Controls Meeting 20-Oct-2011

Agenda

• Announcements
  • can order stuff again
  • new EE Giles Brown
• Minutes from previous meeting 22-Sep-2011
• Equipment
  • order status - Mark, Hovanes
  • 435NBX and Structured Text - Elliott
• Relation between conditions database and archiver
• Solenoid_Controls_Redesign - Josh, Elliott
  • rework connections to coil taps
    • talk to controls engineers at JLab?
    • need specs for fast daq, slow daq and QD
  • order relays and test SOE scheme
  • shunt resistor value?
• Projects for Nerses - all
  • test alarm system, archiver, backup/restore?
  • develop EPICS device drivers?
  • guis?
• Controls test stand update - Hovanes
• PLC programming, Viewpoint, licenses, etc. - Josh
• Test Lab status - Mark, Scot
• Networking - Hovanes, Elliott
  • order status
  • trailer
• ELog? - all
• /group/halld-online available to halldonline group
  • for scripts, kernels, programs, etc, but not for voluminous data
• PyIRMIS - Elliott, Hovanes
• Mantis task tracker

Time/Location

9:30 AM Thurs 20-Oct-2011 CC L207

Announcements

Giles Brown, the new JLab Physics Department power engineer, joined us. He will be working mainly on Hall D projects for about a year.

Next Meeting

Thurs 3-Nov 9:30am CC L207

Minutes

Present: Elliott W, Mark S, Cody D, Giles B, Nerses G, Josh B, Scot S.

Budgets and equipment

We can order stuff again. Just about everyone has something they need to order.

Relation between controls archive and offline

Elliott described how the offline will need to access controls data long after it was recorded. Nerses mentioned that controls data can be stored in the data stream. Elliott noted that after the fact you always need some data you didn't think would be needed, so that the offline will always need to access the EPICS archive. A project for the next few months is to choose an EPICS archiver, and ease of programmatic access is one concern.

Solenoid controls redesign

Elliott showed the long list of items being considered by the redesign subgroup. Some items were discussed, but there were too many to go over all of them. He noted that we must address the concerns from the Director's review last year. Josh pointed out that many had to do with avoiding fast dumps, but our experience in the Test Lab showed that fast dumps are no problem (that's all we had!). We also briefly discussed new schemes for connecting to the coil taps...Josh and Elliott will generate requirements for the fast daq, slow daq and quench detector. We also realized that all taps in the high-current circuit must be considered, including the shunt. Mark noted that we probably cannot increase the shunt resistance, but that other technologies may work...he will look into these.

Projects for Nerses

Nerses is currerntly working on an EPICS driver for the JLab discriminator. When this is done he will work on other drivers and on evaluation of high-level EPICS utilities.

PLC and A-B software

Josh reported that the license server is running and that so far no other group has parked their licenses there. He has not tried Viewpoint yet.

Test Lab

Everything is out of the Test Lab except the computers and related equipment. Tom will move the remaining stuff out soon.

Networking

Elliott and Hovanes will order the networking equipment soon, now that the budgets are unfrozen. It is not clear what will go into the trailer, probably,