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ID Date Author Type Category Subject
12100   Fri Apr 29 16:05:23 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeCleaning ETMX vacuum dirty window

After a second round of F.C. application, I think the window is clean enough and there are no residual F.C. pieces anywhere near the central parts of the window (indeed I think we got most of it off). So I am going to go ahead and install the Oplev.

 Quote: It looks very promising.

12104   Mon May 2 19:14:18 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeOptical layout almost complete

With Steve's help, I installed the Oplev earlier today. I adjusted the positions of the two lenses until I deemed the spot size on the QPD satisfactory by eye. As a quick check, I verified using the DTT template that the UGF is ~5Hz for both pitch and yaw. There is ~300uW of power incident on the QPD (out of ~2mW from the HeNe). In terms of ADC counts, this is ~13,000 counts which is about what we had prior to taking the endtable apart. There are a couple of spots from reflections off the black glass plate in the vacuum chamber, but in general, I think the overall setup is acceptable.

This completes the bulk of the optical layout. The only bits remaining are to couple the IR into the fiber and to install a power monitoring PD. Pictures to follow shortly.

Now that the layout is complete, it remains to optimize various things. My immediate plan is to do the following:

1. Maximize green transmission by tweaking alignment. I should also do a quick check using mirror specs to see that the measured transmitted green power compares favourably to what is expected.
2. Check the green PDH loop transfer function at the X end - this will allow me to set the gain on the uPDH box systematically.
3. Re-establish green beats, check noise performance.
4. There are possibly multiple beam dumps that have to be installed. For now, I've made sure that no high power IR beams are incident on the enclosure. But there are a couple of red and green beams that have to be accounted for.

I will also need to upload the layout drawing to reflect the layout finally implemented.

Not directly related:

The ETMx oplev servo is now on. I then wanted to see if I could lock both arms to IR. I've managed to do this successfully - BUT I think there is something wrong with the X arm dither alignment servo. By manually tweaking the alignment sliders on the IFOalign MEDM screen, I can get the IR transmission up to ~0.95. But when I run the dither, it drives the transmission back down to ~0.6, where it plateaus. I will need to investigate further.

GV Edit: There was some confusion while aligning the Oplev input beam as to how the wedge of the ETM is oriented. We believe the wedge is horizontal, but its orientation (i.e. thicker side on the right or left?) was still ambiguous. I've made a roughly-to-scale sketch (attachment #1) of what I think is the correct orientation - which turns out to be in the opposite sense of the schematic pinned up in the office area.. Does this make sense? Is there some schematic/drawing where the wedge orientation is explicitly indicated? My search of the elog/wiki did not yield any..

12105   Thu May 5 03:05:37 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeALS status update

[ericQ, gautam]

Today we spent some time looking into the PDH situation at the X end. A summary of our findings.

1. There is something that I don't understand with regards to the modulation signal being sent to the laser PZT via the sum+HPF pomona box - it used to be that with 2Vpp signal from the function generator, we got ~5mVpp signal at the PZT, which with the old specs resulted in a modulation of ~0.12rad. Now, however, I found that there was a need to place a 20dB attenuator after the splitter from the function generator in order to realize a modulation depth of ~0.25 (which is what we aim for, measured by locking to the TEM00 modes of the carrier and sidebands and comparing the ratio of powers). It could be that the PZT capacitance has changed dramatically after the repair. Nevertheless, I still cant reconcile the numbers. We measured the transfer function from the LO input of the pomona box to the output with the PZT connected, and figure there should be ~70dB of attentuation (with the 20dB additional attenuator in place). But this means 1Vpp*0.0003*70rad/V = 0.02rad which is an order of magnitude away from what the ratio of powers suggest. Maybe the measurement technique was not valid. In any case, this setup appears to work, and I'm also able to send +7dBm to the mixer which is what it wants (function generator output is 3Vpp).
2. In addition to the above, I found that the demodulated error signal had a peak-to-peak of a few volts. But the PDH servo is designed to have tens of mV at the input. Hence, it was necessary to turn down the gain of the REFL PD to 10dB and add a 20dB attenuator between mixer output and servo input.
3. While Johannes and I were investigating this earlier in the afternoon, we found that the waveform going to the laser PZT was weirdly distorted (still kind of sinusoidal in shape, but more rounded, I will put up a picture shortly). This may not be the biggest problem, but perhaps there is a better way to pipe the LO signal to the PZT and mixer than what is currently done.
4. We then looked at loop transfer function and spectrum of the control signal. Plots to follow. They look okay.
5. I measured the green power coming onto the PSL table. It is ~400uW. After optimizing alignment, the green transmission is ~0.4 according to whatever old normalization we are using.
6. We then recovered the X green beatnote and looked at the ALS noise spectrum. Beatnote amplitude at the beat PD is ~ -27dBm. The coherence in the region of a few hundred Hz suggests that some improvements can be made to the PDH situation (the gain of the PDH servo is maxed out at the X end at the moment...). But the bottom line is this is probably good enough to get back to locking...
12108   Thu May 5 14:05:01 2016 ranaUpdateendtable upgradeALS status update

