Now that you have been introduced to the slow-controls server and how to write your own custom drivers to work with it, we will discuss a fully implemented example of how this system might be used. In the Slow controls subsystem section, you were shown the Module command and instructed on how it can be used to register a slow-controls driver for a CAMAC discriminator. It can also be used to create a module of type ccusb, which is a module that enables remote control over the CC-USB from a client program. This chapter will focus on the the ccusbcamac Tcl package, which provides a client-side API to execute remote CAMAC commands through the ccusb module.
The ccusbcamac package provides an API compatible with the camac and wienercamac packages. It is therefore intended to be a drop in replacement for those two. The ccusbcamac package allows Tcl scripts to send remote commands to the CC-USB device attached to the slow-controls server it is connected to in a transparent way.
The package can be used to communicate with up to 56, unrelated CAMAC crates at the same time. Each of these crates is uniquely identified by a pair of branch ane crate indices. It is important to understand that there are no physical CAMAC branches being referred to. Instead, the branch and crate indices are used to uniquely identify a specific crate and to store the connection information with it. A major benefit of maintaining the branch and crate parameters is the maintaining of compatibility with the camac and wienercamac packages.
The remainder of this chapter describes:
How to incorporate this package in your scripts.
How to use the package itself and configure the CCUSBReadout slow-controls server.
Reference material is available at ccusbcamac(3tcl).
Incorporating ccusbcamac in your scripts is a three step process:
The NSCLDAQ Tcl package repository must be added to the Tcl interpreter's package search path.
The NSCLDAQ lib directory must be added to the Tcl interpreter's package search path.
The ccusbcamac package must be loaded into the interpreter via an explicit package require command.
There are two ways to manipulate the Tcl interpreter package load
search path. The environment variable TCLLIBPATH
is a space separated set of additional directories to search for packages.
The Tcl global variable auto_path is one of the
several Tcl variables that control the package search path.
From now on we will assume that the environment variable
DAQROOT has been defined to point to the
top level of the NSCLDAQ installation directory tree.
A bash shell script fragment that shows how to append the
NSCLDAQ Tcl package repository and lib path to the TCLLIBPATH
environment variable is shown below:
Similarly the code to add the NSCLDAQ Tcl package repository and
lib directory to the auto_path interpreter global is shown
below:
global env
global auto_path
lappend auto_path [file join $env(DAQROOT) TclLibs]
lappend auto_path [file join $env(DAQROOT) lib]
Once these directories have been added to the repository search path, an explicit package require as shown below must be issued prior to using the package commands:
The commands defined by ccusbcamac are defined in the ccusbcamac:: namespace. The examples in the next section will use fully qualified command names (e.g. ::ccusbcamac::cdreg 1 1). It is also possible to import the commands from that namespace using the namespace import command. If you are also using the wienercamac or camac package, this is not advisable as both packages share many of the same command names.
The ccusbcamac package is the client code to the slow-controls server in the CCUSBReadout program. All communication with the server is via the TCP/IP protocol and must proceed after a connection has been established. The server-side handler is the CCCUSBControl class, which must be registered to the slow controls server by adding a line to the controlconfig.tcl script such as:
The example creates a new control module named "ctlr" and is of type ccusb. In order to establish a functional connection, the name of the module, the name of the host running the server, and the port on which it listens must be provided to the ccusbcamac package. These three pieces of connection information are associated and stored with a branch and crate index by the cdconn command. This leads us to the major difference between the ccusbcamac package and the wienercamac packages that affects the user. The difference is that the cdconn command MUST be called prior to any other methods for a given branch and crate index combination. If for some reason the user forgets to call cdconn prior to calling cdreg, they will be presented with an error. It is not essential, but it is not a bad idea to check whether or not the server is accepting connections before calling cdreg using the isOnline procedure.
The commands in the package are loosely based on a subset of the ESONE CAMAC function standard (IEEE 785). In that standard, the unit of address is a single CAMAC module. The cdreg produces a handle to a module which is then used in subsequent commands that operate on that module. Extensions to the standard include commands that allow you to get the graded lam register values, sense and control the inhibit and determine if the crate is online.
While the ESONE block transfer functions are supported, connecting a LAM to a script is not. The example below enables the LAM on a module in Slot 15 of the crate labeled by the user as branch 0 and crate 1.
Example 5-30. Enabling a module Lam with ccusbcamac
# Load the package.
lappend auto_path [file join $env(DAQROOT) TclLibs]
lappend auto_path [file join $env(DAQROOT) lib]
package require ccusbcamac
# Provide the connection information for b=0, c=1
set host localhost
set port 27000 ;# The standard slow-controls server port
set module ctlr
ccusbcamac::cdconn 0 1 $host $port $module
# Initialize the crate and uninhibit it
ccusbcamac::C 0 1
ccusbcamac::Z 0 1
ccusbcamac::Inhibit 0 1 false
# Make the module handle:
set module [ccusbcamac::cdreg 0 1 15]
# F26 at any subaddress normally enables LAM:
ccusbcamac::cssa $module 26 0