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Surface Detector - Local Station Controller

PAMPa: Pierre Auger Monitoring Package

For the preliminary test of the tanks, the Local Station Controller will be equipped with an Ethernet card. This card can be used to provide an input/output channel for testing, monitoring and data taking. A portable computer can be connected to the Local Station Controller, in order to change DAC values, monitor ADC values, and take information about events that can be processed later. This information can also be used to simulate the behaviour of the Local Station in a standard PC.

In collaboration with College de France (J.M. Brunet & L. Guglielmi) we have developed the three components shown in next figure.

A new task was added to the Local Station OS9000 software, in order to provide information through standard UNIX sockets, with TCP/IP protocol. See GAP99-42.

A graphical interface was developed in Tcl/Tk scripting languaje to interact with the Local Station from a notebook. See GAP99-43.


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OS9000 Emulator Cross Library

A third component was developed in order to emulate the behaviour of the Local Station in a Linux box when no real hardware is available. This consist in an OS9000 API cross library for Linux that allow to compile and run real software made for the Local Station. The cross library translates the OS9000 system calls and functions using Linux counterparts resources. This tool is now obsolete and unmaintained since real hardware is available.


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PAMPad: Pierre Auger Monitoring Package Daemon

PAMPad is an Internet Super Server for OS9000. It's a multiport server like Unix ones that allow to run multiple servers and multiple connections. It was first intended to connect the PAMPa client to different data servers running in the Local Station but can be also used to run standart TCP/IP utilities like Telnet or Ftp through it.


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Frontend Board Analog Stage

The Frontend board is the interface between the Photomultiplier Tubes and the Local Station Controller. It consist of an input analog part and a digital part. The analog part is intended to adapt and filter the signals to be then processed by the digital part.

In collaboration with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Kwame Bowie) we have developed a two stage fifth order inverter filter in a Bessel configuration using ultra low power wide band operational amplifiers.


Frontend Board Simulation Software

This software simulates de input filter stage and the 10 bits D/A converters of the Frontend Board. It uses a digital implementation of the Bessel filters and quantizies the output according to 10 bits. It can be used as both stand alone program in order to analize offline data or as a part of a detector simulation program. Currently is being used in several implementations of detector simulators in the collaboration.


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Papers

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