Home

SICS User Manual for Small Angle Scattering. Quokka Edition

Contents

1. 38 SICS Objects iei eee ie eie gs NP EP enden 38 SICS Working Examples sos et ei u Ride ge 39 The Request for a new Client Connection 2 0 4 39 A Simple Command 39 A drive Command in Blocking Mode 0 0 40 A drive Command Interrupted sss 40 A run Command in Non Blocking Mode 0 00 41 10 Motor Controls amp Driye ipee der RR RE Rt E e FRE ear 43 Drive commands ERI EUIS MEINE EE eet 43 Commands se bene isses 43 Parameters au ira elf bored aa 44 list output p etr D prO derma ceed A See 46 49 B am monitots sa ein orte eus 49 Selecting a beam monitor for bm sse 49 Setting modes for the beam monitors 2 2 0 0 ee cece cee eens e 50 Active beam monitor commands bm m eene 50 Specific beam monitor commands 50 Commands used on both active bm and specific bm1 beam monitors 51 Configuring COUN ETS ert d cime rt itt Er HERE pee RA ER ERR 52 12 Histogram Control isore ep ep peg rer bangen ne 53 histm m commana os i d Pe tee rei en EE estt pes 53 Histogram memory object 55 Simple SCAM
2. 40 A run Command in Non Blocking Mode esee 41 10 Motor Controls amp Driye reto P ORE kein 43 Drive commands ie Barren eee e Deed et 43 Command zn TEA 43 Parameters BM 44 list output E 46 IBEX EH E 49 Beam Monitors noe n RE OR EE FERRE EGRE ER EP ERREUR 49 Selecting a beam monitor for bm esses 49 Setting modes for the beam monitors 2 50 Active beam monitor commands bm 50 Specific beam monitor commands bml 50 Commands used on both active bm and specific bm1 beam monitors 51 Configuring iiie een PO DE DER teg 52 12 Histogram Control eere eere ee 53 histmem commands in DC RED REPOS eR RE 53 Histogram memory object 55 13 Simple Scans otio cet neigt 57 runscan command mee E EEES e hen t entes rennen 57 r nscan Opt EiOTnS aa Ekel FE Te REESE 57 bmonscan command 58 14 Batching Tasks sete sta Re eter e qim 61 ee RR N ERI rere REI 61 Commands euer 62 1 User Defined Seans ente RUE EE ED TES T MER CERE ETE eU 64 Creating Scan Command E 64 Using Scan Com
3. nde EPA ERR 24 6 Beamstops IIBER INIRE eiii II een 26 Commands soiree tee st POR PSU RE PU M PUER 26 Troubleshooting u ne aa sp Bus sn 26 T Astrium Velocity Selector iiec eet eder ER else gear neigen 27 Commands EE LI d te EE 27 sp ieh 28 8 Julabo Temperature Control 30 Commands EE PO 30 Paramete S 30 23 Chapter 5 Ordela Detector Voltage Control Ferdi Franceschini Commands The High Voltage controller for the Ordela detector has been implemented as a standard SICS environment controller object with a driveable interface It has been configured differently to other SICS objects in several ways Firstly you use up and down commands to drive the voltage to its upper and lower limits This is a blocking task i e no other task can started until this is complete Secondly the instrument has been configured with the SICS anticollider to prevent you from moving the detector when the voltage is above a certain threshold which will lead to damage of the detector This is important for Quokka as the detector is moved frequently dhv1 up dhv1 down INT1712 1 dhv1 reset dhvi list dhv1 send command dhv1 off Parameters dhv1
4. 12 Getlog Command ise nue een ie URINE 13 Connection Configuration Commands Hee 14 e ER joes tee Sate ve hie 14 3 Interrupting SICS 222 548 ee er ne Deep TEREE EEEa 16 EU 16 stopexe command tet P Fk EROR ve Ep re PRO 16 Interrupting SICS MEE 16 4 BilesCOmmMands au een ee een ERES ER EPI HER PRESE 18 Introduction ete Renee 18 Eilenamies sn te v o toria a ve rote ulta e P REOR OR UR UE 18 File Format P Oc BE Sa ei ort 18 File Content ass te tre RERO RARE ERE FERAE EXER hen 18 File Locations nasse an EE ATE ERE 19 File Commands Single Piles tet ae re 19 newfile commardq este gas Be eee b tede eet ur vv Cep E aere nen 19 saye command ade D Re UR vena Ihe RR suede gees sania erh seasons 20 Other single file commands HH eere 20 File Collection Coinmands iret a IER RE eben 20 newfile collection command 00 20 save collection command 21 Chapter 1 SICS The Instrument Control Server Ferdi Franceschini Safety SICS is NOT a safety system It will allow you to do tasks that may damage p
5. 59 Simple Scans Example 13 3 bmonscan example bmonscan clear clears the list of scan variables bmonscan add stth 0 0 1 adds the motor stth to the scan with a starting value of 0 degrees and an increment value 0 1 degrees bmonscan getvarpar 0 lets you check the variable you are scanning its start and step value In this case it returns bmonscan stth 0 000000 0 100000 bmonscan setchannel 0 selects the first beam monitor bm1 You ll need to check physically where this beam monitor is on the instrument you re driving bmonscan run 10 monitor 10000 runs the scan with 10 scan points in counter mode with a preset of 10000 counts 60 Chapter 14 Batching Tasks Ferdi Franceschini Usage The SICS batch manager reads commands from a Tcl script and executes them you can use Tcl loops and logical constructs in the batch file see the Tcl command reference The batch manager command is exe Refer to the command reference section below for syntax and usage Following is an example of an advanced batch file which runs some twotheta scans and omega scans several times each The batch execution has been made dynamically configurable by using two tcl arrays scan and batch to hold parameters for the scan commands and the loops This means that the user can change the number of points per scan or the number of iterations in the loops from the command line before executing the batchfile The if statements at th
6. 64 User Defined Scans MyScan clear MyScan configure mode MyScan continue NP mode preset MyScan function list MyScan function functionname MyScan function functionname newfunctionname MyScan getcounts MyScan getfile MyScan getmonitor i MyScan gettime MyScan getvardata n MyScan getvarpar i MyScan interest MyScan uuinterest May be used by user functions implementing own scan loops Clears the list of scan variables Must be called before each scan that has different parameters Configures the scan mode Allowed mode one of standard default Writing ASCII files script Scan functions are overriden by the user soft The scan stores and saves software zero point corrected motor positions The standard is to save the hardware positions as read from the motor controller Continues an interrupted scan Used by the recovery feature Lists the available configurable function names The calling style of these functions is described in the next section about stdscan Returns currently configured function for functionname Sets a new function to be called for the function functionname in the scan Retrieves the counts collected during the scan Returns the name of the current data file Prints the monitor values collected during the scan for monitor i Prints the counting times for the scan points in the current scan Retrieves the values of a scan variable during the scan the x
7. Motor Troubleshooting X troubleShoot tcl nix Load config configuration ti t i Note The default file name be set in the troubleshoot setup tcl script When you press the Load config button a control window will be constructed from the information in the instrument configuration file and the troubleshoot_setup tcl file X troubleShoot tcl ox Load config hrpd_configuration tel dmc2280_controlleri dmc2280_controller2 dmc2280 controller3 dmc2280 controller4 me Check subs Check subs Check subs Check subs Check threads Check threads Check threads Check threads There is a column for each of the motion controllers specified in the instrument configuration file hrpd_configuration tcl in this example The control buttons allow you to test the connection to each controller and then perform some tests on the controllers To test the communications and motor controller status just click on the buttons in each column from top to bottom If the test succeeds the button lights up green if it fails a message box describing the failure will pop up Following are some examples of the failure messages Motor Controller Communications Failure Example When you press the connect button it should light up green if everything is OK otherwise you will see the following message X Application Error nix Error Failed to connect to dmc2280 controller2 IP
8. Setting statuscheck to false prevents the dictionary variables from being updated every time there is a start pause or stop OAT TABLE The oat table is setup in the instrument specific configuration the current default for all instruments is to set one large time bin with the upper bin boundary equal to the frame period ie 20msec Histogram Data Axes The x y theta and time axes are calculated from the spatial and temporal bin boundaries and a scale factor and offset 81 Chapter 21 Motor Troubleshooting Ferdi Franceschini You can check for problems between SICS and the instrument by running the troubleshoot tcl application in the usr local sics server common directory The trouble shooter constructs control panel from information in the SICS configuration file and from information in the troubleshoot_setup tcl file The trouble shooter setup file specifies the expected configuration for the motor controllers this file should be updated whenever the motor controller configuration is changed A Troubleshooting Session Warning This chapter requires testing nha 1 May 2009 If you have a computer with an X server then you can troubleshoot your instrument via remote terminal session If you are running linux on your computer then the following will just work If you are using an Apple computer you should have the X11 support installed If you are running windows you will need to have something like X Win32 or o
9. runs any object listed using dir inter driv in non blocking asynchronous mode drive device value drive a devicetoa value drives any object listed using dir inter driv in blocking synchronous mode stopexe device interrupts a drive or run command In the case of motors the motor will decelerate It won t stop immediately as this can cause damage to the instrument Warning This will not interrupt a scan e g runscan SICS will continue to accept commands from a client stopexe all interrupts all devices In the case of motors the motor will decelerate It won t stop immediately as this can cause damage to the instrument Warning This will not interrupt a scan e g runscan SICS will continue to accept commands from a client runscan scanvar start stop numpoints mode preset force datatype savetype Arguments must be in the order described See more detail in the Simple Scans chapter scanvar a drivable device ie a motor or temperature controller etc start the start position for the scan variable stop the stop position for the scan variable numpoints the number of scan points the start and stop positions will be included in the scan mode Allowed mode one of time unlimited period count frame MONITOR n where n 1 2 3 Control interrupt and preset system commands If you set the mode to MONITOR 1 then the histogram server will stop when MONITOR 1 reaches the preset number of counts which h
10. 24 Commands zer rennen oss REV PRSE Meese aT 24 P r meters cnr E UG ETE E 24 6 B amstops x tiet ete asia 26 Command rer oe HET Here Ie E 26 Troubleshooting oi need Dr RD mr PR err Rr ER eripi 26 7 Astrium Velocity Selector 27 CommMandS xi a Rex SS e oat haan Daa SERRE RR AG SOROR ERU E RR Cos a Mids 27 Parameters esse oa adt ever Mew aes 28 8 Julabo Temperature Control sehen 30 SICS User Manual for Small Angle Scattering Quokka Edition Commands s iie IERI A ed ae a ee SY 30 Parameters sce see re RO IRR yatta sles RR Eee aue ER DAE ATONE Ie 30 COMMANDS IN DETAIL eintreten teer se ar nett nes 33 SICS OVERVIEW ne Bee ED e EP ne EYE ER v Peas tea OTs Mode 35 Introduction E eee nM RI 35 SICS Overall Design ditte ette do Gee ep eg rss 35 SICS Clients UH 35 The SIGS SerVet o roce err P RR REESE ERREUR PB EETENER wae cote 35 The SICS Server Kernel E EI 37 The SICS Interpreter t este Rte rere Tae eter re 38 SICS Objects 22 t 38 SICS Working Exampl s ss esse Keen sn pen 39 The Request for new Client Connection see 39 Ac Simple Command zu rte bike 39 A drive Command in Blocking Mode sese 40 A drive Command Interrupted
11. 39 SICS Overview The object wrapper function will check further arguments checks the clients authorisation if appropriate for the action requested Depending on the checks the wrapper function will create an error message or do its work This done control passes back through the interpreter and the connection task to the task switcher The next task executes A drive Command in Blocking Mode The network reader finds data pending at one of the client ports The network reader reads the command splits it into single lines and put those on the top of the client connections command stack The network reader passes control to the task switcher n due time the client connection task executes inspects its command stack pops the command pending and forwards it together with a pointer to itself to the SICS interpreter The SICS interpreter inspects the first word of the command Using this key the interpreter finds the drive command wrapper function and passes control to that function The drive command wrapper function will check further arguments checks the clients authorisation if appropriate for the action requested Depending on the checks the wrapper function will create an error message or do its work Assuming everything is OK the motor is located in the system The drive command wrapper function asks the device executor to run the motor The device executor verifies that nobody else is driving
12. round arg srand arg if execute scripts conditionally if expri then 1 elseif expr2 then body2 elseif else bodyN The if command evaluates expr as an expression in the same way that expr evaluates its argument The value of the expression must be a boolean a numeric value where 0 is false and anything is true or a string value such as true or yes for true and false or no for false if it is true then body1 is executed by passing it to the Tcl interpreter Otherwise expr2 is evaluated as an expression and if it is true then body2 is executed and so on If none of the expressions evaluates to true then bodyN is executed The then and else arguments are optional noise words to make the command easier to read There may be any number of elseif clauses including zero BodyN may also be omitted as long as else is omitted too The return value from the command is the result of the body script that was executed or an empty string if none of the expressions was non zero and there was no bodyN 71 TCL command language interface for Example 17 1 if set a 3 if a 3 puts a equals three for loop for start test next body for is a looping command similar in structure to the C for statement The start next and body arguments must be Tcl command strings and test is an expression string If a continue command is invoked within body then any remaining commands in the current execu
13. Astrium Velocity Selector Parameters For more detailed description of these parameter please see the ASTRIUM velocity selector manual on ANSTOnet hget instrument velocity_selector wvalv hget instrument velocity_selector rtemp hget instrument velocity_selector state hget instrument velocity_selector aspeed hget instrument velocity_selector sspeed val hget instrument velocity_selector winlt hget instrument velocity_selector wflow Privilege User Get the state of the water valve The water valve will open in once the velocity selector has reached 3000 rpm The valve will close again and the selector will brake to 0 rpm if the water flow is not within tolerance open Water valve open clos Water valve closed Privilege User Units Celsius Get the rotor temperature Privilege User Get the state IDLING Is not being controlled Should be at zero rpm RESET A reset has been issued by the velocity selector client program CONTROL Control has been requested by SICS or the velocity selector client program BRAKING The velocity selector has the brake applied due to an hset setstate brake request the Brake button applied on the velocity selector client program or due to a fault condition POWERLOSS MEASUREMENT Powerloss measurement button applied on the velocity selector client program EMERGENCY STOP Emergency stop button applied on the velo
14. If a motor has not completed a move to the required precision then the move command will be resent The number of retries is controlled by the maxretry parameter Controls which type of user is allowed to control the motor Allowed values 0 Internal Motor is reserved for internal use by SICS 1 Manager Only users who logon as managers are allowed to move the motor Usually just instrument scientists 2 User 3 Spy Anyone is allowed to move the motor Default 1 Privilege Manager Controls direction of motion set to 1 to reverse This is the number of consecutive failures of positioning operations this motor allows before it thinks that something is really broken and aborts the experiment The number of times that SICS will retry a move if a motor has not reached the target position to within the required precision Position faults will be ignored if this is greater than zero Default 10 Controls frequency with which position changes are reported if a user subscribes interest to a motor A larger value reduces the frequency home position for the axis which the motor controls ie phi chi two theta x y So it is the physical home position in the units given by the units parameter below ie mm degrees The speed of motion along about the axis controlled by this motor in physical units per second ie mm s deg s Speed in units s Acceleration along about the axis controlled by this motor Configurable Maximum
