Troubleshooting common issues with DAQ

Bugs and Robustness

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Live planning notes

Goal: Update DAQ to HDF5

• What has already been done?
  • We have a working version of the HDF5 DAQ, and now we are working on making it robust
  • Sharon has shown that HDF5 file writing in "Streaming" mode is very fast.
  • Now we want to extend capability for scans so that we have 1 file per camera.
• How to save scan image data into HDF5 file?
  • Use PVs:
    • extraDimSizeN = Number of shots per step
    • nExtraDims = Number of scan dimensions (0 = simple DAQ, 1 = 1D scan, 2 = 2D scan . . .)
    • extraDimSizeX = Number of steps for Dim 1
    • extraDimSizeY = Number of steps for Dim 2
    • extraDimSize3 = Number of steps for Dim 3
    • . . .
  • These PVs implicitly control the NumCapture PV
    • NumCapture_RBV = extraDimSizeN * extraDimSizeX * extraDimSizeY * . . . (depending on number of nExtraDims)
• In this scheme, we have to carefully control the triggers so that each scan step gets exactly the right number
  • We will use a new feature to do this:
    • EVNT:SYS1:1:PMAQCTRL.H = extraDimSizeN = Number of shots per step
    • EVNT:SYS1:1:PMAQCTRL.E = 0/1 to stop/start triggers to cameras
    • Need to toggle back to 0 after every step
    • Set EVNT:SYS1:1:PMAQCTRL.H back to zero at end of scan
• What happens if the camera does not receive all triggers?
  • Then scan steps are kind of messed up . . . think about how best to handle this with pulse ID
• Prefer "NDArrayUniqueId" to be "NDArrayPulseId"
• Make caput/lcaPut/lcaPutSmart consistent
• "BSA buffer" for UV spectrometer IOC?
• Find a reliable fix to shot counting issue
  • checkShots is not counting the correct number of shots at some steps. we think the DAQ is just not waiting long enough for the shot number to go up, because the shots do get saved eventually
  • for E332 shift on 5/30, we just added a while/pause loop to force DAQ to wait for shot numbers to go up
  • if we decide to keep this functionality we should at least add a break for the while loop but for now it is working again

DAQ tests E320 shift 4/30/24

Testing TIFF/HDF5 switch
- take a DAQ with TIFF and try to load it in DAN
- results look normal

Testing HDF5 DAQ
- take a DAQ with HDF5, simple DAQ, 20 shots, 1 camera (LBG_LFOV)
    - all 20 shots saved
- test with 1000 shots
    - saved 999 shots
    - took a little over 2 minutes
- add more cameras (LBG_LFOV, EOS2, GAMMA1)
    - saved 993 shots for each camera
    - ~2 min 10 seconds in total
- try streaming
    - 1000 shots
    - failed TEST 7480
- try streaming but with 10 shots
    - success with all matches
- try streaming with 200 shots
    - success with 197 matches
- try streaming with 700 shots
    - says DAQ failed on step 1 but 641 matches
- try streaming with TIFF, 700 shots
    - saved 155 matches
    - took a little more than 3 minutes
- try a 1D scan, 10 shots, 3 steps
    - did not restore to initial value
    - Spec_Quad_E
    - 28 matches
- trying a 2D scan, 10 x 2 x 2
    - saved 40 shots
- trying 2D scan with streaming
    - saved 40 shots
- try to open HDF5 images in DAN
    - error when "Plot Correlation" button pushed, expecting a TIFF image
    - Error in hlpGetImage with “imgType”

Bugs and Robustness

Feature requests

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