EMU FAST DAQ

DAQ (data acquisition and event monitoring system) for the CMS EMU (Endcap Muon) FAST (Final Assembly and Test) sites and beam tests

News

Jan 3, 2000: DAQ system installed at UF.

Oct 15, 1999: DAQ system installed at UCLA.

Sep 24, 1999: DAQ system upgrade at Fermilab.

Aug 18, 1999: DAQ system in use at the GIF.

Jul 19, 1999: DAQ system can be installed via this WEB page.

Introduction

A specialized data acquisition and monitoring system is needed by the EMU collaboration over the time span 1999-2004 at many locations:

FAST sites:
- UCLA + UC Riverside + UC Davis (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
- Univ. of Florida (Gainesville, FL, USA)
- IHEP (Beijing, China)
- PNPI (St.Petersburg, Russia)
CERN beam tests and LHC installation
FNAL chamber construction tests

It was decided to build off of the EMU DAQ used at the 1998 CERN beam test instead of building an entirely new system from scratch. This way there has always been a working DAQ being incrementally improved. (No other DAQ option could guarantee a working system at the 1999 CERN beam tests).

Personnel

Currently (June 2001), the FAST site DAQ contact people are:

FNAL: Nikolai Terentiev (teren@fnal.gov)
IHEP: Kanglin He (hekl@hpws2.ihep.ac.cn)
PNPI: Valentin Sulimov (sulimov@pnpi.spb.ru), Evgenii Orischin (orischin@pnpi.spb.ru)
UCLA: Valeri Sytnik (sytnik@phyun0.ucr.edu)
UF : Sergei Dolinsky (dolinsky@phys.ufl.edu)

The FAST site DAQ system was first used at the 1999 Summer beam test at CERN (and during preparatory work at Fermilab). The success of this trial run was due to the hard work of the 1999 DAQ group:

David Chrisman (UCR)
Bill Gorn (UCR)
Lisa Gorn (UF)
Bryan Smith (CMU)
summer members:
- Jiawen Zhang (Beijing)
- Fabian Heidrich-Meisner (CERN Summer-Student)

Goals

Starting from the 1998 Riverside DAQ System, the following list of features were (or are currently being) developed and/or improved upon for the FAST site DAQ:

Objective Status
Capability to handle several chambers independently:

separate trigger (cosmic ray or software trigger) for each chamber
separate data stream for each chamber under test
separate sets of histograms and event displays for each chamber
capability to add or remove a chamber from the DAQ without interfering with other chambers under test
capability to use the DAQ to troubleshoot one chamber while accumulating data with the others
Finished
Increased DAQ event rate Finished
No limit on the number of histograms Finished
Inclusion of a data-storage system Finished
Integration of calibration runs into the DAQ Finished
Improved user interface Finished
More-automated record-keeping Finished
Error message utility, for display and logging Finished
Capability to play back a data file Finished
Capability to play back histograms Finished
Simple real-time analysis for fast discovery of dead channels, noise, wandering pedestals, etc. Finished
High voltage control and display Finished
Trigger control, for determining which chamber gets which trigger type Under development
Environmental monitoring and display Under development
Low-level diagnostic programs for all hardware Under development
Performance/resource monitor Under development
Complete documentation and online help Under development

Objective	Status
Capability to handle several chambers independently: separate trigger (cosmic ray or software trigger) for each chamber separate data stream for each chamber under test separate sets of histograms and event displays for each chamber capability to add or remove a chamber from the DAQ without interfering with other chambers under test capability to use the DAQ to troubleshoot one chamber while accumulating data with the others	Finished
Increased DAQ event rate	Finished
No limit on the number of histograms	Finished
Inclusion of a data-storage system	Finished
Integration of calibration runs into the DAQ	Finished
Improved user interface	Finished
More-automated record-keeping	Finished
Error message utility, for display and logging	Finished
Capability to play back a data file	Finished
Capability to play back histograms	Finished
Simple real-time analysis for fast discovery of dead channels, noise, wandering pedestals, etc.	Finished
High voltage control and display	Finished
Trigger control, for determining which chamber gets which trigger type	Under development
Environmental monitoring and display	Under development
Low-level diagnostic programs for all hardware	Under development
Performance/resource monitor	Under development
Complete documentation and online help	Under development

Overview

The FAST DAQ system is a set separate programs which communicate with each other through the use of standard UNIX system calls (Message Queues and Shared Memory). The two core programs are the Run Control and Readout Control. As its name suggests, the Run Control program is the control center of the DAQ system. By clicking on the buttons and menus of the Run Control interface the operator sends messages to the Readout Control program, telling it, for example, to Start, Stop, Pause, Continue, etc... Readout Control is the program which actually gets the data from the chamber and writes it to shared memory. As the run progresses, monitoring programs, such as the Event Display and Event Analysis, get events from the shared memory and process them. As the shared memory periodically becomes full, the Readout Control program saves the events to disk. Here is a BLOCK DIAGRAM showing the communication and data flow between DAQ programs:

back to DAQ home