15. force datatype savetype Arguments must be in the order described scanvar a drivable device ie a motor or temperature controller etc start the start position for the scan variable stop the stop position for the scan variable numpoints the number of scan points the start and stop positions will be included in the scan mode Allowed mode one of time unlimited period count frame MONITOR n where n 1 2 3 If you set the mode to MONITOR 1 then the histogram server will stop when MONITOR 1 reaches the preset number of counts which has been set with the following preset parameter preset the acquisition duration at each scan point this is in second if the mode is time or counts if the mode is count or MONITOR n runscan options These parameters must be supplied as a name value pair e g datatype HISTOGRAM Y 57 Simple Scans They can be given in any order force val Force a scan Allowed val one of true false default If you really want to you can force a scan when the instrument isn t ready This can be useful for getting a background reference datatype val Select the histogram memory datatype to save in your data file Allowed vai one of HISTOGRAM T HISTOGRAM X HISTOGRAM XT HISTOGRAM Y HISTOGRAM YT HISTOGRAM XY HISTOGRAM XYT default savetype val Allowed val one of save default nosave By default your data will be saved in a file with a three letter instrument p
16. then starts the motor and grabs hardware control The device executor also starts a task monitoring the activity of the motor The drive command wrapper function now enters a wait state This means the task switcher will execute other tasks except the connection task requesting the wait state The client connection and task executing the drive command will not be able to process further commands The device executor task will keep on monitoring the progress of the motor driving whenever the task switcher allows it to execute n due time the device executor task will find that the motor finished driving The task will then finish executing The clients grab of the hardware driving permission will be released Atthis stage the drive command wrapper function will awake and continue execution This means inspecting errors and reporting to the client how things worked out This done control passes back through the interpreter and the connection task to the task switcher The client connection is free to execute other commands The next task executes A drive Command Interrupted The network reader finds data pending at one of the client ports The network reader reads the command splits it into single lines and put those on the top of the client connections command stack The network reader passes control to the task switcher 40 SICS Overview n due time the client connection task executes inspects its co
17. 137 157 201 67 port 1034 e couldn t open socket host is unreachable Is the motor controller switched on Are the network cables plugged in OK Skip Messages Details gt gt Missing motor controller subroutine example Assuming that the connection has succeeded ie the connect button is now green then you can click on the Check subs button If the check succeeds the button will light up green if not you will see the following message 83 Motor Troubleshooting r X Application Error jnix Error Subroutine ABC does not exist on controller dmc2280 controller1 Skip Messages Details gt gt This means the a required subroutine named ABC was not found on controller one Motor controller thread not running example You can if necessary threads are running on the motor controller by clicking on the Check threads button If the check succeeds then the button should now be green On failure you will see the following message X Application Error Iojx Error Thread 0 not running on controller dmc2280_controller3 69 If the broken thread is 0 then it is probably a loop in the Y AUTO subroutine which is not being reached OK Skip Messages Details gt gt This means that something should be running in thread zero but it s not Typically the AUTO subroutine will be running an empty loop in thread zero to trigger trip points in the controller software Final sta
18. axis n is the ID of the scan variable to retrieve data for ID is O for the first scan variable added 1 for the second etc Prints the name start and step of the scan variable number i A SICS client can be automatically notified about scan progress This is switched on with this command Three types of messages are sent a string NewScan on start of the scan a string ScanEnd after the scan has finished astring scan Counts 109292 8377 with the scan values after each finished scan point As for interest but the array of counts is transferred in UU encoded format 65 User Defined Scans MyScan dyninterest MyScan uninterest MyScan integrate MyScan log var MyScan noscanvar MyScan np MyScan setchannel n MyScan simscan pos FWHM height MyScan silent NP mode preset MyScan storecounts counts time mon mon MyScan storecounter MyScan recover As for interest but scan points are printed one by one as a list containing point number first scan var pos counts Uninterest switches automatic notification about scan progress off Calculates the integrated intensity of the peak and the variance of the intensity for the last scan Returns either an error when insufficient scan data is available or a pair of numbers Peak integration is performed along the method described by Grant and Gabe in J Appl Cryst 1978 11 114 120 Adds var to list of variables logged during the scan
19. axis for significant changes in position Privilege User Get Set the deceleration along about the axis controlled by this motor in physical units per second ie mm s deg s Privilege Manager This is the number of consecutive failures of positioning operations this motor allows before it thinks that something is really broken and aborts the experiment Default 1 0 Privilege User Set to 1 0 to prevent the motor from being moved set to 1 0 to allow movement NOTE The instrument manager can set the accesscode to prevent users from moving a motor Warning subject to change This may be changed to a configuration only parameter 44 Motor Controls amp Drive mot ignorefault va persists mot interruptmode val persists mot maxretry val mot movecount val persists mot precision va persists mot sign val persists mot softlowerlim val persists mot softupperlim va persists Privilege Manager Get Setthe home position for the axis which the motor controls Ge phi chi two theta x y So it is the physical home position in the units given by the units parameter below ie mm degrees Position faults will be ignored if this is greater than zero Default 0 continue Privilege Manager Controls what effect a motor failure has on operations Allowed vai one of 0 Continue A motor failure will not affect other operations 1 AbortOperation Stop current hardware opera
20. commands scratch writes to a scratch file The file will be overwritten with the next invocation of this option Used mainly for testing filetype file_type may have the following values BEAM MONITOR Saves data from the configured beam monitors histogram memory data is not saved HISTOGRAM_T Saves histogram total time data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_X Saves histogram x data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XT Saves histogram x t data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_Y Saves histogram y data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_YT Saves histogram y t data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XY Saves histogram x y data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XYT Saves histogram total x y t data and beam monitor data save_collection command save collection index val labels samplel saves data to disk within a collection multiple files index is the index of data to be saved starting with 0 To save your first slice of data you would save 0 This provides you with a complete NeXus file You may be doing After you acquire you next slice of data you would save 1 then save 2 etc labels sample will save to the file referenced by the label 1 1 You would put all data relating to a sample into this one file 21 Part Il QUOKKA SPECIFIC COMMANDS Table of Contents 5 Ordela Detector Voltage Control nisce ect reete Ree ttl an anne 24 Commands EP EP 24 Parameters as
21. made into the command log n is optional and defaults to 20 Up to 1000 lines are held in an internal buffer for this command Commandlog intervall Queries and configures the intervall in minutes at which time minutes stamps are written to the commandlog It is now possible to have a script executed whenever a new log file is started In order to make this work a ServerOption with the name logstartfile must exist in the instrument configuration file The value of this option must be the full path name of the file to execute Note with the command config listen 1 you can have the output to the command log printed into your client too With config listen 0 you can switch this off again This is useful for listening into a running instrument GetLog Command The SICS server logs all its activities to a logfile regardless of what the user requested This logfile is mainly intended to help in server debugging However clients may register an interest in certain server events and can have them displayed This facility is accessed via the GetLog command It needs to be stressed that this log receives messages from all active clients GetLog understands the following messages GetLog All achieves that all output to the server logfile is also written to the client which issued this command GetLog Kill stops all logging output to the client GetLog OutCode request that only certain events will be logged to the client issuing this command Enable
22. the next section stopexe device interrupts a drive or run command In the case of motors the motor will decelerate It won t stop immediately as this can cause damage to the instrument Warning This will not interrupt a scan e g runscan SICS will continue to accept commands from a client stopexe all interrupts all devices In the case of motors the motor will decelerate It won t stop immediately as this can cause damage to the instrument Warning This will not interrupt a scan e g runscan SICS will continue to accept commands from a client Interrupting SICS On occasion you as the user or a SICS object may come to the conclusion that an error is so bad that the measurement needs to be stopped Clearly a means is needed to communicate this to upper level Interrupting SICS code This means is setting an interrupt on the connection The current active interrupt is located at the connection object note for SICS programmers this can be retrieved with SCGetInterrupt and set with SCSetInterrupt Interrupt codes are defined in interrupt h These codes are ordered into a hierarchy INT1712 0 INT1712 1 INT1712 2 INT1712 3 INT1712 4 INT1712 5 INT1712 6 Continue Everything is just fine eContinue Abort Operation Stop the current scan point or whatever is done but do not stop altogether eAbortOperation Abort Scan Abort the current scan but continue processing of further commands in buffers or
23. upper voltage lower voltage max voltage rate voltage dhv1 debug val Raise the voltage Lower the voltage Note NOTE This command blocks until the power supply reaches the upper or lower running voltages see below If this commands hang SICS you can interrupt it with by entering this at the SICS command line or by pressing the interrupt button at the bottom of GumTree Reset the controller Displays the values of the various parameters Sends a command to the unit and displays the response Drives the output voltage to zero Sets the running voltage for the up command This would normally be the operating voltage for the equipment to which the power supply is connected Sets the standby voltage for the down command This would normally be the standby voltage for the equipment to which the power supply is connected Sets the hardware maximum for the power supply For the Ordela power supplies it is important that this is the correct full scale value of the power supply itself This is used to convert between the voltage step and voltages and to calculate the step period from the voltage slew rate The volts per second at which the power supply slews between voltages For the Ordela power supplies this is used to calculate the time between voltage steps based on the max parameter Allowed val 24 Ordela Detector Voltage Control 0 No debug information in log 1 Debug information i
24. Can be slave motors such as stt om chi phi during four circle work These variables are not driven just logged var is the SICS variable to log Only drivable parameters may be logged in such a way Prints the number of scan variables Prints the number of points in the current scan Sometimes it is required to scan not the counter but a monitor This command sets the channel to collect data from n is an integer ID for the channel to use Warning BROKEN This is a debugging command It simulates scan data with a hundred points between an x axis ranging from 10 to 20 A gaussian peak is produced from the arguments given pos the position of the peak maximum FWHM is the full width at half maxxximum for the peak height is its height Executes a scan Does not produce an output file Warning Don t understand the syntax nha This stores an entry of count values into the scan data structure To be used from user defined scan functions The scan pointer is incremented by one Store the counts and monitors in the counter object configured for the scan into the scan data structure Increments the scan pointer by one Recovers an aborted scan 66 User Defined Scans MyScan window newval The scan object writes a file with all data necessary to continue the scan after each scan point If for some reason a scan has been aborted due to user intervention or a system failure this scheme allows to continue the scan wh
25. E ERE be RR EE UNSERE EE des 72 19 1 Motor configuration example emm ener TI viii Part I INTRODUCTION Table of Contents SICS The Instrument Control Server 3 NI Em 3 What is SICS mm 3 Should TI read further een yeah EUR EE EUR E Yee 4 Whereis SIGS co LEE 4 Starting and stopping SICS using runsics 4 Login to 5 Starting SICS from the command line eme 5 SICS Directory Str ctUre oa cette E te e pas oe Re 5 SICS Configuration Hs In En vede epe 6 2 Control interrupt and system commands mH Hee 7 Introduction eee EIE RU EI REESE PEE AREE ee ee Muerte 7 System Commands and Concepts 7 Authorisatlon M es 7 General Str et ure esse een ao CFR ERE PE PER reise be nie HER ERR E EPERRE ES 7 SICS Cominand Syntax meme epa son 8 SICS Variables oi er P nie Ek eat rer 8 Commonly Used SICS Commands 8 SICS System Commands afe er meo ipe rore ere niei ETS PSE 10 Deprecated commands nen eee rere ette Ede fern 11 Logens your ACUVILY lt i iocis esse 12 LogBook Command rettet eve gets hatten 12 The Commandlog eni erra ERES RESET RR
26. RR ERES 75 Adding a variable atii he RI MEE DEI 75 19 Motor Configuration EE ic De Riss TI Configuration example i ge eee eget tede eg tera pea TI Configuration checklist u Ree Pone FREIER ER RE 78 For each axis with an absolute encoder e 78 For each axis without an absolute encoder 2 78 Foral aKes 22 22 UE RR ees ee RE TIPS 78 SUIS iss EE 78 Testing coepere muerte ass sn HOUR RP ee 78 Configuration 1eference cete t RET eR Co sss beaks Eine 79 20 Histogram Configuration under construction 81 Histogram Configuration u iere rere dds dee RP PE Rer RR dae Ten 81 ONT TABEE BRIGHTON TIRES 81 Histogram Data AXES en senkt tk ditte rien 81 21 Motor Troubleshooting rene rennen 82 A Troubleshooting Session md Rus eins son Des 82 Starting the troubleshooter 82 An example showing failures eerte etre ee ER ram ye EE ete 82 Motor Controller Communications Failure Example 022 83 Missing motor controller subroutine example een 83 Motor controller thread not running example 84 Final status display diet e tepore tette espace nt epe be eve e yaa aes 84 Using sicsclient for troubleshoot 84 74 Chapter 18 Personal configurati
27. S oen eer Ert o tH PEE EE PD RE e PORE ERR 57 runscan command eiie eese sn Bine 57 ru nscam opt Long uve ette RE IPSE PEU EE 57 bmonscan command 58 14 Batching ER 61 E E E eee ue 61 Commands iot ERE xvm RIA PESE CE V Fresken IE E ER PUER 62 19 User Detined Scans sense 64 Cr ating a Scan Command rese ip rte Re pIE 64 Using a Scan Command eee eee EEE RAE ube RE ERR REPRE eU 64 User Definable Scan Functions e Pak estes E P shane dette ese PORA ERREUR 67 16 Batch Manager 2 2 2 2 pte empto Bros 68 Commands ioa eet DRITT 68 17 TCL command language interface 70 Common commands amp exclusions 10 70 Math functions a se ee se np ersehen 71 if execute scripts Conditionally ren e Ert hte iR HERE ER EP Ee 71 ossi H 72 while execute script repeatedly as long as a condition is 222 72 34 Chapter 9 SICS Overview Introduction SICS the SINQ Instrument Control System meets the following specifications Control the instrument reliably Good remote access to the instrument via the internet Portability across operating system platfor
