OWG Meeting 26-Oct-2011

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Agenda

  • Announcements
  • Review of minutes from 28-Sep-2011 meeting
  • Networking - Hovanes, Elliott
  • Review of DAQ group activities for Hall D - Elliott
    • Vardan: farm mgr --> top-level ECS and gui
    • Dave A: simulated raw event file
    • Carl: event disentangler
    • Bryan: automated readout list
  • EVIO vsn 4 status - Carl, Elliott
    • built-in dictionary
    • formatted row-wise data storage
  • EPICS and the JLab discriminator module - Nerses
  • Controls
    • coil taps, signal isolation/amplification and dynamic range - Cody, Elliott
    • Solenoid Controls Redesign - Elliott
    • test stand update - Hovanes
    • Solenoid controls fast DAQ update - Yi
  • Conditions database - Dmitry, Mark
  • Elog and logbook-like applications - Dave L, Elliott
  • PyIRMIS - Hovanes, Elliott
  • Multi-crate trigger test - Bryan
  • FDC cosmic ray test - Beni
  • Electronics, trigger and DAQ status reports - Chris, Alex, Dave, Fernando, Ben, Ed, William, Bryan
  • Mantis Task Tracker


Time/Location

1:30 PM Wed 26-Oct-2011 CC F326


Announcements

Next Meeting

1:30 PM Wed 9-Nov-2011 CC F326


Minutes

Present: Elliott W, Simon T, David L, Carl T, Nerses G, Bryan M, Hovanes E, Eugene C, Beni Z, Alex S.


Networking

Bryan Hess gave us price lists for all the networking equipment, Hovanes and Elliott will get together to make a proposal, then run it by Eugene. We hope to do this within the next week or so.


DAQ group activities

  • Vardan completed the farm manager component. He will write it up and move on to the top-level experiment control system.
  • Dave A continues to work on the simulated raw data tape.
  • Carl is still busy with the event builder, will get to the disentangler later this Fall.
  • Bryan will have a prototype readout list ready soon for Beni's cosmic ray test.


EVIO Vsn 4

Elliott checked in most of his part of the upgrade to v4 (data dictionary, row-wise storage). Carl will get to his part later this Fall after the event builder is ready. There is a long wish list and we'll probably get to all of them. These include a built-in data dictionary and random-access I/O.


EPICS and JLab discriminator

Nerses presented plans and progress on using EPICS to read out scaler information accumulated by the JLab 16-channel discriminator. See his talk for full details. He is aimng for being able to set things at 2 Hz and readout at max 1 kHz.


Controls

  • Cody is looking for isolation amplifiers for the coil taps to eliminate cross-talk and baseline shifts. He thinks he can find an amplifier that meets the full range of bandwidth, sensitivity and range requirements.
  • Elliott reported on progress on the solenoid controls redesign. Recommendations from the Director's review and the Lehman review have to be addressed. Many were related to avoiding fast dumps, which we now know are not a problem, so it is not clear what we should do about some of the recommendations.
  • Yi reported little progress on the fast DAQ since he is working on other things, but that he'll get back to testing the new National Instruments 8-channel non-multiplexed ADC module soon.


Conditions database

Dmitry is about done releasing the calibration database and will develop a prototype conditions database soon. Much discussion ensued concerning priorities for Dmitry's time, e.g. Alex wants him to work on the configuration database. Mark pointed out that everyone has a project for Dmitry to do. Another question arose concerning how the configuration database, conditions database, EPICS archive database and the calibration database overlap, and whether all were needed. Many thought that they all play different roles and are all needed, some disagreed. Eugene noted that we'll need access to all this info at all stages of offline analysis, from initial calibrations to final physics analysis.


Electronic logbook and related database applications

Dave and Elliott reported on recent thinking about the operator and other logbooks. Right on cue this generated a great deal of heated discussion concerning whether we should use the Accelerator elog or not, and why we are wasting our time looking at alternatives since it apparently is good enough for Halls A and C. Hall B uses a completely separate system, and Elliott noted that he designed it. Some asked why we don't just use the Hall B system or a modified version of it.

Dave noted that Graham plans to meet with all four halls to look into minimizing the number of separate packages used (later he told me he thinks it perfectly appropriate for Halls A and C to use something different from Halls B and D, but would like to see the latter use the same thing).

Elliott noted there are about a dozen different elog-like applications needed in Hall D and that any operator log package adopted will not be suitable for the others (run logs, maintenance logs, manual database, etc).

Yi described the Midas Elog package that Halls A and C have been successfully using as a notebook system. It works quite well for relatively small numbers of entries per notebook, since it uses the file system rather than a database, but that it can bog down once you get more than a few hundred entries (n.b. the CLAS elog has over 36,000 entries). Yi and Elliott will get this going for Hall D so we can check it out. Elliott noted that a notebook-like system is appropriate for the majority of the elog-like applications in Hall D, but not for all of them.


Other reports

  • Bryan reported some negative progress on the multi-crate trigger test...he lost a crate full of modules to Hall B! He previously achieved a 200 kHz uniform trigger rate with 100 events/block.
  • Bryan further reported they have received a new quad-core single-board Linux-based computer and a 10 GBit mezannine card. Prices are the same as for the dual-core boards at the same stage of commercial development, so there is good reason to believe they will eventually come down to our budgeted cost, in which case we'll use quad-cores in all the crates. The manufacturer is Concurrent.
  • Bryan reported that Hai made a breakthrough in the CTP synchronization.
  • Carl reported he should finish the event builder this Fall as planned, then he can turn his attention to EVIO and the disentangler. The EB currently builds events and he is working on improving throughput.