OWG Meeting 1-Feb-2012

Agenda

• Announcements
  • Should coordinate in this meeting with electronics, trigger, DAQ, monitoring and controls efforts
  • Online working group (OWG) charge
    • includes requirements, plans, schedules, progress, purchases, etc.
  • Future topics
    • Andy: JLab security and Online applications (mobile and otherwise)
    • Inventory database, avoid duplicate efforts
    • cMsg-based process monitoring/control
  • No meeting in two weeks due to collaboration meeting
• Counting house installation - Hovanes
  • UPS, racks and power, networks, phones, etc.
• Review of minutes from 18-Jan-2012 meeting
• Collaboration Meeting
• Software review 7,8-Jun - Mark, David, Elliott
• SCONS usage in CLAS12 - Maurizio
• Readout list - Bryan M
• FDC DAQ system - Beni
• Scaler readout - Alex, Hovanes
• Progress on 12GeV planning lines - David, Hovanes, Elliott
  • ConDB, DAQ config, code mgmt, unblocking, event display, scripting, run info archive, storage mgmt
• Elog and Accelerator division projects - Graham, Elliott
• DAQ group activities
  • CODA3 alpha release - Graham, Dave A
  • top-level ECS and CSS compatibility - Vardan
  • simulated raw event file - Dave A
  • event disentangler - Carl
  • automated readout list - Bryan
• EPICS - Hovanes, Nerses
  • board readout, archiver, alarm system, backup/restore
• Controls
  • Solenoid Controls Redesign - Yi, Elliott
    • Magnet cold by Nov-2012
    • Fast/slow DAQ, FMEA results
  • Test stand, equipment purchases - Hovanes
• Beam tests - Alex
• Controls test stand - Hovanes, Elliott
• FDC cosmic ray test - Beni
• Midas Elog - Elliott
  • Materials certification database?
• Electronics, trigger and DAQ status reports - Chris, Alex, Dave, Fernando, Ben, Ed, William, Bryan
• IRMIS - release due in Feb/Mar
• Mantis Task Tracker

Time/Location

1:30 PM Wed 1-Feb-2012 CC F326

Next Meeting

Skipping a meeting due to the collaboration meeting in two weeks

1:30 PM Wed 29-Feb-2012 CC F326 (Feb 29!)

Minutes

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

Counting House

Hovanes reported on the current status of moving into the counting house. The UPS will go in soon and he is working on rack layouts and distributing power to the racks. We discussed need for UPS, clean and dirty power in the rack room and control room. Please send Hovanes comments on the draft of the rack room layout (see above).

We are further working on getting furniture from the Test Lab when it gets renovated.

SCONS in CLAS12

Maurizio reported on his use of SCONS in CLAS12. His system is small and simple, and may not do everything we need, but it probably comes close. Remarkably few lines of SCONS code (i.e. Python) are needed to build JANA and EVIO. Next meeting we'll hear about a more elaborate SCONS system designed by Johann for CLAS12.

SCALERS

Alex described recent work on scaler readout done by the DAQ and Electronics groups, mainly firmware development. At least two modes are envisioned, one optimized for injecting scalers into the data stream, the other for asynchronous readout via registers. The former involves telling the board to append scaler data to the last event in every N'th readout block, where N is programmable. Concerning register readout, Nerses has developed an EPICS IOC that reads scaler data out rapidly into a holding buffer, then serves it out to the network as EPICS PV's. We discussed possibly other mechanisms that might access the scaler data along with whether we need special triggers for scaler readout.

Automated Readout List

Bryan showed us his the XML output format from the routine that scans the crate for modules, and how one might set parameters in the modules using XML. A scan takes about 1 sec, so it could be done at every prestart if desired. Many configuration options are provided. We hope to use this facility in the FDC cosmic ray test. A question arose as to what happens if two modules in the crate have the same base VME address. Bryan says one likely will mask the other so external checks will be needed (e.g. config says there should be 16 modules but only 15 are found by the scan).

Note that a change in FPGA programming might require changes to the XML schema.

At this point (two hours) we got booted out because of another meeting...