Design of node record for the control system of FAST active reflector

Background: Active reflector is the one of the crucial innovations of Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) whose performance touches on that of the overall telescope. Purpose: A real time control system is needed for the active reflector system. Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is a well-used framework over the world which has good performance in real time control. Methods: Based on Input/Output Controller (IOC) frame of EPICS, a new node record was designed to simplify the node management of IOC and improve the reusability of IOC codes by making full use of the excellent real-time performance of EPICS and large number of controlled nodes (more than 2 000) on FAST reflector. Results: The record type was used in design of active reflector control system of FAST Miyun model. And the new IOC controller was experimentally tested in laboratory together with the real node's hardware board. Conclusion: Experimental results show that this new node record can be adapted to FAST control system to enhance the convenience of code reusability. (authors)