28. SICS User Manual for Small Angle Scattering Quokka Edition DRAFT ANSTO version 0 1 Mark Koennecke Heinz Heer Ferdi Francheschini Nick Hauser SICS User Manual for Small Angle Scattering Quokka Edition DRAFT ANSTO version 0 1 Mark Koennecke Heinz Heer Ferdi Francheschini Nick Hauser Table of Contents I INTRODUCTION Hamlet ke ken a 1 1 SICS The Instrument Control Server 3 Safety nn reed rei Er NE 3 Wh t is SICS nen range pen MEIN 3 Should I re d further ier een HERR y ERES STEN 4 Whereis SICS eek taste 4 Starting and stopping SICS using runsics 1011 4 Login to SICS endete SPESE 5 Starting SICS from the command line 3 SICS Directory Structure e nennen men he he he eee ener nere 5 SICS Configuration E Re ngs sarees e EE reste 6 2 Control interrupt and system commands 7 Introduction eerte pr REIR SUAE Mae Re neben 7 System Commands and Concepts 7 Authorisation nee ERE as ea Sa exe 7 General Stricture i nete IERI PIU P EUM 7 SICS Command Syntax rate ans 8 SICS Variables 1 ete EN en ar e De ER Ree 8 Co
29. SICS server structure The Taskloop Device Executor w t Y Emon y pass execution Errenta TCP IP send commands SICS Interpreter and Macro Language SICS Object Database Hardware 36 SICS Overview The SICS Server Kernel In more detail the SICS server kernel has the following tasks Accept and verify client connection requests Read and execute client commands Maintain the I O and error context for each client connection Serialize data access Serialize hardware access Monitor HW operations Monitor environment devices Any program serving multiple clients has the problem how to organize multiple clients accessing the same server and how to prevent one client from reading data while another client is writing The approach used for the SICS server is a combination of polling and cooperative multitasking This scheme is simple and can be implemented in an operating system independent manner One way to look at the SICS server is as a series of tasks in a circular queue executing one after another The servers main loop does nothing but executing the tasks in this circular buffer in an endless loop There are several system tasks and one such task for each living client connection Thus only one task executes at any given time and data access is efficiently serialized One of the main system tasks and the one which will be always there is the network reader The network r
30. Var is a Tcl wrapper for the SICS function VarMake These 2 functions share the same first 3 parameters To view these settings use hlistprop name utility mkVar name type access privilege long name nxsave class control data name name on the sics command line type text int float access privilege spy user manager internal readonly long name long name nxsave saves to NeXus file 75 Personal configuration true false default class node under which this variable is saved and controlled e g instrument sample control will appear in the Gumtree table tree if this is set to true true false default data will appear in the data node of NeXus file if this is set to true nxsave must also be set to true true false default Example zutility mkVar starttime Text user start true experiment true true creates a variable called starttime which is a text variable requiring user privilege to set The long_name is start it will be saved to the NeXus file under the experiment node and appear in the Gumtree table tree 76 Chapter 19 Motor Configuration Ferdi Franceschini Configuration example Motors are configured by following this pattern Setup the host and port of the controller Make the motor queue Set the home value for the absolute encoder Set the motor configuration parameters Example 19 1 Motor configuration example from icsl echidna nbi ansto gov au usr local sics s
31. ab of the hardware driving permission will be released Atthis stage the drive command wrapper function will awake and continue execution This means it finds the interrupt tells the user what he already knows an interrupt was issued This done control passes back through drive command wrapper the interpreter and the connection task to the task switcher The next task executes A run Command in Non Blocking Mode The network reader finds data pending at one of the client ports The network reader reads the command splits it into single lines and put those on the top of the client connections command stack The network reader passes control to the task switcher n due time the client connection task executes inspects its command stack pops the command pending and forwards it together with a pointer to itself to the SICS interpreter The SICS interpreter inspects the first word of the command Using this key the interpreter finds the drive command wrapper function and passes control to that function The run command wrapper function will check further arguments checks the clients authorisation if appropriate for the action requested Depending on the checks the wrapper function will create an error message or do its work Assuming everything is OK the motor is located in the system The run command wrapper function asks the device executor to run the motor 41 SICS Overview The device e
32. allowed acceleration in units s Deceleration along about the axis controlled by this motor Configurable 47 Motor Controls amp Drive maxDecel motOffDelay Debug Settle Blockage_Check_Interval Blockage_Thresh Blockage_Ratio Blockage_Fail Backlash_offset Protocol absEncoder absEncHome cntsPerX Creep Offset Creep Precision posit count posit 1 posit 2 posit 3 stepsPerX Maximum allowed deceleration in units s Number of msec to wait before switching off a motor after a move Default 0 Allowed values 0 no absolute encoder 1 absolute encoder enabled The calibrated home position in encoder counts Required if absEncoder 1 Number of absolute encoder counts per unit of movement along about the axis of motion Number of motor steps per unit of movement along about the axis of motion 48 Chapter 11 Counters Ferdi Franceschini Beam monitors have not been documented completely in either the PSI source code or on the Bragg Institute Plone CMS Therefore this document is a standalone document not edited from another source Beam monitors When you are doing an experiment with the main detector you don t address beam monitors directly You would normally select and configure the beam monitor to control your experiment using the histmem command However you may want to use a scan command with a beam monitor and without the main detector This can be do
33. ambda To get and set other parameters use hget or hset instrument velocity selector run nvs lambda wavelength drive nvs lambda wavelength hset instrument velocity selector setstate brake hget instrument velocity selector state hlist instrument velocity selector hset instrument velocity selector node val hget instrument velocity selector node hset instrument velocity selector setspeed val Units Angstroms Runs the velocity selector to wavelength Units Angstroms Is the same as run but it blocks the client that requested the drive from issuing commands until the task has finished Set the state The state can be read using hget instrument velocity selector state If the state is set to brake then hget instrument velocity selector state will return BRAKING even when the rotor has stopped You can use run nvs speed to run the rotor again Allowed values brake Get the state The normal operating state under SICS control is CONTROL Lists all the velocity selector nodes Set val ona node Get the value of a node Privilege User Units rpm Set the rotor set speed Once this is set the velocity selector will attempt to run to this speed If called with no argument will return an error The velocity selector is under the instrument velocity selector node in hipadaba which is where it will be found when using the Gumtree TableTree This complies with the NeXus standard 27
34. ame prints the range of code executing in named buffer within the stack of nested buffers The reply looks like number of start character number of end character line number Without an argument prints the code text currently being executed name prints the range of code text executing in the named buffer within the stack of nested buffers Switches on automatic notification about starting batch files executing a new bit of code or for finishing a batch file This is most useful for SICS clients watching the progress of the experiment 62 Batching Tasks exe print buffername Prints the content of the batch buffer buffername to the screen exe queue Prints the content of the batch buffer queue exe run Starts executing the batch buffers in the queue exe save filename Save the commands to a batch file Returns an error if you try to overwrite an existing batch file exe syspath newpath Without an argument this command lists the system directories which are searched for batch files newpath sets a new system search path It is possible to specify multiple directories by separating them with colons exe upload Prepare the batch manager to upload a new set of commands from the client 63 Chapter 15 User Defined Scans Ferdi Franceschini Creating a Scan Command A scan command must first be initialised with MakeScanCommand command in the SICS configuration file before it can be used MakeScanComm
35. and initialises the SICS internal scan command MakeScanCommand name countername headfile recoverfil Arguments must be in the order described name The scan will be accessible as name in the system countername The name of a valid counter object to use for counting headfile The full pathname of a header description file This file describes the contents of the header of the data file The format of this file is described below recoverfil The full pathname of a file to store recover data The internal scan command writes the state of the scan to a file after each scan point This allows for restarting of aborted scans Using a Scan Command The scan command named here MyScan but may have another name understands the following commands MyScan run NP mode Executes a scan preset NP is the number of scan points mode is the counter mode either timer or monitor preset is the preset value for the counter Scan data is written to an output file MyScan add name start Adds the variable specified by the argument name to the list step of variables scanned in the next scan The arguments start and step define the starting point and the step width for the scan on this variable MyScan appendvarpos i pos Append pos to the array of positions for scan variable i To be used from user defined scan functions MyScan callback status Triggers callbacks configured on the scan object Allow status one of Scanstart scanpoint Scanend
36. ap a SICS object to a location in a NeXus file and what type the data will be and its attributes e g units Below is an example from nexus dic samphi entryl NXentry sample NXsample SDS sample phi type NX FLOAT32 rank 1 dim 1 attr units degrees attr long_name sample_phi Changes to configurations are done by the facility Dictionaries can be checked with check_instdict tcl and check_sicsobj_attributes tcl By default if the SICS object exists and there is an entry in the dictionary then it will be saved to the data file There is a second hierarchy of SICS objects which is used by Gumtree for control This is called hipadaba We won t go into detail about hipadaba in this manual but it is important for this discussion to know how hipadaba controls saving of SICS objects Hipadaba has the same structure as NeXus The hipadaba tree when initially created by SICS is a complete NeXus tree which is then pruned to contain only those nodes that exist for that instrument This allows any node to be added to nexus dic for an instrument without having to change hipadaba There are dictionary files for hipadaba found at usr local sics server config hipadaba In general there is no instrument specific information in these files Every node in hipadaba has data and nxsave attributes By default nxsave is set to true and if the node contains data data is set to true If either of these is set to false then the data will not be saved Fi
37. are limits are reset to hardware limits initiates automatic printing of any position change of the motor This command is mainly interesting for implementors of status display clients disables interest homerun with no arguments reports the current status a value of 1 means that the motors have been homed homerun 4 will run the homing routine Used on motors with relative encoders e g slit motors Returns the motor s type Warning Appears to be broken Configurable virtual motors do not have a list subcommand 43 Motor Controls amp Drive Parameters mot absenc mot accel val mot accesscode val persists mot blockage_check_interval val mot decel val mot failafter val mot fixed val persists mot home val Privilege User Get the absolute encoder reading Only implemented by motors that have absolute encoders Privilege User Get Set the acceleration along about the axis controlled by this motor in physical units per square second ie mm s 2 deg s 2 Default 2 i e user Privilege Manager Controls which type of user is allowed to control the motor Allowed val 0 Internal Motor is reserved for internal use by SICS 1 Manager Only users who logon as managers are allowed to move the motor Usually just instrument scientists 2 User 3 Spy Anyone is allowed to move the motor Privilege Manager Units seconds Get Set the interval at which the motor driver checks the
38. as been set with the following preset parameter the acquisition duration at each scan point this is in second if the mode is time or counts if the mode is count or MONITOR n INT1712 3 interrupts a runscan command In the case of motors the motor will decelerate It won t stop immediately as this can cause damage to the instrument SICS System Commands sics exitus wait time resetserver sicslist sicslist server sicslist sicsobject sicslist sicsobject key sicslist setatt sicsobject key value sicslist met adatakey sicslist metadatakey value sicslist objstatus j A single word commands which shuts the server down Only managers may use this command waits time seconds before the next command is executed This does not stop other clients from issuing commands resets the server after an interrupt Prints a list of all SICS objects Prints a list of all server options Prints all the metadata associated with the SICS object sicsobject Prints the value of the key associated with the SICS object sicsobject Sets a user defined attribute with the name key and the value value for the SICS object sicsobject List all unique entries for the specified metadata key System supplied metadata keys are type The object class interface The object interfaces implemented by SICS e g sicslist type will print all the objects classes available in the SICS server This list may be augmented with user generated ke
39. aves histogram total x y t data and beam monitor data save command save index saves data to disk index is the index of data to be saved starting with 0 To save your first slice of data you would save 0 This provides you with a complete NeXus file You may be doing After you acquire you next slice of data you would save 1 then save 2 etc Other single file commands killfile decrements the data number used for SICS file writing and thus consequently overwrites the last datafile This is useful when useless data files have been created during tests As this is critical command in normal user operations this command requires managers privilege File Collection Commands newfile collection command newfile collection 1abels Whereas newfile creates one file newfile collection will create samplel sample2 as many files as there are labels The command does write any filetype file_typ information to disk savetype save_typ To save data use the save_collection command Example You have a multi sample changer or robot You want to do a measurement on each sample at multiple temperatures Your experimental sequence has the sample changer as the fastest varying parameter inner loop and temperature change as the slowest varying parameter outer loop You want to record all temperature data for a sample in one file savetype save_type may have the following values data writes to a normal data file 20 File
40. bjects in SICS are drivable This means they can run to a new value Obvious examples are motors Less obvious examples include composite adjustments such as setting a wavelength or an energy Such devices are alos called virtual motors This class of objects can be operated by the drive run Success family of commands These commands cater for blocking and non blocking modes of operation Commands run moti posi mot2 pos2 Success drive mot1 posi mot2 pos2 mot OR mot position mot hardposition mot list mot reset mot interest mot uninterest mot homerun 1 or 0 list mot type runs mot 1 to pos1 mot2to pos2 waits and blocks the command connection until all pending operations have finished or an interrupt occured is the same as run but it blocks the client that requested the drive from issuing commands until the motion has finished Can be called with one to n pairs of object new value pairs This command will set the variables in motion and wait until the driving has finished A drive can be seen as a sequence of a run command as stated above immediatly followed by a Success command prints the current position of the motor All zero point and sign corrections are applied prints the current position of the motor No corrections are applied Should read the same as the controller box Lists all the motor s parameters resets the motor parameters to default values This is software Zero to 0 0 and softw
