TOF LV Operations Manual

Last modified: October 27th 2009, by Bertrand H.J. Biritz

The TOF LV system is comprised of eleven Wiener PL512, which provide a maximum of 8V and 25A per channel (12 in total).

The main control interface EPICS consists of two components, the underlying Input/Output Controller (IOC) and then the MEDM GUI interface. The later provides a graphical overview of the Process Variables (PV's) which the former supplies. This means there need to be two processes running for the normal operation of the LV controller. This interface was written by me (Bertrand H.J. Biritz) - so you know whom to complain to :)

There also are some shell scripts for easier use of the terminal commands - this is considered a back up to the GUI interface. These scripts are in the ~/bin directory which is included in the terminal path.

Command Line Interface

Get Commands
Set Commands

Trouble Shooting

get/set command not found
mainInhibit
Unknown Object Identifier

EPICS Interface

Starting the light weight GUI

There are two ways to launch this interface. From the alarm handler main window click on the button labeled P to the right of the LV group button - read the overview section if you don't understand the instructions. Alternatively, from the TOF main window you can click on the THUB located towards the center of the window.

Main Window

Either method should launch the following GUI

Main Window

Depending upon the status of the LV, the display colors might be a little different (i.e. red, yellow, blue or white instead of green).

Using the light weight GUI

With the above interface one can control the power to the TOF start detector, THUBs and also the power for all the trays associated with a particular THUB. In addition clicking on one of the dots in a THUB group brings up a small interface to control that particular channel

Main Window

Starting the PowerSupply GUI

From the TOF main GUI you can also launch a window which shows the status for an entire LV power supply by clicking on one of the LV buttons next to a particular sector.

Main Window

Using the PowerSupply GUI

Besides seeing the present channel values and supply status, this interface also allows one to see whether the supply is accidentally in inhibit mode. Not only would the Uninhibit Switch be off but also instead of saying mainOn it would read mainInhibit.

Command Line Interface

For these commands to be useful one needs to know the supply name associated with a particular sector

Sector	Hostname	IP Address
West 1	tof-lvps2	130.199.60.72
West 2	tof-lvps8	130.199.60.111
West 3	tof-lvps9	130.199.60.112
West 4	tof-lvps0	130.199.60.87
West 5	tof-lvps10	130.199.60.113
East 1	tof-lvps7	130.199.60.110
East 2	tof-lvps4	130.199.60.107
East 3	tof-lvps6	130.199.60.109
East 4	tof-lvps5	130.199.60.108
East 5	tof-lvps11	130.199.60.129
THUB	tof-lvps1	130.199.60.65

Get Commands

There are 14 shell scripts which allow you to get values for the PL512. You use them as follows:

getcommand -a hostname

where hostname is either the network name (tof-lvps1) or IP address (130.199.60.65) of the PL512 and the -a option tells the command to list all channels (getMainSwitch is the only exception).

If one just wants to look at one channel:

getcommand hostname U[0-11]

Giving no arguments will output the usage prompt.

The complete list is

Command	Channel	Description
getCurrent	U0 - U11	Real time output current
getMainSwitch		Front panel on/off switch
getMaxCurrent	U0 - U11	Trip point output current
getMaxSenseVoltage	U0 - U11	Maximum sense voltage
getMaxVoltage	U0 - U11	Trip point output voltage
getMinSenseVoltage	U0 - U11	Minimum sense output voltage
getSenseVoltage	U0 - U11	Real time sense voltage
getTemperature	U0 - U11	Real time temperature
getTerminalVoltage	U0 - U11	Real time terminal voltage
getoutputCurrent	U0 - U11	Maximum output current
getoutputGroup	U0 - U11	Group channel belongs to
getoutputStatus	U0 - U11	Real time status of channel
getoutputSwitch	U0 - U11	On/off switch for channel
getoutputVoltage	U0 - U11	Demand voltage

Set Commands

There are 9 shell scripts which allow you to set values for the PL512. You use them as follows:

setcommand hostname U[0-11] value

where hostname is either the network name (tof-lvps1) or IP address (130.199.60.65) of the PL512.

Giving no arguments will output the usage prompt.

The complete list is

Command	Channel	Value	Description
setGroupSwitch	0-2	0-1	Turn on/off a particular group
setMaxCurrent	U0 - U11	0-25	Set the trip point current
setMaxSenseVoltage	U0 - U11	0-8	Set the maximum sense voltage
setMaxVoltage	U0 - U11	0-8	Set the trip point voltage
setMinSenseVoltage	U0 - U11	0-8	Set the minimum sense voltage
setoutputCurrent	U0 - U11	0-25	Set the maximum current
setoutputGroup	U0 - U11	0-2	Set the channel's group
setoutputSwitch	U0 - U11	0-1	Turn on/off the channel
setoutputVoltage	U0 - U11	0-8	Set the demand voltage

Troubleshooting

The first and foremost rule is

Don't get creative, call for backup

If you run into any of the problems listed below the expert should be contacted - doubly so for ones which aren't listed! I have compiled these trouble shooting items for a couple of reasons:

Have a reference for what problems have happened or might happen (mainly for the expert)
Give the detector operator some help in case the expert can not be reached

get/set command not found

All the get and set commands are actually shell scripts in order to cut down on the amount of typing one has to do. The originals reside in ~/TOF/LV/shell_scripts, but copies have been placed in ~/bin.
If you receive a command not found error message then type the following:

cd ~/TOF/LV/shell_scripts

you can then execute any of the get/set commands as usual, expect for needing to place a ./ in front of each - i.e.

./getoutputVoltage.sh tof-lvps1 U0

mainInhibit

In order to verify that the communication is working launch a terminal and type the following:

getMainSwitch.sh tof-lvps1

snmpget

If the response is instead

WIENER-CRATE-MIB::sysMainSwitch.0 = INTEGER: OFF(0)

then the main switch was turned off and the crate cannot be used until you can physically go there and turn the switch back on!

If it is instead

Timeout: No Response from 130.199.60.65

then the ethernet is not working.

Unknown Object Identifier

If you get Unknown Object Identifier error messages with the get/set commands:

sysMainSwitch.0: Unknown Object Identifier (Sub-id not found: (top) -> sysMainSwitch)

then either the environmental variable $MIBS is not set properly or the MIB file is actually missing. This can be checked by typing

echo $MIBS

Checking MIBS environmental variable

If you do not get the above response, then type the following in the terminal

export MIBS=+WIENER-CRATE-MIB

The other possibility is the MIB file WIENER-CRATE-MIB.TXT is not located in the place /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs. To check this type

ls /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs/WIENER-CRATE-MIB.txt

Checking MIB status

If you do not get the above response, then you will need to become root and type the following

cp ~tof/TOF/WIENER-CRATE-MIB.txt /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs/WIENER-CRATE-MIB.txt

Copying MIB