Page History
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Safety Stand-down and EEIP
The newsletter is being released approximately 1 week later than we originally planned due to the SLAC-wide safety stand-down on Wednesday 5/4. While the circumstances prompting the stand-down are not good, the outcome of the activity was positive.
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EEIP is everyone's responsibility.
LCLS-II-HE update
The ECS team continues making progress, advancing instruments’ designs, and ramping up efforts with greater engagement from instrument’s leads. The goal for the remainder of FY22 will be to refresh the overall cost estimate as recommended by the committee, while at the same time remaining committed to advancing the design maturity of all Experiment control systems to Preliminary Design Review (PDR) (60%) level. The PDR for controls is slated for August of 2022.
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MEC-U update
Rack allocations
We spent some time doing rough estimates of rackspace for MECU, here are some of the figures we developed for your consideration. These don't include the other partner labs in the count, their estimates are elsewhere. Other systems outside of this count include Safety (PPS/BCS/HPS/LSS), Timing and IT infrastructure.
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The Rochester and Livermore team came to SLAC on March 22nd and 23rd to learn more about MEC operations and collaborate in person on the project. This was the first time all three partner labs met in person to work on MEC-U. The controls breakout session reviewed the operations and the high-level supervisory control software of the Omega laser facility. We also learned more details about the mechatronics, industrial and timing system controls of the LLE system.
Hutch Python Update
Hutch python's conda environment was updated to pcds-5.3.1 near the start of April.
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New Dual-Acting Valve Widget
Dual acting valves are now integrated into pcdswidgets with a nice looking icon to represent the functionality of the valve.
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Lightpath Campaign
Lightpath is a tool that aims to show users and scientists which components are blocking the beam path, greatly expediting troubleshooting and recovery of operation.
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Unfortunately the tool has been plagued with bugs and efficiency issues for quite some time. We are planning a substantial rework of the tool, with the goal of making the tool available and useful for all hutches.
A JIRA Epic has been created to gather existing lightpath issues/bug reports. If you have ideas for features or bugs to report, feel free to add an issue to the epic. We will be basing the re-design on requested features, so submitting an issue now is the best way to see those issues solved. We will continue to reach out for input throughout development, so be ready to hear from us!
New ECS PD Campaign: Code Review
ECS currently has nearly all of our hutch-python and related Python source code in the pcdshub organization on GitHub.
We utilize a standardized workflow that improves understanding among our team, provides automated quality and style fixes, and in the end results in a higher quality set of code.
We want to take our apply the same standards that we apply to have for Python development and bring it forward to nearly all PLC, EPICS module and EPICS IOC development.
This will be an ongoing effort over the course of months.
See more details on the initiative page here - ECS GitHub and Code Review Campaign - feedback is welcome.
ATEF Status Update
We are continuing on our refocused ATEF development effort, targeting passive testing of control system devices. The "passive" portion of this means that it will be fully-automated and non-intrusive (that is, it will not move your motors or otherwise directly cause a PV to changeexecute a caput).
We are making progress on the user-facing components of atef for passive checks. This includes a work-in-progress set of GUI elements, allowing for a more straightforward specification of a passive checkout configuration, with a happi device search tool and ophyd device inspector. A preliminary command-line based passive check running tool has also been developed.
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Future development will include: active tests (guided, with humans in the loop) including integration with bluesky, a synoptic for viewing the atef-reported status of all devices, integration with Grafana, views of devices in typhos/hutch-python at a given time in the past, and many other things.
shared-dotfiles
What are dotfiles?
- Dotfiles are configuration files that sit in your home directory, like
.bashrc. - Dotfiles set per-user configuration settings for different applications, like the text editor vim or your shell.
- If you have a unix account, you likely have dotfiles in your home directory on pslogin, whether you have customized them or not.
In a survey of users' configurations, we found that many were similar, likely copied and tweaked from one user's home directory to another when they joined ECS.
In some strange form of the telephone game, a bit of meaning was lost between each successive copy, with configuration lines remaining with not a clue as to why they were there.
We then set off on a goal to create a shared repository that allows for a To make things better we created a shared repository as good starting point for new engineers, or existing ones that want to improve (or just better understand) their settings.
Almost every line contains an explanation as to why it is there, with some offering suggestions as to how to adjust it to your preference.
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It includes a variety of suggested configuration files for various basic tools like ssh, bash, vim, and so on that ECS staff and others who use the same computing infrastructure may find useful.
It also explains a bit about what scripts are available and how to better navigate your environment in its documentation.
If you have ever felt like your command line interface was missing commands, or you wish it had more colors to help with readability, or you just want to make sure you're not missing out on some nice features, check out the repo.
Vacuum System
Added Adding a new supported gauge! Instrument hot cathode gauge IGM401 will be used in TMO. Please chick check here.
We also gave a seminar on the LCLS II vacuum control system. If you missed the seminar, you can find the slides and meeting video here .