41. city selector client program Units rpm Get the actual speed Privilege User Units rpm No idea Units Celsius Get the cooling water inlet temperature Units litres min Get the cooling water flow rate 28 Astrium Velocity Selector hget instrument velocity_selector ploss hget instrument velocity_selector splos hget instrument velocity_selector rspeed hget instrument velocity_selector woutt hget instrument velocity_selector vacum hget instrument velocity selector bcuun hget instrument velocity selector ttang hget instrument velocity selector vibrt hget instrument velocity selector vvalv hget instrument velocity selector aveto Units Watts Get the last measured power loss Units rpm Get the speed of the last measured power loss Units rpm Get the requested speed set using run nvs_speed Units Celsius Get the cooling water outlet temperature Units 10 bar Get the vacuum Get the BCU units Units degrees Get the turntable angle 999 99 if not initialised Units mm s Get the vibration Get the vacuum valve state Returned values open closed Get the veto state Returned values nok not OK ok OK 29 Chapter 8 Julabo Temperature Control Nick Hauser Commands The Julabo temperature controller is a SICS script context object There are 2 parts the script context object which has the name sample tc1 and the d
42. command les eAbortScan Abort Batch Aborts everything operations scans and batch processing and leaves the system ready to enter new commands eAbortBatch Halt System As eAbortBatch but lock the system eHaltSystem Free System Unlocks a system halted with eHaltSystem eFreeSystem Warning For internal usage only Makes the SICS server run down and exit Higher level SICS objects may come to the conclusion that the error reported by lower level code is actually not that critical and clear any pending interrupts by setting the interrupt code to eContinue and thus consume the interrupt Chapter 4 File commands Ferdi Franceschini Introduction Filenames SICS provides methods to create and save files You can create a single file and save either a single dataset or multiple datasets to the one file You can also create and manage collections of files and save single or multiple datasets to files in the collection SICS automatically creates the filename The filenames have the form xxxnnnnnnn nx hdf where xxx is a 3 letter abbreviation of the instrument QKK quokka ECH echidna WOM wombat KOW kowari PLA platypus nnnnnnn is a 7 numeral sequence number starting at 0000000 when the facility commenced operation and is automatically incremented by SICS The file usr local sics DataNumber is used to keep track of the number DO NOT edit this file nx denotes that the file is a NeXus file hdf denot
43. di Franceschini histmem command You can start and stop acquisitions and do limited configuration the histogram server with the histmem command Note that histmem does not save data You have to explicitly use the save command The histogram memory server is a component that is separate from SICS SICS currently exposes only a subset of the histogram server interface In the future Gumtree will provide an editor for the histogram server configuration files For a simple experiment in beam monitor mode where you want to histogram data until one million counts are counted in the beam monitor from the command line you would histmem mode MONITOR_1 histmem preset 1000000 histmem start wait until the histogram is finished save For subsequent acquisitions where you want to do fast starts of the histogram server because you don t need to change configuration histmem pause do something in SICS like change the sample or temperatur histmem start wait until the histogram is finished save You must call the histmem command with one of the following subcommands histmem start block will start an acquisition in the current mode The option block prevents subsequent commands from being processed until the histmem is finished Used in scripts when using the count or time modes histmem stop will stop the histogram memory if it is running in unlimited mode that has been started without the block option NOTE If you are running i
44. do need to get to the SICS command line then use the sicsclient command at the Linux prompt echidna icsl echidna gt sicsclient OK Now you ll have to login to SICS with your role and password The role is spy user or manager and the instrument scientist will provide you with the password myusername mypassword Login OK When a correct username and password is entered SICS announces that the login was successful SICS commands can now be entered Starting SICS from the command line To start SICS you have to log on to the instrument control computer and then cd usr local sics server and launch the server in the background with a command similar to the one shown below cd usr local sics server nohup SICServer xxx_configuration tcl amp where xxx is the instrument name Note The amp is important it runs the server in the background nohup logs output from SICS to a file called nohup out and ensures that SICS continues running when you logout The tcl file specified on the command line is the configuration file for your instrument replace the xxx with your instrument s ID The configuration file may source other tcl files SICS Directory Structure SICS is installed on the usr local sics directory of the instrument control computer It has the following subdirectories server This contains the SICServer and the tcl configuration files data Data files are stored here log Server log files are stored her
45. e along with the status tcl file The status tcl file preserves variable settings and some parameter values from the last session with the SICServer tmp The server keeps temporary files here SICS The Instrument Control Server SICS Configuration SICS is configured via tcl files which initialise the command objects which clients use to control the hardware Also the server s functionality can be extended by defining new commands in the configuration files we can do this because SICS embeds a Tc1 interpreter hence the tcl extension Chapter 2 Control interrupt and system commands Mark Koennecke Introduction In the previous chapter you learnt how to start and stop SICS and how to login Now you ll learn how to control the instrument The first part of this chapter deals with some of the most used commands in SICS This includes system commands and control commands This provides you with a soft start The second part of the chapter deals with logging activity and configuring your connection to SICS The next chapter will go more deeply into the how SICS executes those commands through a sequence of states You may want to skip the next chapter if you don t require a deeper understanding of SICS This chapter and the next are from the master user manual for SICS It gives an overview over all commands implemented independent of a specific instrument This is to be used as the source for more instrument speci
46. e stack of nested batch files i e batch files calling each other Without an argument prints the range of code currently being executed name prints the range of code executing in named buffer within the stack of nested buffers The reply looks like number of start character number of end character line number Without an argument prints the code text currently being executed name prints the range of code text executing in the named buffer within the stack of nested buffers Appends buffername to the queue of batch buffers to execute Clears the queue of batch buffers Prints the content of the batch buffer queue Starts executing the batch buffers in the queue Prints the content of the batch buffer buffername to the screen Switches on automatic notification about starting batch files executing a new bit of code or for finishing a batch file This 68 Batch Manager is most useful for SICS clients watching the progress of the experiment exe upload Prepare the batch manager to upload a new set of commands from the client exe append tcl Note commands don t know the syntax nha Append some tcl commands exe save filename Save the commands to a batch file Returns an error if you try to overwrite an existing batch file exe forcesave filename Will overwrite an existing batch file without warning 69 Chapter 17 TCL command language interface Ferdi Franceschini Common co
47. e start of the file initialise the arrays if they don t already exist Example 14 1 Batch file example This is an example of a dynamically configurable batch file 4 Set default values for the batch and scan parameters if info exists scan np 0 set scan np 5 if info exists scan mode set scan mode timer if info exists scan preset 0 set scan preset 1 0 if info exists batch repeatnum set batch repeatnum 3 clientput Starting batch of twotheta scans MyScan add twotheta 50 0 01 for set i 0 i Sbatch repeatnum incr i clientput twotheta scan i MyScan run scan np scan mode scan preset MyScan clear clientput Starting batch of omega scans MyScan add omega 50 0 01 for set i 0 i Sbatch repeatnum incr i clientput omega scan Si MyScan run scan np scan mode scan preset Assuming that the file is called batch tcl the user could execute it as follows set scan np 100 exe batch tcl Warning about the run command The run command does not wait for a move to complete before it returns this means that the batch manager will execute any following commands straight away If you want move an axis and then perform some action after the move is completed you should use the drive command instead of run The following batch file will print the message after the move is complete 61 Batching Tasks drive omega 5 client
48. eader has a list of open network connections and checks each of them for pending requests What happens when data is pending on an open network port depends on the type of port If it is the servers main connection port the network reader will try to accept and verify a new client connection and create the associated data structures If the port belongs to an open client connection the network reader will read the command pending and put it onto a command stack existing for each client connection When it is time for a client task to execute it will fetch a command from its very own command stack and execute it This is how the SICS server deals with client requests The scheme described above relies on the fact that most SICS command need only very little time to execute A command needing time extensive calculations may effectively block the server Implementations of such commands have to take care that control passes back to the task switching loop at regular intervals in order to prevent the server from blocking Another problem in a server handling multiple client requests is how to maintain the proper execution context for each client This includes the clients I O context socket the authorisation of the client and possible error conditions pending for a client connection SICS does this via a connection object a special data structure holding all the above information plus a set of functions operating on this data structure This connection ob
49. ed Scans This section has only a summary of the most used commands which allows you to do a one variable scan Note The data acquired at each scan point is saved before going to the next point bmonscan run NP mode preset bmonscan clear bmonscan add variable start increment bmonscan getvarpar i bmonscan setchannel n Executes a scan NP is the number of scan points mode is the counter mode either timer or monitor preset is the preset value for the counter Scan data is written to an output file tree interface commands scan bmonscan NP tree interface commands scan bmonscan mode tree interface commands scan bmonscan preset Clears the list of scan variables Must be called before each scan that has different parameters Adds the variable specified by the argument variable to the list of variables scanned in the next scan The arguments start and increment define the starting point and the step width for the scan on this variable tree interface commands scan bmonscan scan variable tree interface commands scan bmonscan scan start tree interface commands scan bmonscan scan increment Prints the name start and step of the scan variable number i tree interface commands scan bmonscan scan variable Sets the beam monitor to collect data from where n is an integer ID for the beam monitor to use setchannel uses zero based counting so 0 is bm etc tree interface commands scan bmonscan channel
50. em evaluates the result as a Tcl expression and returns the value The operators permitted in Tcl expressions are a subset of the operators permitted in C expressions and they have the same meaning and precedence as the corresponding C operators Expressions almost always yield numeric results integer or floating point values For example the expression expr 8 2 6 70 TCL command language interface evaluates to 14 2 For some examples of simple expressions suppose the variable a 3 and 6 Then the commands shown below will produce the value after the gt set a 3 set b 6 expr 3 1 Sa gt 6 1 expr 2 Sa b gt 56 expr splitreply omega 2 0 gt omega axis position 2 Note the use of square brackets for command substitution Math functions Tcl supports the following mathematical functions in expressions acos cos hypot sinh asin cosh log sqrt atan exp log10 tan atan2 floor pow tanh ceil fmod sin Note you must use the expr command to invoke these functions eg expr cos 0 set pi expr acos 1 expr sin pi Each of these functions invokes the math library function of the same name see the manual entries for the library functions for details on what they do Tcl also implements the following functions for conversion between integers and floating point numbers and the generation of random numbers abs arg double arg int arg rand arg
51. en everything is alright again This works only if the scan has been started with run not with silent Peak Integration uses a window in order to determine if it is still in the peak or in background This command allows to request the size of this window without argument or set it with newval User Definable Scan Functions The last commands in the last section allow overloading functions that implement various operations during the scan with user defined functions This section is the reference for user defined functions The following operations during a scan can be configured count MyScan userobjectname point mode preset collect MyScan userobjectname point drive MyScan userobjectname point finish MyScan userobjectname prepare MyScan userobjectname userdata writeheader MyScan userobjectname writepoint MyScan userobjectname point Called at each scan point to perform the counting operation Called for each scan point This function stores the scan data into the scan data structure drive to the next scan point Called after the scan finishes and may be used to dump a data file or perform other clean up operations after a scan Does operations before a scan starts This is the name of a user defined object which may be used to store user data for the scan Write the header of the data file Called for each scan point Prints information about the scan point to the data file and to the user MyScan is t
52. er rre IR ERE 79 20 Histogram Configuration under construction 81 Histogram Configuration te in RR Res 81 OAT TABLE tee eerte Rss Re 81 Histogram eie tre Perte omg fer 81 21 Motor Troubleshooting HH III eI eene 82 A Troubleshooting EUR Dean 82 Starting the troubleshooter 82 An example showing fail res EE PROSE SEEE ss LPEE 82 Motor Controller Communications Failure Example 2 2 83 Missing motor controller subroutine example 83 Motor controller thread not running example sess 84 Finalstatus display esse rer EIER 84 Using sicsclient for troubleshoot 84 vi List of Figures 9 1 Schematic Representation of the SICS server structure Vil List of Examples 13 1 runscan example i re b ae ep ie ie He ve ade de EO ae 58 13 2 peers iR ER N e be e 58 13 3 bmonscan example iecore mh east d Hep 60 14 1 Batch tile examples leu Imre eei spe sagen 61 AIDS ner re Ber nehmen 72 17 2 M 72 17 3 while eee rrt eR REP PU
53. ersons and the instruments DO use the STAR principle STOP THINK ACT REVIEW Familiarise yourself the location of the Emergency Stop buttons located near the cabin exit or in several places within the instrument enclosure Familiarise yourself with the instrument and its safe operation DO NOT do anything with SICS that may risk damage to persons or the instrument DO NOT rely on these commands to stop motors or close shutters If in any doubt use the Emergency Stop button The commands in this chapter may fail for a variety of reasons SICS has crashed Your network connection to the SICS is blocked due to network congestion or failure The motor controller is no longer accepting connections or has a rogue process running What is SICS Neutron scattering experiments require control of motors for instrument configuration control of histogram memory for counting neutrons and control of sample environment SICS is a program that accepts human readable commands and converts these to commands that devices understand For simplicity much of the control for an experiment is done in a sequence synchronously requiring that an operation completes successfully before the next is commenced SICS can also be used asynchronously but more care has to be exercised by the operator to ensure the desire result Instrument control is based on a client server architecture each instrument has a dedicated server called SICS which receives co
