CS Studio Online Data Monitoring tools - E1039-Collaboration/e1039-wiki GitHub Wiki

Data Monitoring tools for detector experts

Official Manuals:

Epics:

https://epics.anl.gov/

Archiver:

https://slacmshankar.github.io/epicsarchiver_docs/userguide.html

Cs-Studio:

http://controlsystemstudio.org/

https://epics.anl.gov/docs/USPAS2014/1-Monday/CSS_2_First_Steps.pdf

Data inherited from EPICS and stored as tsv files:

/data2/e1039_data/slowcontrol_data/

As of 10/23/2020 the following six groups are being saved (and also archived)

Chambers: spill_XXXXXXXX_ChamHv.tsv

Slow control Life scripts:  spill_XXXXXXXX_ReadSlowCont.tsv

Acnet spill_XXXXXXXX_Acnet.tsv

Hall enviroment  spill_XXXXXXXX_HallEnv.tsv

Hodoscopes  spill_XXXXXXXXX_HodoHv.tsv

Dark Photon Hodoscopes spill_XXXXXXXX_DPhodo.tsv

Monitoring Data with CS-Studio:

1. Log in to e1039gat1

2. cd  to the directory /data2/epics-7.06.1/base-7.0.6/epics_extensions/cs-studio-4.5.9

3. launch the program  from the terminal:   ./cs-studio &

4. From here one needs to chose a space, it is advisable to **use one's own personal space dedicated to detector monitoring** and plot making.

  1. A welcome window will pop-up, close it

6.Open a fie (from top left) :

Navigate to the directory /data2/e1039/daq/slowcontrols/epics/css_projects/CSS

Here a number of projects **with extension .plt ** that have been prepared. README file contains more information.

Open a relevant file for your detector. In the example below the Proportional tube (P4), current information is open.

_You should save these projects (from top left) in your own directory.

This will allow the user to open these projects by default every time Cs-studio is launched._

Save the plot and data:

  1. Right click on the plot:

  2. Choose Save Snapshot to File or Open data Export Panel (below) and choose your format (spreadsheet or MatLab)

How to create your own variable group or add variables not present on the default projects:

In general to add a variable :

  1. If the Archive Search tab is open (below) just type your variable in the Pattern section, In my example I search for Dark photon (1) voltage variable

  1. Right click→ Process Variable→ Data Browser

  2. Once the curves appear, save as (top left). This assures that the project is saved.

The plot above its rather busy , one can hide the curves by simply clicking in properties→ traces→ Show (unclick) Click yes when pop-up window asks you to hide.

In my example below I hid Ch11-Ch20

Changing the axis values

To change the y(value) or x axis (time) scales just look on the bottom panel under -> properties-> time axis -> value axis and edit the boundary limits.

CS-STUDIO baseline projects

/data2/e1039/daq/slowcontrols/epics/css_projects/CSS/

from the above the following projects have been created:

  1. Hall environment:

HD.plt HH.plt HT.plt P1.plt P.plt T1.plt

  1. Drift Chambers:

D1_V.plt D1_I.plt D2_V.plt D2_I.plt D3_V.plt D3_I.plt

  1. Prop tubes:

P4_V.plt and P4_i.plt

  1. Hodoscopes:

The following sample projects have been created:

LC_H3_EN_HV.plt

LC_CM.plt

X3XT_MV.plt

H3XT_DV.plt

  1. Dark Photon Hodoscopes:

These is the most demanding of all detectors with 1192 PV's

We have created the following sample projects:

DP1_LT1_V.plt

DP1_LT1_CH_I.plt

and

DP1_LT1_CH1-10_I.plt which is a subset of DP1_LT1_CH_I.plt

Common errors:

  1. The main error so far encountered deals with click overload. Remote monitoring (away from FNAL) sometimes takes time to refresh. If you make a mistake and the application truly freezes you can just close the application and restart.

  2. There is also a problem with program overload from multiple users launching the same link at the same time.

If this becomes a problem one can port several skeleton installations in people's directories with minimal space requirements .

For cs-studio experts: how to change the location of the epics archiver data in cs-studio

CS-Studio communicates with the appliance using the PB/HTTP protocol. The databrowser can be configured to use the appliance by including the client retrieval URL to the list of Archive data servers. From the top menu select Edit-> Preferences-> CSS Applications-> Trends

  • Add the archiver appliance URL to the set of Archive Data Server URL's
  • This URL is generated by replacing the string http with the string pbraw in the data_retrieval_url element of the appliances.xml and looks like so pbraw://......../retrieval.
  • The URL should be pbraw://e1039scrun.sq.pri:17668/retrieval. The host name can be localhost only when you run CS-Studio on e1039scrun.

Other monitoring pages:

  1. Drift Chambers, page created by Kenichi.

https://e906-gat1.fnal.gov/hvmon_cham_exp/current/index.php

  1. Archiver (used by experts only, see appropiate wiki for instructions):

Here one can monitor PV's and add new PV's to be archived and monitored with CS-Studio

Archiver E1039 wiki