All seems very fishy. Its not good to put attenuators and filters in nilly-willy.

1. Once the post-PD bandpass has been designed and constructed, you should be able to use whatever PD gain setting gives you the best SNR. There's no need to use more PD gain than necessary; it just reduces the PD bandwidth. What is the input referred current noise of the PD at the different gain settings?
2. The open loop mixer output *should* be very large. It should be reduced to mV only when the loop is closed.
3. The better way to estimate the modulation depth is to lock the arm on red as usual and then scan the EX laser and look at the green transmission. The FSR is 3.7 MHz, so the SBs should show up well in a narrow scan around the carrier.
4. I guess its going to be tough to impedance match the splitter box to the NPRO PZT, since its impedance is all over the place at 200-300 kHz, but you could put a 50 Ohm in-line terminator in there somewhere?
5. The Bode plot seems to indicate that we could easily get a 10 kHz UGF and then switch on a Boost. Is the remote Boost switch disabled or always ON? I am suspicious of the plot and think that the coarse trace is probably missing some sharp resonances which will sneakily bite you.
12109   Thu May 5 21:28:44 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeInnolight PZT capacitance

I suggested in an earlier elog that after the repair of the NPRO, the PZT capacitance may have changed dramatically. This seems unlikely - I measured the PZT capacitance with the BK Precision LCR meter and found it to be 2.62 nF, which is in excellent agreement with the numbers from elogs 3640 and 4354 - but this makes me wonder how the old setup ever worked. If the PZT capacitance were indeed that value, then for the Pomona box design in elog 4354, and assuming the PM at ~216kHz which was the old modulation frequency was ~30rad/V as suggested by the data in this elog, we would have had a modulation depth of 0.75 if the Function Generator were set to output a Signal at 2Vpp (2Vpp * 0.5 * 0.05 * 30rad/V = 1.5rad pp)! Am I missing something here?

Instead of using an attenuator, we could instead change the capacitor in the pomona box from 47pF mica to 5pF mica to realize a modulation depth of ~0.2 at the new modulation frequency of 231.25 kHz. In any case, as elog 4354 suggests, the phase introduced by this high-pass filter is non-zero at the modulation frequency, so we may also want to install an all-pass filter which will allow us to control the demodulation phase. This should be easy enough to implement with an Op27 and passive components we have in hand...

12122   Thu May 19 16:29:20 2016 SteveUpdateendtable upgradeOptical layout almost complete

12526   Fri Sep 30 19:53:07 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeX end IR pickoff fiber coupled

[johannes, gautam]

Today we re-installed the fiber coupler on the X-endtable to couple some of the PSL light into a fiber that runs to the PSL table, where it is combined with a similar PSL pickoff to make an IR beat between the EX AUX laser and the PSL. The main motivation behind this was to make the process of finding the green beatnote easier. We used JAMMT (just another mode matching tool) to calculate a two lens solution to couple the light into the collimator - we use a +200mm and -200mm lens, I will upload a more detailed mode matching calculation + plot + picture soon. We wanted to have a beam waist of 350um at the collimator, a number calculated using the following formula from the Thorlabs website:

$d =4\lambda (\frac{f}{\pi*MFD})$

where d is the diameter of the output beam from the collimator, f is the collimating lens focal length and MFD is 6.6um for the fiber we use.