54. erver config motors motor configuration tcl Setup addresses of Galil DMC2280 controllers set dmc2280_controllerl host mc1 animal set dmc2280 controllerl port pmcl Sanimal MakeAsyncQueue mcl DMC2280 Sdmc2280_controllerl host dmc2280 controllerl port Measured absolute encoder reading at home position set mphi Home 7781389 Monochromator phi Tilt 1 upper Motor mphi motor driver type params asyncqueue mc1 absEnc 1 absEncHome mphi axis AN cntsPerX 8192 hardlowerlim 2N hardupperlim 2 maxSpeed 1 maxAccel 1 maxDecel 1 stepsPerX 25000 units degrees setHomeandRange motor mphi home 0 lowrange 2 uprange 2 mphi speed 1 phi movecount move count phi precision 0 05 phi part crystal phi long name phi m m m m 77 Motor Configuration Configuration checklist Always use a positive number for the motor steps conversion multiplier If the encoder counts decrease when the motor steps increase then the encoder counts conversion multiplier must be negative For each axis with an absolute encoder How many motor steps there per degree mm 2 How many encoder counts are there per degree or mm 3 Move the motor a positive number of steps If the encoder counts has increased then set the stepsPerX positive otherwise negative 4 If encoder counts decrease when motor steps increase then set the sign of cntsPerX to the opposite s
55. es the file is an hdf5 binary file e g QKK0001234 nx hdf File Format NeXus Files are saved using the ANSTO interpretation of the NeXus standard SICS support both the xml and hdf5 form For performance of reading and writing by default we write hdf5 binary SICS can also be configured to write xml This is set in nxscripts common 1l tcl Set the file format element of the state array to xml File Content This section will give only a very brief overview of NeXus Further reading can be found at the NeXus webite www nexusformat org NeXus is a hierachical data format data is saved in groups and these groups live under entries It a similar structure to directories on a file system We have made a policy decision at the Bragg Institute to have only one entry per file This entry may contain a variable parameter or scan where e g temperature is varied If you use the runscan command histogram data is taken at discrete 18 File commands temperatures Temperature will be a vector in the file and the histogram data may be a data cube of 2 dimensional x y or 3 dimensional x y t histogram arrays There are 4 groups in NeXus User Sample Instrument and Data SICS will write the data it acquires to one of these groups The content that is saved and where in the file it is saved to is controlled by configuration files usr local sics server config nexus contains dic dictionary files These files tell SICS how to m
56. face Therefore care must taken to ensure synchronisation between the SICS histogram memory object and the histogram memory server SICS has seven histogram memory objects as follows hmm hmm xy hmm xt hmm yt hmm x hmm y hmm t 55 Histogram Control which you can use to fetch xyt xy xt yt x y and t data For simplicity we will use hm to refer to any of the 7 histogram memory objects Make sure you use the one appropriate to your measurement hmget 1 gets the current histogram memory data ie live data hm zipget 1 gets the current histogram memory data in binary zip form hm configure rank gets the rank of the current histogram memory hm configure dimn gets the current histogram memory data in binary zip form 56 Chapter 13 Simple Scans Ferdi Franceschini runscan command You can run a histogram memory scan with the runscan command With this command you can acquire data with the histogram memory server while scanning against a drivable device eg motors temperature controllers By default this saves time resolved ie HISTOGRAM_XYT data at each scan point Multi dimensional scans where you would like to scan say temperature and a motor have to be done in a batch file or by using a tcl for loop which may contain a runscan See Chapter5 Batch Manager Note The data acquired at each scan point is saved before going to the next point runscan scanvar start stop numpoints mode preset
57. fic user manuals and gives an overview of the commands available within SICS Please note that many instruments have special commands realized as scripts in the SICS built in scripting language Only the most common of such commands are listed here System Commands and Concepts Authorisation A client server system is potentially open to unauthorised hackers who might mess up the instrument and your valuable measurements A known problem in instrument control is that less knowledgeable user accidentally change instrument parameters which ought to be left fixed In order to solve these two problems SICS supports authorisation on a very fine level As a user you have to specify a username and password in order to able to access SICS Some clients already do this for you automatically SICS support four levels of access to an instrument Roles Spy may look at everything request any value but may not actually change anything No damage potential here User is privileged to perform a certain amount of operations necessary to run the instrument Manager has the permission to mess with almost everything A very dangerous person Internal is not accessible to the outside world and is used to circumvent protection for internal uses However some parameters are considered to be so critical that they cannot be changed during the runtime of the SICS server not even by Managers All this is stated here in order to explain the common error message You a
58. he controller s temperature lower limit When the temperature is lt val SICS will veto the histogram memory and counters until the temperature rises above val Units Celsius Get the controller s temperature sensor value 30 Julabo Temperature Control sample tcl heating power percent val sample tcl operate val sample tc1 status sample tcl remote val sample tc1 1h45_lasterror sample tcl tolerance val sample tcl apply tolerance val Units percent Get the controller s current heating power Privilege User Get Set the operate state Allowed va1 O Controller doesn t control temperature Will still report parameters 1 Controller provides control Get the controller s operate state Allowed va1 Busy Equivalent to t c1 operate 1 Idle Equivalent to tc1 operate 0 Privilege User Get Set remote control enable disable Allowed va1 True tcl remote control enabled False remote control disabled Get the last error recorded on the controller Note that this error condition is not cleared if the error no longer exists This value is only overwritten by another error state Example of an error state 04 LOW TEMPERATURE WARNING Privilege User Units Celsius Get Set tolerance overtemp warnlimit and subtemp warnlimit will be set when you use the run or drive tcl templ Control is dependent on the overtemp warnlimit and subtemp warnlimit values not on to
59. he name of the scan object invoking the function This can be used for querying the scan object userobject name is the name of a entity as specified as userdata in the configuration point is the number of the current scan point 67 Ferdi Franceschini Commands Chapter 16 Batch Manager The batch buffer manager handles the execution of batch files It can execute batch files directly Additionally batch files can be added into a queue for later processing The batch buffer manager supports the following commands described below The command for controlling the batch manager is called exe exe buffername exe batchpath newpath exe syspath newpath exe info exe info stack exe info range name exe info text name exe enqueue buffername exe clear exe queue exe run exe print buffername exe interest directly load the buffer stored in the file buffername and execute it The file is searched in the batch buffer search path Without an argument this command lists the directories which are searched for batch files newpath sets a new search path It is possible to specify multiple directories by separating them with colons Without an argument this command lists the system directories which are searched for batch files newpath sets a new system search path It is possible to specify multiple directories by separating them with colons prints the name of the currently executing batch buffer prints th
60. ical units per second ie mm s deg s Privilege User Get Set the physical units Preferred val mm degrees mot list shows the values of the parameters listed below in the order listed below Position TargetPosition hardlowerlim hardupperlim softlowerlim softupperlim softzero fixed interruptmode Reports the current positon Shows target position Hardware lower limit for motor set in SICS configuration file Hardware upper limit for motor set in SICS configuration file Lower software limit This is automatically adjusted when you set the softzero or use the setpos command Upper software limit This is automatically adjusted when you set the softzero or use the setpos command The zero position 1 0 prevents movement 1 0 allows movement NOTE The instrument manager can set the accesscode to prevent users from moving a motor Controls what effect a motor failure has on operations Values 0 Continue A motor failure will not affect other operations 1 AbortOperation Stop current hardware operation but no scans or batchfiles 46 Motor Controls amp Drive precision accesscode sign failafter maxretry ignorefault movecount home speed maxSpeed accel maxAccel decel 2 AbortScan Stop current scan or operation but continue processing of batch files with next command 3 AbortBatch Stop all processing even batch files Controls precision of movements
61. ient which has the token may control the instrument Any other client may look at things in the SICS server but does not have permission to change anything Passing the control token requires that the client which has the token releases the token so that another client may grab it There exists a password protected back door for SICS managers which allows to force the release of a control token Most experiments do not happen at ambient room conditions but require some special environment for the sample Mostly this is temperature but it can also be magnetic of electric fields etc Most of such devices can regulate themselves but the data acquisition program needs to monitor such devices Within SICS this is done via a special system object the environment monitor A environment device for example a temperature controller registers it s presence with this object Then a special system task will control this device when it is executing check for possible out of range errors and initiates the proper error handling if such a problem is encountered The SICS Interpreter When a task belonging to a client connection executes a command it will pass the command along with the connection object to the SICS interpreter The SICS interpreter will then analyze the command and forward it to the appropriate SICS object in the object database for further action The SICS interpreter is very much modeled after the Tcl interpreter as devised by John Ousterhout Fo
62. ign of stepsPerX otherwise the sign should be the same 5 What is the encoder reading at the home position For each axis without an absolute encoder 1 How many motor steps are there per degree or mm 2 Move the motor a positive number of steps If the axis moved in the positive direction according to the coordinate conventions then set the stepsPerX positive otherwise negative 3 Set axis home position a Make sure the axis HOME routine has been run The axis should be at the lower limit and the motor defined position should be zero ie TDx returns zero b Drive the axis to the home position and set motorHome to TDx For all axes 1 Check that maxSpeed maxAccel and maxDecel are sane NOTE The initial speed accel and decel will be set to the maximum values 2 If an axis should not be powered down after each move then set noPowerSave 1 Slits The zero position for the slits is defined when the slits are closed but not overlapping Since the slit motors don t have absolute encoders we need to define a zero reference for counting motor steps we will call this reference the motorHome The motorHome is set when the slits are fully open there is a home subroutine called HOME on the DMC2280 controller which can be called to set this position for you The homing code on the controller fully opens the slits and then sets the position as zero 1 Run HOME command on controller ie XQ HOME 1Useu 2 Check that the command has comp
63. is sent to the client But a graphical user interface client might want to restrict message to only those delivering requested values and error messages and suppressing anything else In order to achieve this this command is provided Possible values Values for val are Internal Command HWError InError Status Error Value This list is hierarchical For example specifying InError for val lets the client receive all messages tagged InError Status Error and Value but not HWError Command and Internal messages config Rights Username Each connection between a client and the SICS server has user Password rights assocociated with it These user rights can be configured at runtime with the command config Rights Username Password If a matching entry can be found in the servers password database new rights will be set config File name Scientists are not content with having output on the screen In order to check results a log of all output may be required The command config File name makes all output to the client to be written to the file specified by name as well The file must be a file accessible to the server i e reside on the same machine 14 Control interrupt and system commands as the server Up to 10 logfiles can be specified Note that a directly connected line printer is only a special filename in unix config close num closes the log file denoted by num again config list lists the current
64. iver into the system Internally independent from the actual hardware all hardware object of the same type for example motors look the same and can be treated the same by higher level objects No need to rewrite a scan command because a motor changed In order to live happily within the SICS system SICS object have to adhere to a system of protocols There are protocols for Input Output to the client Error handling Interaction with the interpreter For identification of the object to the system at run time Forinteracting with hardware see device executor above 38 SICS Overview For checking the authorisation of the client who wants to execute the command SICS objects have the ability to notify clients and other objects of internal state changes For example when a motor is driven the motor object can be configured to tell SICS clients or other SICS objects about his new position SICS uses NeXus the upcoming standard for data exchange for neutron and xray scattering as its raw data format SICS Working Examples In order to get a better feeling for the internal working of SICS the course of a few different requests through the SICS system is traced in this section The examples traced will be A request for a new client connection A simple command A command to drive a motor in blocking mode A command to drive a motor which got interrupted by the user A command to drive a motor in no
65. ject is passed along with many calls throughout the whole system Multiple clients issuing commands to the SICS server may mean that multiple clients might try to move motors or access other hardware in conflicting ways As there is only one set of instrument hardware this needs to be prevented This is achieved by a convention No SICS object drives hardware directly but registers it s request with a special object the device executor This device executor starts the requested operation and reserves the hardware for the length of the operation During the execution of such an hardware request all other clients requests to drive the hardware will return an error The device executor is also responsible for monitoring the progress of an hardware operation It does so by adding a special task into the system which checks the status of the operation each time this tasks executes When the hardware operation is finished this device executor task will end A special system facility allows a client task to wait for the device executor task to end while the rest of the task queue is still executing In this way time intensive hardware operations can be performed by drive count or scan commands without blocking the whole system for other clients 37 SICS Overview The SICS server can be configured to support another security feature the token system In this scheme a client can grab control of the instrument With the control token grabbed only the cl
66. le Locations File are written to usr local sics data oftheicsl australian fauna computer This path is configured in server config tcl by setting the SicsDataPath variable Posix symbolic links are used to link the directory to the appropriate directory on filer nbi ansto gov au under the experiments mount point You can mount this directory on the MS Windows machine davl australian fauna File Commands Single Files newfile command newfile 1 type scratch creates a new file of type 1 type ready to write to The command does write any information to disk To save data use the save command You can only hold a reference to one file If you need to reference a number of files then use newfile collection Only use the optional scratch if you want to write data to a scratch file The file will be overwritten with the next invocation of this option file type may have the following values BEAM MONITOR Saves data from the configured beam monitors histogram memory data is not saved 19 File commands HISTOGRAM_T Saves histogram total time data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_X Saves histogram x data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XT Saves histogram x t data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_Y Saves histogram y data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_YT Saves histogram y t data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XY Saves histogram x y data and beam monitor data HISTOGRAM_XYT S
