Slow Control/DAQ/Monitoring

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Slow Control/DAQ/Monitoring Kin
Yip Collider-Accelerator Department Brookhaven
National Lab.
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• Slow Control
• Though not one button, the slow control (Labview
  with C codes) is one button to start and then
  just turn on 4 voltages. Everything else is just
  to observe.
• The prerequisite is of course that you have
  turned on all the power.
• When we did not turn on everything such as only
  in the East but not the West, and/or only the
  HV/GPIB but not Adam, Ive had to change the
  server code to initialize and probe only those
  which were turned on. If I didnt so, the
  time-out would be long (eg. GPIB initialization
  15 minutes and each probe 7 minutes).
• In the LV page, after some (long) time, the LV
  green light may disappear and wouldnt recover
  itself. I checked by a voltmeter that the
  input pins of 7 V was still there. I had to
  turn off LV/Adam and turn them back to see the
  green light again.

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• Slow Control
• To improve
• One button to turn on all the voltages
  automatically ?
• Modify the codes so that itd not need to wait
  for huge time-out when some devices were off.
• At least one Adam daughter card cant read
  temperature (we swapped to another one which
  could read) ? buy more Adam daughter cards.
• More stable for the LV and everything

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• DAQ
• After the efforts by Tonko/Igor, we can now use
  the normal STAR RunControl program to take data.
• We took pedestal data in the East side
  successfully on Oct. 22/23 after we installed the
  SVX/silicon package.
• On Oct. 29, we (Ramiro) installed the SVX/silicon
  package in the West side and we could take
  pedestal data successfully (though this SVX is
  not as good as the one in the East).
• But then, we found that the chain failed to
  initialize etc. (Tonko has now sent the log
  message to the DAQ Monitoring Log so that we can
  tell without asking him.)
• So far, we have tried all sequencers and changed
  that colored twisted-pair cable/ribbon. All in
  vain.
• Igor suggested that we could check the fuse or
  use another SVX/silicon .

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• DAQ
• Going forward
• Its probably not a waste of time to find out why
  the package can be read out one day but not one
  week later. In 2009, we also had a plane which
  didnt work on the last day. Its probably not
  trivial or even challenging to keep most planes
  working at the end of 5 months.
• Trying different modes in /RTS/conf/pp2pp/pp0.ini
  , sparse (which didnt work last time), readall
  .

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• Quick analysis program/Monitoring
• Ive used basically the programs that Ive used
  in 2009 to read the above-mentioned raw data
  (weve just taken in 2014) from either the event
  pool (in our blanchett2, its /evp/a/run_number)
  or the raw data files (downloaded from HPSS).

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• Quick analysis program/Monitoring
• So far, it seems that nothing major needs to be
  changed for our old programs. ( My software
  chain which only needed some almost trivial
  adjustments, eg. not loading libStChallenger. )
  
• I can use the 2009 programs to do all the quick
  analyses that I have done before.
• We need to think about how to deal with the
  pedestal. In the past, Ive done the pedestal
  analysis and then put them into the databse.
  This is a necessary step for reconstruction/micro-
  DST to be produced.
• The names of the roman pot need to be changed.
  Certain things like the range of bad
  silicon-bunches and bad silicon chain etc. need
  to be re-adjusted.

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• Miscellaneous
• Buying PTZ camera After a long time, Arthur
  Fernandos suggestions are too expensive (3000
  each). D. Gassner is looking at cheaper ones
  that suit out needs (in the order of hundreds of
  dollars each).
• After a long time of struggle with personnel
  problem, it seems that Joe Tuozzolo and M. Mapes
  have finally agreed to allow us to engage Alan
  Gustavsson to help us work with the NMC. Alan
  worked with Vincent Castillo before and Alan has
  got hold of Vincents documentations We need to
  do calibration in the tunnel after the cables are
  connected etc.
• Telnet through DIGI to the serial port of the new
  CPU/VME has been tested (Bob Scheetz and myself)
  such that we could get access to the BIOS of the
  CPU. Tonko has to redirect the Linux if we want
  to see the Linux stuff