Transcript Electronics - Station Acceptance  Hardware:     1 MICE cryostat with 1 VLPC cassette. VME crate, AFE power supply, BIT3, 1553, VLSB, LVDS cables, etc... Cryocooler.

Electronics - Station Acceptance
 Hardware:
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1 MICE cryostat with 1 VLPC cassette.
VME crate, AFE power supply, BIT3, 1553, VLSB, LVDS cables,
etc...
Cryocooler related hardware (Oxford controller, gas rack,
compressor, etc...)
AFE boards, power supply, Computer, etc...
 Firmware:
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AFE board contains 7 different sets of programming (PIC, 1553,
Helper, Clockgen, Collector, AFPGAs, DFPGAs).
 Software:
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Excel and Visual Basic based board initialisation and readout.
Control of moving stage (for radioactive source) in Visual Basic
can be integrated into DAQ.
Malcolm Ellis - Tracker Meeting - 28th November 2006
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Firmware
 Kwame has produced firmware that allows the AFE board to
be readout through the LVDS to a VLSB one trigger at a time
(i.e. not the final MICE scheme).
 The board can be triggered in three ways:
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Software trigger (i.e. a command is sent to the board through
the 1553 interface that causes the board to read out).
External trigger (the board waits for an externally generated
L1A signal to be send to the board and when it arrives the board
is read out).
Self trigger (if one of the discriminators fires then the board will
read out).
 These schemes have been used at Fermilab on a test stand
and for real data taking (characterisation of cassette 112) as
well as on the test stand at RAL.
 So far, all of this has been done with a single AFE board...
Malcolm Ellis - Tracker Meeting - 28th November 2006
2
Recent Firmware Progress
 Kwame has produced FPGA code that will allow two boards to
be synchronised (via a cable that plugs into both boards) and
verified that this works with the self triggered mode (what we
plan to use for the tracker QA).
 He will also be testing this synchronisation scheme for use
with an external trigger (requires a modification of the special
cable).
 I will be turning my attention to modifying the Excel/VB DAQ
(see next slide) to allow the readout of two (or more) boards
when I’m back in the US (Friday).
Malcolm Ellis - Tracker Meeting - 28th November 2006
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Software
 Currently on version 4 of the DAQ spreadsheet (versions exist
for 617 and 810 models of BIT3).
 Spreadsheet provides the following:
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Initialisation of board, including sending FPGA programming to
AFE board when required.
Database of set points for all current MICE cryostats and AFE
boards for control of temperature and bias voltage.
Easy user selection of triggering mode (currently External and
Software, Self trigger will be added soon).
Simple DAQ button that records a given number of events to a
simple text file.
 At D0 this operates at approximately 100 Hz.
 Have not tried to perform a block read yet, current speed
increases have been due to firmware changes that have meant
no 1553 communication is required for each trigger.
Malcolm Ellis - Tracker Meeting - 28th November 2006
4
Next Steps
 Kwame will be spending ~50% of his time in the next two
weeks to work on testing a 2 board system on the cryostat at
D0 with self triggering and eventually external triggering.
Once this has been achieved he will move onto running more
than 2 boards.
 I will be preparing a new version of the spreadsheet that can
control two or more AFE boards and readout two or more
VLSBs.
 In parallel the characterisation of Cassette 112 will be
completed.
 Once the two board, self triggered readout is working, then
this version of the DAQ will be passed to Maiko so that the
stage control code can be integrated.
Malcolm Ellis - Tracker Meeting - 28th November 2006
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