67. lerance Setting overtemp warnlimit or subtemp warnlimit will override tolerance Privilege User Get Set apply tolerance Don t know what this does Allowed va1 0 I 31 Julabo Temperature Control sample tc1 lowerlimit va sample tcl upperlimit val sample tc1 emon monmode sample tc1 emon isintol sample tc1 emon errhandler Privilege Manager Get Set the lower limit for setpoint If you try to set setpoint below this value will return ERROR setpoint violates limits Privilege Manager Get Set the lower limit for setpoint If you try to set setpoint above this value will return ERROR setpoint violates limits Get emon s monitor mode Don t know what this does Returned values monitor 202 Get if the value is within tolerance but which tolerance hitemp lotemp or tolerance Returned values 0 out of tolerance 1 in tolerance Get if the value is within tolerance but which tolerance hitemp lotemp or tolerance Returned values pause 22 22 32 Part Ill COMMANDS IN DETAIL Table of Contents SO Ca AE E 35 Introduction 5 s Soca Sec an ra oe te E E E 35 SICS Overall Design udo seele ee e RR MES 35 SICS Clients oerte ih RUD E eie EDS 35 The SICS Server nee RR 35 The SICS Server Kernel re Te I Rete xy Denn 37 The SICS Interpreter erre ree er eerte Pera ERIS
68. leted with MG _XQ1 a value of 1 means the command has finished otherwise it displays the current line number 3 After the HOME command has completed check that the defined motor positions has been set to zero by executing TDEFGH 4 run gap to zero set lowerlims to ve val if there is a gap then run gap to ve witdh 5 Read position for each slit and set it as the motorHome parameter in the sics configuration file Testing 1 Check communications to all four controllers 2 Try to run motor past limits Does SICS reject the command 3 Run motors to limits Does it move in the right direction Does it stop where expected 4 Run motor to home position Does it stop where expected 78 Motor Configuration Set limits Set home Set softzero Set speed 10 Set acceleration 11 Set deceleration absEnc integer absEncHome integer axis val entsPerX integer hardlowerlim integer hardupperlim integer maxAccel val maxDecel val maxSpeed val motorHome integer motOffDelay integer noPowerSave val stepsPerX val units val Set sign direction of motion Configuration reference Set to 1 if the axis has an absolute encoder The calibrated home position in encoder counts Required if absEnc 1 The DMC2280 motor controller can control up to eight axes Allowed vai one of ABCDEFGH Number of absolute encoder counts per unit of movement along about the axis of motion Hardware lower
69. limit for motor Hardware upper limit for motor Maximum allowed acceleration in units per second Maximum allowed deceleration in units per second Speed in units per second The calibrated home position in motor steps You only need to set this if the axis does not have an absolute encoder Number of msec to wait before switching off a motor after a move Default 0 By default a motor will switch off after a move If you set this to 1 the motor will stay on Allowed val one of 0 default 1 Number of motor steps per unit of movement along about the axis of motion The units of motion for the axis eg degrees for phi or two theta mm for translation Allowed va one of degrees 79 Motor Configuration mm 80 Chapter 20 Histogram Configuration under construction Ferdi Franceschini Histogram Configuration Histograms are the most complex objects in SICS and when doing configuration you must have The following uploads the text in the hmconfigscript dictionary variable as well as the other dictionary variables to the histogram server hmm configure init 1 hmm init The following just uploads the values in the dictionary variables to the histogram server hmm configure init 0 hmm init The following simply updates the values of the dictionary variables listed in the http localhost 8080 admin textstatus egi page hmm configure statuscheck true hmm stop hmm configure statuscheck false
70. ling TCP IP the user interface and the functional aspect are well separated This allows for easy exchange of user interfaces by writing new clients SICS Clients SICS Clients implement the SICS user interface The Gumtree client is implemented in Java for platform independence This is a real concern where MS Windows Macintosh and Unix users have to be satisfied As many instrument scientists still prefer the command line for interacting with instruments the most used client is a visual command line client Status displays are another kind of specialized client programs The SICS Server The SICS server is the core component of the SICS system The SICS server is responsible for doing all the work in instrument control Additionally the server has to answer the requests of possibly multiple clients The SICS server can be subdivided into three subsystems 35 SICS Overview The kernel The SICS server kernel takes care of client multitasking and the preservation of the proper I O and error context for each client command executing SICS Object Database SICS objects are software modules which represent all aspects of an instrument hardware devices commands measurement strategies and data storage This database of objects is initialized at server startup time from an initialization script The Interpreter The interpreter allows to issue commands to the objects in the objects database Figure 9 1 Schematic Representation of the
71. ly active values for outcode and user rights config myname returns the name of the connection config myrights prints the rights associated with your connection config listen val switches listening to the commandlog on or off for this conenction If this on all output to the commandlog i e all interesting things happening in SICS is printed to your connection as well val 0 is off val 1ison 15 Chapter 3 Interrupting SICS Ferdi Franceschini Safety SICS is NOT a safety system It will allow you to do tasks that may damage persons and the instruments DO use the STAR principle STOP THINK ACT REVIEW Familiarise yourself the location of the Emergency Stop buttons located near the cabin exit or in several places within the instrument enclosure Familiarise yourself with the instrument and its safe operation DO NOT do anything with SICS that may risk damage to persons or the instrument DO NOT rely on these commands to stop motors or close shutters If in any doubt use the Emergency Stop button The commands in this chapter may fail for a variety of reasons SICS has crashed Your network connection to the SICS is blocked due to network congestion or failure The motor controller is no longer accepting connections or has a rogue process running stopexe command The stopexe command will stop drivable objects It will NOT stop scans or batch files For that you ll have to use an interrupt as found in
72. mand nece gehe nn 64 User D finable Scan FUNCIONS sehen en she hp LPS 67 16 Bateh es pen Do sd 68 Commands ae 68 17 TCL command language interface 70 Common commands amp exclusions 70 Math functions oie ee uet 71 if execute scripts Conditionally 71 lor Tof 160p een are en eee 72 while execute script repeatedly as long as a condition is 72 IV CONFIGURATION AND TROUBLESHOOTING 91 73 18 Person l configur tion re Gio en Pee IP BR E Ebr re e ep ERR 75 Personalised configuration extraconfig tcl sese 75 Adding a procedure iss eI OW ERRORES 75 Adding uoi arcane eg C e 75 19 Motor Configuration ee 77 SICS User Manual for Small Angle Scattering Quokka Edition Configuration example 77 Configuration checklist Rs 78 For each axis with an absolute encoder 01 1 78 For each axis without an absolute encoder 78 Foral c c 78 Nice EE 78 Testing ccce ee ERR RIVE Mec epe e eee 78 Configuration reference sen e
73. mmand stack pops the command pending and forwards it together with a pointer to itself to the SICS interpreter The SICS interpreter inspects the first word of the command Using this key the interpreter finds the drive command wrapper function and passes control to that function The drive command wrapper function will check further arguments checks the clients authorisation if appropriate for the action requested Depending on the checks the wrapper function will create an error message or do its work Assuming everything is OK the motor is located in the system The drive command wrapper function asks the device executor to run the motor The device executor verifies that nobody else is driving then starts the motor and grabs hardware control The device executor also starts a task monitoring the activity of the motor The drive command wrapper function now enters a wait state This means the task switcher will execute other tasks except the connection task requesting the wait state The device executor task will keep on monitoring the progress of the driving of the motor when it is its turn to execute The network reader finds a user interrupt pending The interrupt will be forwarded to all tasks in the system In due time the device executor task will try to check on the progress of the motor It will recognize the interrupt If appropriate the motor will get a halt command The task will then die The clients gr
74. mmands amp exclusions From the PSI SANS documentation by Dr Joachim Kohlbrecher and Dr Mark K nnecke with slight modifications The macro language implemented in the SICS server is John Ousterhout Tool Command Language TCL Tcl has control constructs variables of its own loop constructs associative arrays and procedures Tcl is well documented by several books online tutorials and manuals All SICS commands are available in the macro language Some potentially harmful Tcl commands have been deleted from the standard Tcl interpreter These are exec source puts vwait exit gets socket Below only a small subset of the most important Tcl commands like assigning variables evaluating expressions control and loop constructs are described For complete description of Tcl commands have a look on the manual pages or on one of the many books about Tcl Tk set varName value set Set get scalar variables or array elements Arrays in Tel are arrName index value actually associative arrays this means that their indices are not restricted to integers The following examples demonstrate setting a scalar variable and a couple of array elements Note the third array example which shows that the same array can have mixed indices the number 1 and as well as mixed data types the number 10 and in the same array set a 3 set arr 1 10 set arr one ten expr arg arg arg Concatenates arg s adding separator spaces between th
75. mmands from client applications and then executes them by issuing control sequences to the hardware SICS was originally developed at PSI to control the SINQ spallation source instruments Drivers and site specific extensions have been developed at ANSTO to control and provide status information for motors sample environment and histogrammed neutron event data from the detectors Driving a device synchronously is done using the drive command The device could be a motor or sample environment e g temperature controller Driving a devices asychronously is done using the run command Stopping the device is done using the stopexe command Counting of histogrammed neutron events is done using the histmem command SICS The Instrument Control Server Running scans that are a linear sequence of driving counting and file saving tasks is done using the runscan command Creating a new file is done using the newfile command and saving data to the file is done using the save command Detail for using each of these commands is provided in the next chapter SICS provides many other functions but we won t cloud the issue at this stage Should I read further In general the Bragg Institute instrument scientists manage SICS for the instrument users SICS should be running when you come to the instrument and you should only need to run the Gumtree program You should read further if you think that SICS is not running and you want to start it yo
76. mmonly Used SICS Commands sess 8 SICS System Commands 10 Deprecated commands itor RR me 11 Logzimg your activity a een es irn Ve cei pude bes ve gewoon gs 12 LEogBook command irr ERRARE ER ER PRSE ERES 12 The Comm ndlog nehme EIU Ine ioe 12 GetLog Command un rre tree ere reis 13 Connection Configuration Commands 14 Config command ss ree benennen Bis 14 3 Interrupting SICS sectii nen Dp eig 16 Safety MEE 16 stopexe command sense lern 16 Interrupting SICS shee does SESER Ea EE 16 4 Tile commands 221 Ende diet hee VEI ee tear EU 18 Introduction ar teet tape IRB 18 Filenames PPM EE 18 File Formats NeXuS ere E PR EXTR REESE RE PER been 18 File Content uere ERE RE NIRE RENE 18 File Locations EE 19 File Commands Single Files 19 newe command gu REPREHENDERE 19 save command u 20 Other single file commands des cn er pre rre 20 File Collection Commands 20 newfile collection command 008 20 save collection command hehe rese eereeee 21 IL QUOKKA SPECIFIC COMMANDS tnit as ter Eee Ee EUG 22 5 Ordela Detector Voltage Control 9
77. ms Enhanced portability across instrument hardware This means that it should be easy to add other types of motors counters or other hardware to the system Support authorization on the command and parameter modification level This means that certain instrument settings can be protected against random changes by less knowledgeable users Good maintainability and extendability Becapable to accommodate graphical user interfaces One code base for all instruments Powerful macro language A suitable new system was implemented using an object oriented design which matches the above criteria SICS Overall Design In order to achieve the design goals stated above it was decided to divide the system into a client server system This means that there are at least two programs necessary to run an instrument a client program and a server program The server program the SICS server does all the work and implements the actual instrument control The SICS server usually runs on the ics instrument control server computer The client program may run on any computer on the world and implements the user interface to the instrument Any numbers of clients can communicate with one SICS server The SICS server and the clients communicate via a simple ASCII command protocol through TCP IP sockets With this design good remote control through the network is easily achieved As clients can be implemented in any language or system capable of hand
78. n unlimited amp block mode count or time modes you must send an INT1712 1 to abort the acquistion or hit the Interrupt button in Gumtree histmem veto enable disable will stop the histogram memory from counting and disable not clear memory It will have no effect on configuration Use this command if you need to pause a measurement without clearing the memory enable will resume counting without clearing the memory 53 Histogram Control histmem pause histmem mode mode histmem preset val histmem freq val histmem fsrce frame_source if MULTIPLE_DATASETS ENABLE mode default but check use pause instead of stop for a fast start Use this if you don t have to change the histogram memory configuration Clears histograms and counters but doesn t reinitialisation the histogram server if MULTIPLE_DATASETS DISABLE mode use pause instead of veto Does not clear histograms and counters does not reinitialise the histogram server Data is accumulated Note that the MULTIPLE_DATASETS mode is set in the SICS hmm configuration files and or on the histogram memory server SICS does not report this value To view this value you must look at the config tab on the histogram server web client Allowed mode one of MONITOR_n where n 1 2 3 If you set the mode to MONITOR 1 then the server will stop when MONITOR 1 reaches the preset counts time will stop at the preset time after start unlimited will st
79. n blocking mode For the whole discussion it is assumed that the main loop is running executing cyclically each single task registered in the server Task switching is done by a special system component the task switcher The Request for a new Client Connection The network reader recognizes pending data on its main server port The network reader accepts the connection and tries to read an username password pair f such an username password pair comes within a suitable time interval it is checked for validity On failure the connection is closed again Ifa valid connection has been found A new connection object is created a new task for this client connection is introduced into the system and the network reader registers a new client port to check for pending commands Control is passed back to the task switcher A Simple Command The network reader finds data pending at one of the client ports The network reader reads the command splits it into single lines and put those on top of the client connections command stack The network reader passes control to the task switcher n due time the client connection task executes inspects its command stack pops the command pending and forwards it together with a pointer to itself to the SICS interpreter The SICS interpreter inspects the first word of the command Using this key the interpreter finds the objects wrapper function and passes control to that function
