Introduction

This brief essay describes the software to monitor the 3.5 meter polishing cell. This software reads load cells, which define the array of supporting forces, and thermocouples, which monitor temperatures in and around the cell.

An entirely distinct set of hardware and software actually controls the LOG and the the lap which polishes the mirror.

Hardware

The hardware for this project consists of the usual VME rack and power supply and a handful of cards. First and foremost we have a trusty mvme147 cpu board (with 4M of ram). In addition to this we have a BB906 analog input board with a digital IO daughter board. At one time this would have been sufficient, but the 906 board is only a 12-bit board, and the temperature system demanded extra precision, so an Acromag 9330 16-bit ADC board was added.

In addition to the collection of boards inside the VME rack, we have a locally designed and built multiplexor board that funnels 192 input channels into 8 channels. At one time all 8 channels were on the 906 board, but later the last 2 were moved to the 9330. In any case, each of the 8 input channels can have one of 24 different inputs selected via this multiplexor at any one time. The multiplexor itself is controlled via the digital IO duaghter board on the 906. The multiplexor has a certain settling time after it changes settings. Also, low-pass filters are used on the inputs to the 9330. Both of these necessitate some care in the software to wait a sufficient time to obtain an acceptable reading after the mux is addressed.

Reading voltages

So lets dive right into how the software works. The main loop is concerned with cycling the mux thru its various values, allowing the right amount of settling time, and reading the voltages. It keeps a matrix of 8 by 24 values (stored as 16-bit integers, just raw out of the ADC's). There are actually 2 of these matrices, the one being filled, and the one already filled. Only the one completely filled is available in any way to the rest of the world.

A clock interrupt happens at 100 Hz (every 10 milliseconds), and this drives the main loop. The mux is set, then ticks are counted for a settling interval (presently 10 ticks for a 100 millisecond settling time). After this, on each tick the ADC is read out and the value is accumulated. After some number of ticks (presently 90), the average value is calculated and recorded in the matrix. The upshot of all this is that a new row gets added to the matrix every second and the values in the row are the average of 90 readings from the ADC.

Every 24 seconds the entire matrix is filled up and we have a new complete set of data to process. The full matrix is handed to the data conversion task, and the data collection task continues along filling a new matrix. The two matrices are swapped back and forth every 24 seconds in this fashion. The full matrix is immediately converted to voltages (in the range -10. to +10. volts), and the voltage matrix is handed first to the load cell conversion routine, and then the temperature conversion routine.

Load Cell values

The first 6 columns of the voltage matrix contain load cell values, among other things. The other things are reference voltages, power supply monitors, and such like. In each column 4 of the 24 voltages are these sort of housekeeping things (which do not get involved in the load cell calculations, by the way). So we could have 120 load cells, but not all of these are hooked up. The software keeps a data structure with the following items for each actual load cell: A word of explanation is in order regarding the volts per pound value. The load cells we use produce a nominal 30 microvolts per pound. We run these thru an amplifier board before the ADC sees the signal which has a nominal gain of 598. Hence the ADC sees a nominal 0.018 volts per pound. The load cell database keeps the raw load cell calibration (typically 31-32 microvolts per pound) and the amplifier gain (always 598.0) in case we want to independently characterize

Temperature values

The last 2 columns of the voltage matrix are a single IJB (isothermal junction block) for the thermal system. Again, 4 items in each column are housekeeping values, the other 80 could be thermocouples, except that one of them is the AD590 that reads the junction temperature, so we could accomodate 79 thermocouples if we should so desire. However not all of these are wired up at this time.

Here are the steps along the way to developing temperatures from the block of voltages for an IJB:

To the end of the list of thermcouple temperatues, we append two "Phantom thermocouples" so they can be processed along with the real thermocouples. These are the raw and offset-adjusted IJB temperatures (AD590 readings). Since we have a zero offset in this system, both values are identical. All thermocouple temperatures are then subjected to the following battery of tests. If they fail any test, the temperature is marked as BAD (a value of 999.0 is entered), and an error is flagged. And that is how you get the raw temperatures for all the thermocouples. The offsets for each thermocouple and the IJB are provided to allow individual calibrations to be done for each sensor in the system. The software keeps the last 5 temperatures for each thermocouple, whenever a new temperature is calculated, the oldest is discarded. It is possible to request the most recent (raw) temperatures, or the median of the 5 temperatures.

How do I get the data?