OWG meeting 4-Mar-2009

Agenda

• Announcements - Monitoring/Controls report
• Review of minutes from 21-Jan-2009 meeting
• FADC125 status report - Gerard
• Update on controls - Elliott
• Other electronics status reports - Fernando, Chris, others

Time/Location

1:30 PM Wed 4-Mar-2009 CC F326

To connect by telephone:

1.) dial:

• 800-377-8846 : US
• 888-276-7715 : Canada
• 302-709-8424 : International

2.) enter participant code: 39527048# (remember the "#")

Next Meeting

18-Mar-2009 1:30pm CC F326

Minutes

Attendees: Elliott W, David L, Mark I, Chris C, Simon T, Jeff W, Eugene C, Beni Z, Fernando B, Alex S, Dave D, Elton S, Dave A.

FADC125

Gerard called in to give a status report on FADC125 development.

• Layout and routing in progress, still much to do.
• Some components still need to be added, some minor circuits still to be designed.
• Back-end mostly done.
• Entire board will be hand-routed, needed due to density, complexity, grounding requirements, and proximity of analog and digital components.
• Mezzanine card not started, but mostly a copy of what's underneath.
• All important circuits have been prototyped.
• Power usage mostly independent of signal rate and amplitude.
• Will have an informal internal design review after first prototype tested.
• Three prototypes will be constructed, should be available in early May. One month of design to go, one month to fabricate.
• Prototype should suffice for summer FDC and CDC tests.

Controls Update

See Elliott's slides for many details.

• Installation and testing of EPICS base plus a few extensions took two to three days of effort.
• Development of a custom application including archiving, alarming, and stripcharts took four to five days of effort.
• Used default ALH and striptool, and new JLab Accelerator archiver.
• This test application has been running continuously for about three weeks now.
• Next step is to connect to real device.
• Need to test new alarm system and archiver from SNS.
• Elliott developed a new way to link functions from dynamic libraries (.so files) into EPICS applications, should appear in future release of EPICS.
• JLab has Labview site license for Linux, Windows, and Mac. Important question is: What role might Labview play in Hall D?
• General agreement that Labview is fine for bench testing and for expert control systems. The only issue concerns what shift personnel have to work with.
• Connectivity of Labview to EPICS channel access needs to be understood. Apparently works from Windows, not clear about Linux. Elliott will find out.