80. n log dhv1 lock This locks the device from being set by users Users can use up down and off commands to set voltages dhv1 unlock Managers may unlock the device 25 Chapter 6 Beamstops Ferdi Franceschini Commands Raising and lowering of beamstops is implemented via action objects you control them via the action and waitaction commands action bs1 position bsi status waitaction bs1 Troubleshooting Will send beamstop bs1 either up or down Allowed position up down this will report one of the following bsl up bsl down bsl inbetween Note Currently there is no automatic notification when a move is complete If you want to sequence some commands in a batch file you can use the waitaction command e g If you put these lines in a batch file the histogram memory won t start counting until the beamstop is up waitaction bsl up histmem start Beamstop position can be checked visually by eyes from the vessel port with touch To do this you should drive the detector to position 9300mm and view from the middle vessel port 26 Nick Hauser Commands Chapter 7 Astrium Velocity Selector The Astrium velocity selector is a SICS script context object There are 2 parts the script context object which has the name instrument velocity selector and the 2 driveable interfaces to the object which have the names nvs speed and nvs lambda Hence you can drive and run nvs speed and nvs l
81. ne with bmonscan which is a SICS scan object For more detail on bmonscan see the chapter Simple Scans Instruments often have more than one beam monitor SICS has a multicounter interface named bm which is a list of all the beam monitors on the instrument usually 2 or 3 beam monitors with names bm1 bm2 bm3 You must select which beam monitor will control your experiment When you run the experiment using bm all the beam monitors on the instrument will count and with most instrument configurations the values will be saved to the data file you should check this is the case if you need these values Selecting a beam monitor for bm bmonscan setchannel n Sets the active beam monitor n 0isbml n 1 15 bm etc This is the preferred command when doing a bmonscan bm setchannel n Sets the active beam monitor 015 bml n 1 15 bm etc This is the alternate command when using bmonscan histmem mode MONITOR n Sets the active beam monitor n l is bml n 2 is bm etc Use this command when using histmem runscan also has an argument to select the beam monitor Do not use these interchangably e g do not use bm setchannel n to set histmem mode MONITOR n It will not work Since there are four commands for selecting beam monitor you have to be careful to use the right one Be explicit with your selection of beam monitor when using these commands Don t assume If you are using histmem to control the detector set the beam monit
82. on Nick Hauser Personalised configuration extraconfig tcl You can add your own variables and functions to sics Start by opening usr local sics extraconfig tcl in a text editor this is on the ics computer The purpose of the extraconfig tcl file is to allow instrument scientists and users to create personal configurations that can be stored in the user s home directory and reused later if required It also allows users to experiment with additional features that once proven can be migrated to an appropriate configuration file Edit the file using the patterns provided below For the changes to take effect you ll need to save the file and stop and restart sics Adding a procedure To add a procedure to SICS Say you want to add the procedure movdet to sics and set by a user proc movedet pos drive 1 600 drive det Spos drive dhvl 2350 publish movedet user This function will drive the high voltage controller to 600 volts move the motor det to position pos and drive the high voltage controller to 2350 volts publish is a SICS manager command which makes a Tcl command or procedure visible in the SICS interpreter publish provides a special wrapper for a Tcl command which first checks the user rights of the client connection which wants to execute the Tcl command If the user rights are appropriate the command is invoked in the Tcl interpreter Adding a variable To add a variable use the mkVar procedure mk
83. op when it receives a histmem stop or INT1712 1 count will stop when the total histogram counts reaches preset counts frame will stop when the preset number of TOF time of flight frames e g when there s no TOF there is an internal frame frequency which by default is 50Hz So if you have a preset of 1000 frames you will get a 20 second acquisition period will stop when it reaches preset number of periods A histogram period contains some number of frames averaged together this is controlled by the BAT base address table and its attributes The mapping can be fairly complex e g time averaged time history and stroboscopic acquisition so there s not always a simple relationship between number of periods acquired and the DAQ time but it can be worked out from the BAT setup count roi Not supported Will stop when the total histogram counts reaches preset counts in a region of interest defined in the histogram server configuration the acquisition will terminate after the val period This is seconds if the mode is time and counts if the mode is count or MONITOR n val is the frame frequency Hz for time resolved data If you set a frequency of zero then this will default to 50Hz Allow values of rame source are 54 Histogram Control EXTERNAL default INTERNAL You can set this to INTERNAL if you don t have an external frame signal histmem status Warning This doesn t re
84. or using histmem mode If you are using bmonscan set the beam monitor using bm setchannel or bmonscan setchannel If you are using runscan set the beam monitor with the mode setting in the runscan arguments 49 Counters Setting modes for the beam monitors The mode for a beam monitor either Timer or Monitor can be set using bm mode where bm can be bm bm1 bm2 etc The mode of the mulitcounter bm may be different from the mode of the selected beam monitor e g bm1 mode Even if you select bm1 using bm setchannel 0 or bmonscan setchannel 0 changing the mode of bm1 e g bm1 mode monitor will not change bm mode bm mode is set by the most recent bmonscan run Active beam monitor commands bm The active beam monitor bm has the following commands These commands are get only bm_preset scalar value at which an acquisition will be stopped Used in conjunction with mode get only tree interface monitor preset bm_mode mode to stop acquisitions either Timer or Counter get only Return values Timer will stop acquisition preset seconds after the acquisition is started Monitor will stop acquisition preset counts after the acquisition is started tree interface monitor mode tree interface only gets the scalar value for the instantaneous time of the beam monitor selected to control the experiment get only Units seconds tree interface monitor time tree interface only gets the scalar value for the instantaneous count
85. port anything Started Stopped or Paused histmem loadconf this uploads configuration tables e g OAT for setting bins to the histogram memory OAT_TABLE with no arguments will print out SICS s copy of the OAT_TABLE TABLE set X will generate a table starting at bin boundary bbO with bb1 Y bbO bb1 T bbO a spacing of bbl bbO extrapolated to the maximum bbi bin boundary The numbers of channels are calculated automatically TABLE set X this version sets the number of channels explicitly bbi Y bbO bb1 T bbO bb1 NTC vall NXC val2 NYC val3 SICS cannot read the current OAT TABLE from the histogram server the only way to make sure that SICS is in sync with the histogram memory is to use the SICS OAT TABLE set command to change your table and then to upload it to the histogram server with the histmem loadconf command Histogram memory object In most cases the histmem command will be sufficient to configure and control an experiment This section describes a richer level of configuration and control using the SICS histogram memory object The histogram memory object in SICS is used to set the configuration of the histogram memory server described in detail in a later chapter and to get the current histogram memory server configuration and data Note that it is possible to for the histogram memory s configuration to be set independently from SICS e g through the histogram memory s web inter
86. put omega is has reached five degrees Commands The batch buffer manager handles the execution of batch files It can execute batch files directly Additionally batch files can be added into a queue for later processing The batch buffer manager supports the following commands described below The command for controlling the batch manager is called exe exe append tcl commands exe buffername exe batchpath newpath exe clear exe clearupload exe enqueue buffername exe forcesave filename exe info exe info stack exe info range name exe info text name exe interest Note don t know the syntax nha Append some tcl commands directly load the buffer stored in the file buffername and execute it The file is searched in the batch buffer search path Without an argument this command lists the directories which are searched for batch files newpath sets a new search path It is possible to specify multiple directories by separating them with colons Clears the queue of batch buffers For safety use in conjuction with exe clearupload Clears partially uploaded batch buffers Appends buffername to the queue of batch buffers to execute Will overwrite an existing batch file without warning prints the name of the currently executing batch buffer prints the stack of nested batch files i e batch files calling each other Without an argument prints the range of code currently being executed n
87. r Cygwin with X11 installed Otherwise you will have to run this on the instrument control computer locally Starting the troubleshooter First log on to the instrument control computer by entering the following in a terminal linux or cygwin ssh Y uname ic instname nbi ansto gov au Where uname is your ANSTO user id and instname is the name of your instrument eg echidna wombat Once you have logged in go to the sics server directory cd usr local sics server There should be a troubleshoot tel script and troubleshoot_setup tcl file in this directory check this by listing the directory contents with the Is command An example showing failures This example uses the following troubleshoot_setup tcl file for Echidna ECHIDNA setupset configFileName hrpd_configuration tcl These subroutines s Two simulated failures and one real failure are demonstrated in what follows I have simulated a missing subroutine error by adding a dummy subroutine name ABC to controller one in the setup file above A network failure is simulated by simply unplugging the ethernet cable from controller two There is a real failure on controller three a necessary thread was not running on that controller because a command failed in the auto start subroutine Start the troubleshooter with the following command common troubleshoot tcl You will see this dialog box which lets you specify the name of your instrument s configuration file 82
88. r each SICS object visible from the interpreter there is a wrapper function Using the first word of the command as a key the interpreter will locate the objects wrapper function If such a function is found it is passed the command parameters the interpreter object and the connection object for further processing An interface exists to add and remove commands to this interpreter very easily Thus the actual command list can be configured easily to match the instrument in question sometimes even at run time Given the closeness of the design of the SICS interpreter to the Tcl interpreter the reader may not be surprised to learn that the SICS server incorporates Tcl as its internal macro language The internal macro language may use Tcl commands as well as SICS commands SICS Objects As already said SICS objects implement the true functionality of SICS instrument control All hardware all commands and procedures all data handling strategies are implemented as SICS objects Hardware objects for instance motors deserve some special attention Such objects are divided into two objects in the SICS system A logical hardware object and a driver object The logical object is responsible for implementing all the nuts and bolts of the hardware device whereas the driver defines a set of primitive operations on the device The benefit of this scheme is twofold switching to new hardware for instance a new type of motor just requires to incorporate a new dr
89. re not authorised to do that and that or something along these lines General Structure SICS is a client server system The application the user sees is usually some form of client A client has two tasks the first is to collect user input and send it to the SICS server which then executes the Control interrupt and system commands command The clients second task is to listen to the server messages and display them in a readable format This approach has two advantages clients can reside on machines across the whole network thus enabling remote control from everywhere in the world The second advantage is that new clients such as graphical user interface clients can be written in any feasible language without changes to the server SICS Command Syntax SICS is an object oriented system This is reflected in the command syntax SICS objects can be devices such as motors single counters histogram memories or other hardware variables such as wavelength or Title and measurement procedures Communication with these objects happens by sending messages to the target object This is very simply done by typing something like object message parl par2 parn For example if we have a motor called 1 Al list will print a parameter listing for the motor A1 In this example no parameters were needed There exist a number of one word commands as well For compatibility reasons some commands have a form which resembles a function call such a
90. refix and a run number If you use savetype nosave then the data will be written to a scratch file called scratch nx hdf Example 13 1 runscan example runscan sphi 0 2 4 time 5 This will run a four point scan with the sphi motor starting at 0 and stopping at 2 The data will be acquired over five seconds at each point with the default datatype HISTOGRAM_XYT and saved in a file with a three letter instrument prefix and run number Example 13 2 runscan example runscan mom 69 000 75 2 MONITOR 23000 savetype nosave datatype HISTOGRAM Y force true This example sets all runscan parameters bmonscan command You can run a beam monitor scan with the bmonscan command With this command you can acquire data with a counter in the histogram memory server while scanning against a drivable device eg 58 Simple Scans motors The main detector is not required Generally this would be used to align an instrument e g alignment of a monochromator or sample crystal Additional information can be found in the chapters Counters User Defined Scans and Batch Manager bmonscan will create a data file of type BEAM_MONITOR Multi dimensional scans have to be done in a batch file or by using a tcl for loop which may contain a runscan See the chapter Batch Manager Unlike runscan bmonscan is a standard SICS scan object This means you can configure interrogate and control bmonscan using the commands in the chapter User Defin
91. riveable interface to the object which has the name tc1 driveable ie tee cee one Note this name can change in the configuration Hence you can drive and run tc1 driveable To get and set other parameters use hget or hset sample tc1 run driveable t emp1 drive driveable temp 1 hlist sample tc1 Runs the temperature controller tel to temp1 Is the same as run but it blocks the client that requested the drive from issuing commands until the task has finished Lists all the tc1 nodes Nodes can be get and set using hget and hset The temperature controller is usually put under the sample node in hipadaba which is where it will be found when using the Gumtree SICS This complies with the NeXus standard Parameters Use hget and hset on these parameters Parameter without val are read only and therefore cannot be set sample tcl setpoint 1 sample tcl overtemp warnlimit val sample tc1 subtemp_warnlimit val sample tc1 sensor value Privilege User Units Celsius Get Set the temperature setpoint If the setpoint is set the controller will change the temperature to this value subject to constraints including operate remote ctrl hitemp lotemp upperlimit lowerlimit Privilege User Units Celsius Get Set the controller s temperature upper limit When the temperature is gt val SICS will veto counters until the temperature fall below val Privilege User Units Celsius Get Set t
92. s drive al 26 54 This will drive motor al to 26 54 All commands are ASCII strings and usually in english SICS is in general CASE INSENSITIVE However this does not hold for parameters you have to specify On a unix system for instance file names are case sensitive and that had to be preserved Commands defined in the scripting language are lower case by convention Most SICS objects also hold the parameters required for their proper operation The general syntax for handling such parameters is objectname parametername prints the current value of the parameter objectname parametername newvalu sets the parameter value to newvalue if you are properly authorized SICS Variables Most of the parameters SICS uses are hidden in the objects to which they belong But some are separate objects of their own right and are accessible at top level For instance things like Title or wavelength They share a common syntax for changing and requesting their values This is very simple The command objectname will return the value the command objectname newvalue will change the variable But only if the authorisation codes match Commonly Used SICS Commands The most used commands in SICS are Control interrupt and system commands sicslist interface drivable prints a list of all drivable objects This is more than motors and includes virtual motors sample environment devices and wavelength run device value run device toa value
