A bare-bones guide for turning on the LPL and making a custom pulse shape – please add whatever notes/pictures you want to flesh things out to your liking!
Step-by-step guide
- Begin a terminal session on mec-laser, mec-monitor, or mec-daq (either by sitting down at one of those machines or by tunneling to them via
ssh mec-las
for example) - Begin a hutch Python session by typing
mecpython
and waiting for everything to load - Import the MEC laser Python package by entering
import meclas
- You can also import using IPython magic functions to load all the meclas functions straight into the session's namespace (thus allowing you to avoid typing
meclas.
over and over again) by entering%run /reg/g/pcds/pyps/apps/hutch-python/mec/mec/macros/meclas.py
- You can also import using IPython magic functions to load all the meclas functions straight into the session's namespace (thus allowing you to avoid typing
- Turn on the MEC LPL by typing
meclas.LPL.On()
and wait for the sequence to finish- It's best to wait for the heads to warm up, which may take 15-30min
- You can check the shape of the YFE waveform using
meclas.YFE.Trace()
- You can check the energy of the YFE by using
meclas.EMeters.EGall()
- Load or view a new pulse recipe using
meclas.LPL.psmenu()
- Set the new parameters desired for the new recipe:
- set the target output shape with
LPL._Psns_set()
andLPL._SSs_set()
- set the target YFE shape with
LPL._YSSs_set()
- This is the tricky part!! At the moment, you can guess at these with context (e.g. previous recipe hints, visible by viewing the waveform using
LPL.psmenu()
or that kind of thing); in the future, the hope is to calculate a guess using SCALLOPS
- This is the tricky part!! At the moment, you can guess at these with context (e.g. previous recipe hints, visible by viewing the waveform using
- set the target output shape with
- Converge the YFE output to the prescribed goal using
LPL.psefc10Hz()
(orLPL.psrefrwvfm()
) - Once satisfied, prepare for taking a full-energy shot using
LPL.pspreshot()
- Charge and fire the laser
- Acquire the latest shot data using
LPL.pspostshot(save_flag=False, display=True)
- Choose what to do next based on the quality of your shot:
- if the shot was satisfactory, save the shot using
LPL.pssavewvfm()
- if the shot was not satisfactory, make adjustments to the target YFE shape with
LPL._YSSs_set()
, re-converge to the shape withLPL.psefc10Hz()
, etc. and then repeat until you get something satisfactory or you try more troubleshooting
- if the shot was satisfactory, save the shot using
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