SPS BGI Software Meeting

Monday 6 Nov 2017, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

Present: Christos, Hampus, James (BI-BL), Ana, Steen, Stephane, Stephen (BI-SW).

 

Operational requirements

• From https://edms.cern.ch/document/1233010/1: "Update frequency of averaged (all bunches) profiles during one cycle for continuous measurement = 0.1 - 1 kHz (10Hz or better requested)."

• For 2018 run aim to publish camera images at 10Hz for the entire cycle of interest. 

 

Hardware organisation

• Like the PS-BGI the system is split between 1) Slow control of high voltages, relays and camera settings and 2) Image acquisition.

 

Slow control via PLC

•  For each of the 2 x BGI the PLC controls:
  • 4 x high voltages (cathode, MCP_in, MCP_out, phosphor screen)
  • 2 x relays (camera on/off, high voltage power supply on/off)
• The above can be controlled by 6 x BGIPower instances.  Expert GUI very similar to the PS-BGI slow control; Stephane will put this together with the help of Hampus.
• Intra-cycle control of the high voltages settings is not required.
• Cycle-to-cyle control of the high-voltage is required (PPM mode). Stephane suggests that this should be done by the FESA class that controls / acquires the image data (see below), not by making the BGIPower PPM. 

 

Slow control via Ethernet / RS-485 box (apologies I forgot this in the meeting, but add here for completeness)

• Camera is controlled by serial commands via an ethernet <-> RS-485 box (e.g. cfb-ba5-bgi). Commands are sent to/from the camera with a simple C program (https://gitlab.cern.ch/be-bi-bgi/SPS-LHC-Software-Camera-Control).
• Would it be possible to transform this to a FESA class? 

 

Image acquistion via BTV card

• At present camera images captured by BTV card are published by a BTV FESA instance which has been implemented by Ana. At present this allows to capture a maximum of 30  images (ticks) at a rate of at least 10 Hz. This class includes all needed functionality (return image, profile, fit, etc.) except for image rotation. 
• Steen will clone the BTV FESA class to create a BGI specific class for the SPS BGI (suggest name OpticalBGI c.f. PixelBGI for the PS system), which will include image rotation.
• Stephane proposes a common interface to the PS and SPS BGI data (e.g. image, profile, beam size, fit, etc.). Stephane will implement Expect GUI to display images, profiles and fits. Suggestion by Stephen to involve OP once we have a working Expert GUI. 

 

Timescale

• Aim is to have the necessary FESA + Expert GUI software for operational use at the start of the 2018 run. 

 

Next meeting

• Next meeting proposed for mid January 2018.