High Voltage (HVSys) Operations
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There is a gui program that talks to the HVSys controllers that drive the PMT and MAPMT bases in the boxes on the poletip. The gui communicates with a VxWorks processor in crate 90, which talks to the 3 HVSys modules via RS232 ports. This gui runs from the main gui. To open the detailed HV gui click on the orange square box in the HI-VOLTAGE section of the main gui.

You will get a display of the detector divided into the 12 sectors and a box for each PMT and MAPMT box. Boxes will be gray if off, green if on and at loaded voltage, yellow in transition and red if unable to turn on to required voltage. At the start of this run all tubes in all boxes are green. Along the bottom of the gui are 3 boxes one for each of the controllers. This has an on/off toggle, the big circle indicates the status,(green on, red off), a controller reset and 4 lights indicating the status of the 4 branches on the controller, gray for off, green for on. When starting up after a power cycle the large circle should be green indicating the AC is on. The four branches will be gray. Clicking on should result in all the branches lighting up green. This indicates the controller is ready but the HV is not on yet. If clicking on does not work click on "HVsys controller reset" for that controller. You may have to try more than once. "Reset All" resets all the controllers at once.

To turn the high voltages on you need to load the voltages from the files by clicking "Reload All". (A default is set to load the standard voltages. Details below.) Then the HV is turned on by clicking on the big ON box in the middle of the detector image. OFF of course will turn them off.

The bases store the most recently requested voltage as a daq value. You can leave the gui etc and the bases keep their state. So the settings are only changed if you load new voltages from files stored in /home/online/VxWorks/indiana/HVSys on eemc-sc. The current standard procedure is to load from standard files determined from calibrations. These are maintained by experts setting up a link. (The link is 2005HVcurrent in the above directory and points to the current latest version of HVset_v_* where * = letter and earlier versions are towards the front of the alphabet.)

To check detailed status of individual boxes or tubes you must click on the little black box near a sector to open another window. (Do one at a time and don't try to open too many other slow control windows at once.) You get a display of the tubes in that sector organized by their boxes, PMTs in the top row and MAPMTs in the bottom. There is a light for the status of each tube (green= good i.e. equals requested DAC {could be 0}, yellow = usually seen as turns on , red = not working or not at requested voltage, white = 0 and gray{matches background} = if controller is missing or controllers are on but have not loaded files, dark gray = off. There is actually a 3 bit status returned which has been collapsed into this color scheme.) At the top of the box is an on/off switch. Clicking "on" should turn the whole sector on to the set voltages and the lights will turn green when they reach the set voltage. Likewise you can turn one box on and off with buttons at the bottom of the graphic of each box.

You can see the current DAC settings for one box by clicking on the square in the sector display for the box. Another window opens with 3 columns: Voltage, set DAC and read DAC. The voltage should match the ones in the files. If VxWorks has been rebooted the first two columns will be 0. You can change HV settings by hand by typing in the voltage boxes and clicking on set voltages but this is not normally done during the run. Any change should be made in the files (using letters to indicate new versions) and then uploaded so they are preserved.

Also on this page is displayed the status of each base. This is a 3 bit status word described in the HVSys Manual at http://www.star.bnl.gov/STAR/eemc/high_voltage/ 0 = off and faulty
1 = off and just became faulty
2 = on and working properly
3 = ??
4 = off and ok but was faulty last check
5 = off and working properly
6 = on and ok but was faulty last check (gives yellow)
7 = on but not working properly (gives red)
(Note currently the word on the page is 4 when the tubes are good. I don't understand this.)

Some other details:

There are three modules or controllers in the racks. These are labeled A, B and C (or 0, 1 2). If the procedure described above for reseting the modules does not work they can be power cycled with an ethernet power switch. (See instructions below.) There are 4 branches on the controllers each with a subset of the boxes on them. The mapping is as follows:

Controller Branch (MA)PMT boxes A 0 PMT 11TD-1TC Note branches for PMTs are one 1 PMT 1TD-3TC full sector plus two partials 2 MAPMT sec 12-1 MAPMT branches match sectors 3 MAPMT sec 2-3 Each sector has 5 subsectors A-E B 0 PMT 3TD-5TC for PMTS. 3TC is sector 3 sub 1 PMT 5TD-7TC sector C. 2 MAPMT sec 4-5 MAPMT boxes are labeled 5S1, 5S2 3 MAPMT sec 6-7 5S3 (3xSMD) and 5P1 (pre/post-shower C 0 PMT 7TD-9TC 1 PMT 9TD-11TC 2 MAPMT sec 8-9 3 MAPMT sec 10-11

Alternate HV system: kreml (now used only during shutdowns for testing.)

The laptop computer eemc-testdaq can be used to talk to one HVSys controller through its serial port. This is useful for doing diagnostics and tests as well as the current situation (3/3/04) when one of the serial ports in the VxWorks is dead.

To use this you need to log into eemc-testdaq using the online account pw( ) and change directory to online/HVsys/kreml2.0. The command kreml does the following: kreml -help to print this Help kreml -print to Print status of visible cells kreml -dac to Print 'DAC' values loaded to visible cells kreml -on to turn ON all HV kreml -off to turn OFF all HV kreml -scan to Scan connected cells (WARN: it turns OFF all HV and _clears_ the DAC values in all cells - do not ask my 'why?' JB) kreml -load 'hv.file' to Load new HV and turn MV & HV to ON kreml -verify 'hv.file' to Verify current status and compare HV kreml -g0 ... -g4 to more debug info, use _before_ other arguments kreml -u 'g0,120' to sent any user command to HVsys STOP

The RS232 cable from the controller you wish to control must be plugged into the back of the laptop. There is only one connector it will fit in. If you have just turned the controller on for the first time you should run ./kreml -scan This seems to initialize everything. ./kreml -dac will tell you what tubes are connected to the controller and responding at a minimal level. (Used most often when testing boxes. Currently 3/04 we know what is connected and you don't need to do this. You would run this command to know what tubes to put in the file described below.) If the controller has been off or you want new voltages you should ./kreml -load 'filename The file should contain a name, branch and base ID, full scale voltage and voltage to set for each tube. Example: 06S101 3001 1024 768.6 06S102 3002 1024 725.8 06S103 3003 1024 722.4 06S104 3004 1024 727.0 . . name 3=branch 3 1024 is full scale and 768.6 is set voltage 004=base ID Sample files from testing of boxes are in ./pmt_test. (In 3/04 we are running controller C using this procedure since the VxWorks 4th serial port is flaky. The proper file to run is prepared by experts from the same files used for the gui. The file can be found in rhic4/HVset_iv_*_kreml/controller2.kreml where * should match the same letter as used for the gui and should most likely be the latest in the alphabet in rhic4. So the current command is ./kreml -load rhic4/HVset_iv_?_kreml/controller2.kreml (get latest version for ?) We are not doing this in 2005.) For example ./kreml -load mytest.kreml After this you can turn the voltages on ./kreml -on You can check the status any time after that by ./kreml -verify mytest.kreml You will have to run this twice. The first time it will return an unknown status for every tube. The second time most should be good. It gives a summary count at the end. ======== HV STATUS ========= Number of ON tubes = 330 Number of OFF tubes = 0 Number of BAD tubes = 6 No. SET V .ne. READ V = 0 Number of UNKNOWN tubes = 0 There is now a monitor program that will run once per hour and check the status of the tubes run from kreml and print a summary. From the same account and directory as above type ./kreml_mon.pl and the same == HV STATUS === shown above will be displayed every hour.