93. s of the beam monitor selected to control the experiment get only Units counts tree interface monitor data bm is available in the tree interface under the monitor node and attributes can be set and get using the hget and hset commands Specific beam monitor commands bm1 Each beam monitors are accessible as SICS objects and in the tree interface under the monitor node They can be addressed by name or using the hget commands when using the tree interface There are generally either 1 2 or 3 monitor per instrument and the commands are of the form 50 Counters bml where 1 can be 1 2 or3 For simplicity all the command descriptions below will use bm1 bmi counts bml event rate bmi time bmi status returns the instanteous value of the number of counts Units counts tree interface monitor bmil counts returns the instanteous value of the count rate Units counts per second tree interface monitor bml event rate return the instantaneous time on this beam monitor Each beam monitor can have a unique time value Units seconds tree interface monitor bmil time Return values RUNNING Beam monitor is enabled DISABLED Beam monitor is disabled tree interface monitor bml status Commands used on both active bm and specific bm1 beam monitors Use the commands on either bm or bm1 Please replace bm1 with the beam monitor you want to control A setting on bm will not change the set
94. s only the level specified Multiple calls are possible Possible values for OutCode are Internal internal errors such as memory errors etc Command all commands issued from any client to the server HWError all errors generated by instrument hardware The SICS server tries hard to fix HW errors in order to achieve stable operations and may not generate an error message if it was able to fix the problem This option may be very helpful when tracking dodgy devices InError All input errors found on any clients input 13 Control interrupt and system commands Error All error messages generated by all clients Status some commands send status messages to the client invoking the command in order to monitor the state of a scan Value Some commands return requested values to a user These messages have an output code of Value Connection Configuration Commands SICS has a command for changing the user rights of the current client server connection control the amount of output a client receives and to specify additional logfiles where output will be placed All this is accessed through the following commands Config command The config command configures various aspects of the current client server connection Basically three things can be manipulated The connections output class the user rights associated with it and output files config OutCode val sets the output code for the connection By default all output
95. t logging LogBook file filename sets the filename to which output will be printed Please note that this new filename will only be in effect after restarting logging LogBook on This command turns logging on All commands and all answers will be written to the file defined with the command described above Please note that this command will overwrite an existing file with the same name LogBook off This command closes the logfile and ends logging The Commandlog The Commandlog is a file where all communication with clients having user or manager privilege is logged This log allows to retrace each step of an experiment This log is normally configured in the startup file or can be configured by the instrument manager There exists a special command Commandlog which allows to control this log file Control interrupt and system commands Commandlog new filename starts a new commandlog writing to filename Any prior files will be closed The log file can be found in the directory specified by the ServerOption LogFileDir Usually this is the log directory Commandlog displays the status of the commandlog Commandlog close closes the commandlog file Commandlog auto Switches automatic log file creation on This is normally switched on Log files are written to the log directory of the instrument account There are time stamps any hour in that file and there is a new file any 24 hours Commandlog tail n prints the last n entries
96. the file is a list of SICS commands to set all these parameters again The file is written on the instrument computer relative to the path of the SICS server This is usually home INSTRUMENT bin toggles a ag which controls saving of motor positions If this is set commands for driving motors to the current positions are included in the backup file This is useful for instruments with slipping motors reads a file produced by the backup command described above and restores SICS to the state it was in when the status was saved with backup If no file argument is given the system default file gets read prints the list of lines which caused errors during the last restore decrements the data number used for SICS file writing and thus consequently overwrites the last datafile This is useful when useless data files have been created during tests As this is critical command in normal user operations this command requires managers privilege prints the number of seconds since the last invocation of a counting or driving operation Used in scripts DEPRECATED use sicslist a command which lists objects available in the SICS system Without any options prints a list of all objects The list can be restricted with 11 Control interrupt and system commands dir var DEPRECATED use sicslistprints all SICS primitive variables dir mot DEPRECATED use sicslistprints a list of all motors dir inter driv DEPRECATED use sicslis
97. ting on the selected beam monitor e g bml bmi preset value bmi mode value bmi status bmi count value get or seta preset value for bm1 This is the value at which the acquisition will be stopped Used in conjunction with mode get or set the mode to stop acquisitions either timer or monitor value must be one of these options timer will stop acquisition preset seconds after the acquisition is started monitor will stop acquisition preset counts after the acquisition is started returns the monitor status e g bm1 CountStatus 10000 0 Beam 0 E6 preset current control value current counts The current counts may be high by 10 times To be tested and fixed Sets the preset to value and runs the counter to the preset 51 Counters Use hget with the tree interface e g hget monitor bm1_counts hget monitor bm1 counts will return the same value as bml1 counts These attributes are get only e g hget monitor bm1 counts The next section refers to histmem which is most commonly used The second section will refer to bm and how it interacts with histmem Configuring counters Counters must be configured into the SICS server with the MakeCounter command they cannot be added dynamically to a running server The MakeCounter command has the following syntax MakeCounter name type parameters The list of parameters depends on the type of counter that is being created 22 Chapter 12 Histogram Control Fer
98. tion but no scans or batchfiles 2 AbortScan Stop current scan or operation but continue processing of batch files with next command 3 AbortBatch Stop all processing even batch files Default 3 Privilege Manager The number of times that SICS will retry a move if a motor has not reached the target position to within the required precision Default 1 0 Privilege Manager Controls frequency with which position changes are reported if a user subscribes interest to a motor A larger value reduces the frequency Privilege Manager Controls precision of movements If a motor has not completed a move to the required precision then the move command will be resent The number of retries is controlled by the maxretry parameter Default 1 Privilege Manager Controls direction of motion set to 1 to reverse Privilege User Get set lower software limit This is automatically adjusted when you set the softzero or use the setpos command Privilege User 45 Motor Controls amp Drive mot softzero val persists mot speed val mot units val list output Get set upper software limit This is automatically adjusted when you set the softzero or use the setpos command Default 0 Privilege User Sets the zero position to val You probably want to use setpos described below it s easier to understand Privilege User Get Set the speed of motion along about the axis controlled by this motor in phys
99. tion of body are skipped processing continues by invoking the Tcl interpreter on next then evaluating test and so on If a break command is invoked within body or next then the for command will return immediately The operation of break and continue are similar to the corresponding statements in C for returns an empty string Example 17 2 for for set x 0 x 10 incr x puts x is x while execute script repeatedly as long as a condition is met while test body The while command evaluates test as an expression in the same way that expr evaluates its argument The value of the expression must be a proper boolean value if itis a true value then body is executed by passing it to the Tcl interpreter Once body has been executed then test is evaluated again and the process repeats until eventually test evaluates to a false boolean value continue commands may be executed inside body to terminate the current iteration of the loop and break commands may be executed inside body to cause immediate termination of the while command The while command always returns an empty string Example 17 3 while set x 0 while x lt 10 puts x is x incr x 72 Part IV CONFIGURATION AND TROUBLESHOOTING Table of Contents 18 Personal configuration ERE aes EUR Fe ein Bi ne 75 Personalised configuration extraconfig tcl 75 Adding a procedure enr E PRSE pre RR EE E
100. tprints a list of all drivable objects This is more than motors and includes virtual motors such as environment devices and wavelength as well dir inter count DEPRECATED use sicslistShows everything which can be counted upon dir inter env DEPRECATED use sicslistShows all currently configured environment devices dir match wildcard DEPRECATED use sicslistlists all objects which match the wildcard string given in wildcard doesn t work Logging your activity SICS offers not less then three different ways of logging your commands and the SICS server s responses You may create a similar per client log file on the computer running the SICS server through the logbook command Then there is a way to log all activity registered from users with either user or manager privilege into a file This means all commands which affect the experiment regardless from which client they have been issued This is accomplished with the commandlog command the GetLog command receives messages from all active clients This allows you to view all events on your connection and is intended for debugging LogBook command Some users like to have all the input typed to SICS and responses collected in a file for further review This is implemented via the LogBook command LogBook is actually a wrapper around the config file command LogBook understands the following syntax LogBook alone prints the name of the current logfile and the status of even
101. tus display After completing all the tests for this example you will see the following display This means that controller one is missing one or more subroutines the connection failed on controller two one or more required threads are not running on controller three and all the tests succeeded on controller four r X troubleShoot tcl nix Load config hrpd_configuration tel dmc2280_controlleri dmc2280_controller2 dmc2280 controller3 dmc2280_controller4 oma Using sicsclient for troubleshoot The siesclient command line can be used for troubleshooting motors There can be circumstances when a third party such as the handle held wireless Galil controller or a terminal client is used to control motors In these cases the values in SICS can be out of sync with those on the controller The Galil controller can be interrogated using send 84 Motor Troubleshooting mot1 send MG _SP In this example the controller and axis of motor mot 1 will the sent a command which will return the speed _ SP of the motor Note that a substitution is made in SICS of the controller and axis using the backtick character The values from the controller can be compared manually with the values from SICS mot 1 list 85
102. u want to command a device directly with SICS the first half of this manual or you would like to change the instrument configuration the second half Where is SICS SICS runs on an ICS computer instrument control server All ICS computers run the Linux operating system and have a name that looks like ics 1 echidna nbi ansto gov au If you have an account on the NBI network you can use that username and password to login You must login using ssh from a unix computer or using an ssh client on a Microsoft Windows computer like putty or F Secure Starting and stopping SICS using runsics To control the instrument the SICS software must be running on the instrument control computer First check to see if SICS is already running by calling the runsics status command as shown below Note the echidna ics1 echidna gt is just the command line prompt echidna icsl echidna gt runsics status SICServer running SICS script validator running This example shows SICS is already running In this case you should proceed to login to SICS If the reply is echidna icsl echidna gt runsics status SICServer NOT running SICS script validator NOT running then use the runsics start command echidna icsl echidna gt runsics start Starting SICS 29087 SUCCESS Starting SICS Script Validator SICS The Instrument Control Server 29091 SUCCESS Login to SICS Most users won t want to login to SICS However if you
103. xecutor verifies that nobody else is driving then starts the motor and grabs hardware control The device executor also starts a task monitoring the activity of the motor The run command wrapper function passes control through the interpreter and the clients task function back to the task switcher The client connection can handle new commands The device executor task will keep on monitoring the progress of the motor driving whenever the task switcher allows it to execute n due time the device executor task will find that the motor finished driving The task will then die silently The clients grab of the hardware driving permission will be released Any errors however will be reported All this seems to be pretty complex and time consuming But itis the complexity needed to do so many things especially the non blocking mode of operation requested by users Tests have shown that the task switcher manages 900 cycles per second through the task list on a DigitalUnix machine and 500 cycles per second on a pentium 2GHz machine running linux Both data were obtained with software simulation of hardware devices With real SINQ hardware these numbers drop to as low as 4 cycles per second if the hardware is slow in responding This shows clearly that the communication with the hardware is the systems bottleneck and not the task switching scheme 42 Chapter 10 Motor Controls amp Drive Ferdi Franceschini Drive commands Many o
104. ys as defined through using the sicslist setatt obj key value command List all the SICS objects which match the value for the metadatakey given as parameters e g sicslist interface drivable will print all objects implementing the drivable interface in the SICS server Will query the current state of the SICS object ob j This makes sense for things like motors counter etc which can be run asynchronously The result can be idle fault busy etc 10 Control interrupt and system commands sicslist match mask status status interest backup backup motsave restore restore listerr killfile sicsidle Deprecated commands dir Will print the names of all SICS objects where the name matches the wildcard given as mask A single word command which makes SICS print its current status Possible return values can be Eager to execute commands Scanning Counting Running Halted Note that if a command is executing which takes some time to complete the server will return an ERROR Busy message when further commands are issued initiates automatic printing of any status change in the server This command is primarily of interest for status display client implementors saves the current values of SICS variables and selected motor and device parameters to the disk file specified as parameter If no file parameter is given the data is written to the system default status backup file The format of

Download Pdf Manuals

Related Search

Related Contents

Hiver Conseils pratiques - ALD  MSF Infos Décembre 2013 - Médecins Sans Frontières  Reference Manual  333453D - Graco Inc.  Case Logic TBC-309  BOW THRUSTER  ISO-HPO-100 Instruction Manual  Lenovo SA88-8908-00 User's Manual  see manual  Spec Sheet - The Reynolds Company  

Copyright © All rights reserved. Failed to retrieve file