Instructions for Data Taking

Draft version 2.5

Table of Contents:

1. General Instructions
2. Simple Data Taking
   • 2.1 Important Things to Watch When You Are On Shift
3. Detailed CODA information
   • 3.1 The CODA Database
   • 3.2 Components of CODA
   • 3.3 Hardware
   • 3.4 Software
4. Trigger
5. Scalers
6. Slow Controls (EPICS)
   • 6.1 EPICS in the Physics Datastream
   • 6.2 The Alarm Handler
7. High Voltage Control
   • 7.1 hvDaemon, The Old HV Control
   • 7.2 Scripts for Simple HV Control
   • 7.3 EPICS HV Control
8. Wire Chambers
   • 8.1 Wire Chamber Gas System
9. Compton Polarimeter
10. Targets
    • 10.1 Atomic Beam Source
    • 10.2 Buffer System
11. Online Analsis
    • 11.1 Spying on the Live Data
    • 11.2 Preliminary Analysis
12. Power Failure Recovery
13. Common Problems and Solutions
    • 13.1 trig (or visual_scal or hvDaemon) won' start, reports trigger is already running.
    • 13.2 I've started a run, and I see triggers in the scalers, but no events are coming in.
    • 13.3 Most of the scalers are zero; only the DCCT and a few others count.
    • 13.4 The visual_scal screen has turned red.
    • 13.5 RunControl reports "blastROC has not reported status in n seconds".
    • 13.6 None of the ROCs will reboot.
    • 13.7 RunControl reports "Downloading a run fails" (or ending a run, or any of the other transitions).
    • 13.8 EB reports "Event Type Mismatch".
    • 13.9 Runcontrol Trigger rate is higher than scaler count of trigger, independent of trigger type, also independent of beam current.
    • 13.10 MySQL reports too many connections, unable to connect.
    • 13.11 Wire Chamber Sense wire keeps tripping.

OLDER DOCUMENTATION

This Document is broken into three parts:

• General Notes about how to run BLAST
• The relationship between all the software parts of BLAST
• A list of all the parts and how (normally) to run them

• CODA Suite
  • mSQL Database
  • ROC - read out controler
  • ET - event transfer
  • EB - event builder
  • ER - event recorder
  • rcServer
  • runcontrol
• BLAST DAQ Suite
  • MySQL database
  • Trigger
  • High Voltage for Detectors
    • Daemon
    • Monitor
    • control
  • EPICS
    • Daemon
    • Monitor / GUI
    • ETstart - see CODA above
  • Scalers
    • Daemon - not yet ready
    • Monitor
• BLAST Data Suite (online & offline)
  • Electronic notebook
  • master monitor / master controler
  • dataServer
  • nsed
  • online
  • dataClient
  • reconDST.C