Archon Generalities

We replaced the Leach Gen 3 controller and the MarkIII CCD array with a new thick monolithic CCD and an Archon controller. We do not use a VM crate anymore. We communicate with the Archon directly by using the lredccd dispatcher. We have found that we have limited telemetry from the Archon so in order to re-establish a clear communication with the Archon and the ccd we need to powercycle the whole system: bring down the dispatcher, power down the Archon and the ccd.

Shutdown procedure to power off LRIS-R CCD electronics

To ensure a good startup, we should shutdown the dispatcher.

Method 1:
• open the LRIS Power Control GUI from the engineering menu
• click the green box next to the red ccd archon
• Quit the GUI

Method 2:
• open a terminal to lrisserver
• on the terminal enter lred-down
• Wait until it finishes.

Example crate output from the shutdown

Powering on the LRIS-R CCD electronics

The power up procedure will bring down the dispatcher first. Then it will power up the Archon, start the dispatcher, check the communications (check for errors and setting some commands), and finally bring back the power to the CCD.

Method 1
• Bring up the LRIS Power Control GUI
• click the green box next to the red ccd archon
• Quit the GUI

Method 2
• login on to lrisserver
• run lred-up to start the red side.

In an lrisserver xterm run lrisr_setup_after_powerup

TERMINAL OUTPUT

output from the shutdown:

CCD power is on, turn off CCD power
setting ccdpower = Off (wait)
CCD power is off
lredccd         : Sending SIGKILL to pid:  132883
shut down dispatcher
dispatcher is off
turning off Archon
setting powoff = 13 (wait)
Done

output from the start command is:

Shut down dispatcher first before powering up Archon...
lredccd         : Sending SIGKILL to pid:  33967
Power up Archon
Wait 60 sec for Archon to complete power up...
setting powon = 13 (wait)
Start the dispatcher...
Starting lredccd (/kroot/rel/default/bin/mr_server  -s lredccd -l lredccd_servic
e -- -requestkey DISP1REQ -quekey DISP1QUE -quelenkey DISP1QLN -immediate 'ELAPT
IME DATEPCLR DATE_END DATE_FIN DATE_BEG DATE_INI TELAPSE XPOSURE STARTEX EXPOSIP
 RDOUTIP EXPOSUID' true)
Checking if Archon is properly connected
Archon is connected
setting archonaply = True (wait)
wait 30 sec for archon to load configuration files
Archon configuration file status is True after waiting 30 sec
No Archon error, all good
Successfully loaded Archon CDS deinterlace values
Archon connection checks complete.
Turning on the red CCD...
setting ccdpower = On (wait)
Red CCD power is On
Done.