Minutes.
The collaboration meeting started with historical summary of electrometer milestones, highlighting: the collaboration agreement signature (September 2015), which ends on September 2020; the 1st collaboration meeting (March 2016); em# meeting during ICALPCS (October 2017). It was pointed out that the design was done modular in all levels to ease the collaboration, main summary of the design was done, focusing on the general structure of the code and the last developments from the first official release (FW v.1.0.00) to the last official release (4th July 2019 FW v.1.3.03). Documentation of the project was explained and the need of a evaluation plan to validate software exposed.
After this introductory presentations it was reported by ALBA and MAX IV the problems and incidents detected from last collaboration meeting. The conclusion was that major problems are solved, Em# is working well and no major problems are pending to guarantee the agreed functionality for current stage. Max IV will update the em# to version FW v1.3.03 to check if the problems reported vanishes.
After lunch the meeting continued presenting related projects status, Max IV current multiplexer and the future ALBA strategy to develop a synchronization device based on Harmony called Rhythm.
On Wednesday both institutions reported the production and installation status. ALBA assembled units (9 LV + 15 HV), 6 units in use + 2 units sent to ESRF for test + 1 unit sold to SOLARIS. MAX IV assembled units ( 50 LV + 25 HV), 51 units in use, it is foreseen a production new of 15HV electrometers. The next presentation faced the obsolescence of em# components. It was reported that NUC and SPEC boards are obsolete and few alternatives were exposed with the risks of replacement. Both facilities exposed that they were aware of the problem and they were going to provision the obsolete boards for future productions, and that the problem of alternatives will be faced afterwards and considering also future developments needs of next project stages.
During the closure session a list all the needs and tasks to be done was produced. The tasks were ordered by priority and a delivery date was assigned to some of them. The next meetings dates were fixed. Next video-meeting on 15th September at 15h. Second web-meeting on 21st Janaury at 15h and Collaboration meeting in Lund on 9th and 10th of June 2020.
The objective is that for the next meeting (15Sept) the following tasks will be finished and therefore reported:
Assembly 2 Calibrators of actual version. Responsible X.Serra
Configure gitLab to check mistakes on firmware code. Responsible Antonio Milan
Study to include NTP protocol of Em# OS. Responsible Antonio and Manolo
Write a script to check basic functionality of Em#. Responsible Peter, Antonio, Manolo and Xevi.
Before the second meeting (21Jan) the objective is to finish:
A new official version including the features
SCPI command and web to identify the Em# kind (HV, LV)
Set DAC value to 0, when DAC range is changed
Web button to Blink display, to identify the Em#
Add timestamp to triggers
Allow to remove data on NUC once it is read
Autotrigger by hardware
Study of how to improve the continuous sampling rate of Em#
In the second meeting the tasks to do before the collaboration meeting of Lund must be discussed, however the following tasks are foreseen:
Prepare an collaboration agreement extension
Design a new calibrator
Improve sampling rate of Em# as much as possible with current hardware. 1kS/s will be acceptable. 2 kS/s will be the maximum required. A limited acquisition (1 channel, limited timestamp information) can be explored.
Improve internal memory of Em# as much as possible with current hardware. 10kS is aparently will be easy to achieve with FPGA internal memory blocks.