attpc_envoy

attpc_envoy is a Data Acquisition Hub for the Active Target Time Projection Chamber written in Rust. It provides an async framework for querying the various DAQ elements of the AT-TPC with a clean user interface. The primary goal is to provide an error-safe system from which to run and manage the data aqcuistion, without sacrificing performance.

Download and Installation

To build attpc_envoy you need a rust compiler which can be installed using instructions from the Rust website.

To download attpc_envoy use the command:

git clone https://github.com/gwm17/attpc_envoy.git

To build the project and run it, enter the repository and use the following command

cargo run -r

attpc_envoy aims to be cross platform and supports Mac, Windows, and Linux. However, since the AT-TPC group primarily uses MacOS for DAQ machines, attpc_envoy is only guaranteed to run on MacOS. Other platforms are supported as best-effort only.

What is attpc_envoy exactly?

attpc_envoy is essentially a control panel that communicates to the distributed DAQ services used to run the AT-TPC. There are a few key assumptions made by the envoy system that you should be aware of:

• attpc_envoy assumes that you are using the AT-TPC network infrastructure, including the expected IP address assignments for DAQ machines.
• Each DAQ machine is expected to be running three programs: getECCServer, dataRouter or DataExporter, and attpc_sentry
• There are the typical number of DAQ machines (at time of writting, 11)
• GETDAQ configuration files are located in the expected AT-TPC directory structure

If you do not meet these requirements, or are unsure, you can checkout the constants docs to view some of them.

Configuration

It is not recommended to create a configuration by hand. Instead, it is best to use the UI to set configuration parameters and then use the File->Save, and File->Load menus to handle configuration saving and loading. However, we will outline the format here for clarity.

attpc_envoy uses YAML to define its configuration. Below is an example configuration file:

experiment: Exp
run_number: 0
description: Write here
fields:
  B-Field (T): ''
  Beam: ''
  E-Drift (V): ''
  E-Trans (V): ''
  Energy (MeV/U): ''
  GET Freq. (MHz): ''
  Pressure (Torr): ''
  Target Gas: ''
  V_Cathode (kV): ''
  V_MM (V): ''
  V_THGEM (V): ''

experiment is the experiment identifier, and should match the identifier used for the GET configuration files. run_number is the current run number. description is a brief discription of the run. fields is an extensible list of run logged info. All fields values are stored as strings even if they are more naturally a numeric type to avoid boxing.

Documentation

The documentation for attpc_envoy can be found here