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Radiation Monitoring in the FEE
We began taking initial Radiation measurements installed a live radiation measurement system in the FEE! We have been busy integrating this equipment for the past several months.
From four different locations we gained 2 sensor readouts each. Here we see Hard Xray beam energy mapped against dose rates.
A shift was made to bring the rest of the sensors online. Looking forward to collecting more data this month!
was made to bring the rest of the sensors online. Looking forward to collecting more data this month!
The plan is to collect data on radiation in the FEE and EBD to prepare a baseline for comparison with SC beam when it arrives. Ultimately we want to be able to discern between device failure due to normal use and radiation damage.
X-ray Optics Controls Updates
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- Look for some higher performance in the axis control
- Control loops changed and Deadbands deadbands tightened
Experiment State Tracker and Eloggrubber
Based on popular demand, the Experiment State Tracker has been integrated with the eloggrubber and the possible state list has been extended (with much more detail for 'instrument down' in particular.)
The eloggrubbers JIRA implementation has changed to allow automatic assignment to the instruments as well as posting of the attachments Murali Shankar
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The "ADU Threshold" is the number of ADU below the saturation in low gain allowed before a pixel is considered too high. The "Pixel Count" is the number of high pixels allowed before tripping the beam. Please do not adjust these values without discussing with Meng or I beforehand Mengning Liang or Tyler NT Pennebaker beforehand.
As another form of feedback, the AMI plugin adds an option in the AMI window called "JungfrauTrip" that allows the user to watch the number of pixels above the threshold over time. Below, we can see a constant 20 pixels above the threshold, using the current settings without beam, due to the misbehaving already-burnt pixels. If you have any questions about the tripper, please feel free to reach out to me!
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This year is a prototype system for determining interaction point component alignment using machine vision sponsored by Diling Zhu. In early March, the The CSU Chico Engineering Capstone Collaboration project team visited XPP in early March to do some final fit measurements around the interaction point for installation of their project later this year.
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For the past five years LCLS departments (SED and ME) have sponsored projects with the Mechanical/Mechatronic Engineering departments of CSU Chico for their engineering degree capstone. Each year the collaboration project offers a chance for LCLS to develop prototype concepts, or even to offload a manageable portion of work to a team of 4-5 students and a faculty advisor (for a nominal fee + M&S). More importantly these These projects offer us a chance to discover talented candidates that we can hireand provide the students with an incredible experience doing a project at a national lab. If you have an idea for a project, please contact Alex Wallace for details (or if you want help setting up a collaboration with your school). On a final note, this year we are excited to announce that we hired another a student from the collaboration projectthis year's team, Mitchell Cabral. He will join ECS as a control system integrator in June.
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Restoration and recommissioning of the HXR spectrometer mechatronics has been completed and has successful commissioning times. The spectrometer has already been a vital part utilized in experiments including those some in MFX. Included below Below are some images taken from the orca Orca camera. Further Some minor updates to the gui have been made including ways to power cycle devices control as well provide an easier way to access as quick access to the webcam used for remotely viewing how the spectrometer is behaving.
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Spencer, Aalayah I Omar Quijano Otero, Julieth
Network Reorganization
Over the past few months, the CDS-IT (hereafter IT) team has worked to upgrade and simplify the network set up across the NEH and FEH Hutches, XRT, and FEE. Currently, CXI is the only Hutch remaining to undergo the new network restructurationrestructuring.
The purpose is to provide 100GbE stacking and/or uplinks for maximum reliability and multigigabit access. The first 24x (1 - 24) ports provide 1000 Mbps connection and the next 24x (25 - 48) ports provide 10000 10,000 Mbps connectivity. All ports provide POE+ with up to 1500W power budget.
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LCLS has 2 WEKA storage clusters: i) provides the home directories and software for all users and staff, and ii) the FFB for the user's experiments. There was a bug with the previous release , so the of WEKA affecting quota. The latest version was installed to fix the quota bug and improve performance. The team is still working with the WEKA team to provide the users with the output of their appropriate space usage (quota).
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There have been many incidents where the Experimental Experiment Controls and DAQ team is not aware of the available DSS and MON nodes during a given experiment. To provide transparency across the multiple teams, the IT team has created a confluence page that explains the validation methodology and provides a log of the current functional functional DSS and MON servers. This will prevent the teams from guessing which nodes are available and allow the IT team to fix those that are not available. Coming soon, the IT team will deploy a new image with monitoring that will provide alerts so that actions can be taken in a timely manner.
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There is an effort in progress to support UED's restructuration revamp to the LCLS standard. Now, UED has a main system named ued-daq with multiple screens, which support both the LCLS and ASTA controls. The idea is to integrate the Accelerator Network into the LCLS managed devices to provide the current LCLS IOCs and DAQ systems with the capability of accessing the Accelerator PVs. This step will provide two key functions: i) removal of the UED local gateway and leverage the LCLS gateways, and ii) allow UED to slowly transition their control system to the LCLS environment.
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