugable distributed (networked) applications that can be remotely controlled. Karabo can be used for control and data acquisition (i.e. as SCADA system) but also for data-management, and data analysis aspects.

If you want to know more about Karabo please read our paper, and/or have a look at this presentation. Advanced readers may want to have a look at Karabo’s design concepts.

If you want to cite Karabo please use this reference:

Hauf, Steffen and Heisen, Burkhard et al., The Karabo distributed control system,
Journal of Synchrotron Radiation 26, no. 5 (2019) 1448--1461 doi:10.1107/S1600577519006696

Find the doi information here.

What Karabo Is

Karabo is a distributed control system (DCS) which allows for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). In this context it may be used to control and monitor hardware devices through various interfaces, control groups of devices and composition higher-level functionality on those, as well a implement processing algorithms working on the data input into the system. In Karabo (hardware) resources may be shared in a non-intrusive fashion, by using topics assigned to installation domains. On top an alarm system assures that operators are kept updated with significant deviations from normal system-performance.

What Karabo Is Not

Karabo is by no means a fail-safe system. As such any core protection of hardware, and especially personal may not be implemented in Karabo. Karabo may only be used as a view and configuration tool for these protection systems.

Additionally, while the aim is to make interfacing with Karabo as simple as possible, Karabo remains an expert tool. It is thus required for users to make themselves aware with the relevant documentation before using the system.