There is ~26mW of IR light coming through the BS after the EX AUX - after playing around with the 6 axis stage that the coupler is mounted on, Johannes got the IR transmission to the PSL table up to ~11.7mW. The mode matching efficiency of 45% is certainly not stellar, but we were more curious to find a beat and possibly measure the X arm loss so we decided to accept this for now - we could probably improve this by moving the lenses around. We then attenuated the input beam to the fiber by means of an ND filter such that the light incident on the coupler is now ~1.3mW, and the light arriving at the PSL table from the EX laser is ~550uW. Along with the PSL light, after the various couplers, we have ~500uW of light going to the IR beat PD - well below its 2mW threshold.

The IR beat was easily found with the frequency counter setup. However, there was no evidence of a green beat. So we went to the PSL table and did the near-field-far-field alignment onto the beat PD. After doing this, we were able to see a beat - but the amplitude was puny (~-60dBm, we are more used to seeing ~-20dBm on the network analyzer in the control room). Perhaps this can be improved by tweaking the alignment onto the PD while monitoring the RF output with an oscilloscope.

Moreover, the green PDH problems with the X end persist - even though the arm readily locks to a TEM00 mode, it frequently spontaneously drops lock. I twiddled around with the gain on the uPDH box while looking at the error signal while locked on a oscilloscope, but was unable to mitigate the situation. Perhaps the loop shape needs to be measured and that should tell us if the gain is too low or high. But ALS is getting closer to the nominal state...

Johannes is running his loss measurement script on the X arm - but this should be done by ~10pm tonight.

12532   Wed Oct 5 16:28:10 2016 gautamUpdateendtable upgradeEX laser power monitor PD installed

I installed a 10% BS to pick off some of the light going to the IR fiber, and have added a Thorlabs PDA55 PD to the EX table setup. The idea is to be able to monitor the power output of the EX NPRO over long time scales, and also to serve as an additional diagnostic tool for when ALS gets glitchy etc. There is about 0.4mW of IR power incident on the PD (as measured with the Ophir power meter), which translates to ~2500 ADC counts (~1.67V as measured with an Oscilloscope set to high impedance directly at the PD output). The output of the PD is presently going to Ch5 of the same board that receives the OL QPD voltages (which corresponds to ADC channel 28). Previously, I had borrowed the power and signal cables from the High-Gain Transmon PD to monitor this channel, but today I have laid out independent cabling and also restored the Transmon PD to its nominal state.

On the CDS side of things, I edited C1SCX to route the signal from ADC Ch28 to the ALS block. I also edited the ALS_END library part to have an additional input for the power monitor, to keep the naming conventions consistent. I have added a gain in the filter module to calibrate the readout into mW using these numbers. The channel is called C1:ALS-X_POWER_OUT, and is DQed for long-term trending purposes.

The main ALS screen is a bit cluttered so I have added this channel to the ALS overview MEDM screen for now..

2131   Wed Oct 21 17:12:30 2009 AlbertoUpdateelogBrowser context menu enabled on the Elog under HTM editing mode

On behalf of Steve and of the rest of the not-native-English community at the 40m willing to have their browser's spell checker working while editing the Elog, I fixed the Elog's feature that prevented Firefox' context menu (that one which pops up with a mouse right click) to work when using the HTML editing interface (FCKeditor).

That let also Firefox spell checker to get enabled.

To get the browser context menu just press CTRL right-clicking.

To make sure that the features works properly on your browser, you might have to fully clear the browser's cache.

Basically I modified the FCKeditor config file (/cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/scripts/fckeditor/fckconfig.js). I added this also to the elog section on our Wiki.

2200   Fri Nov 6 19:29:24 2009 JenneUpdateelogelog acting up

elog was acting up again (not running), so I restarted it.

2201   Fri Nov 6 20:10:15 2009 JenneUpdateelogelog acting up

 Quote: elog was acting up again (not running), so I restarted it.

And again.  This makes 4 times since lunchtime yesterday....something bad is up.

2302   Thu Nov 19 16:04:48 2009 AlbertoConfigurationelogElog debugging output - Down time programmed today to make changes

We want the elog process to run in verbose mode so that we can see what's going. The idea is to track the events that trigger the elog crashes.

Following an entry on the Elog Help Forum, I added this line to the elog starting script start-elog-nodus:

./elogd -p 8080 -c /cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/elogd.cfg -D -v > elogd.log 2>&1

which replaces the old one without the part with the -v argument.

The -v argument should make the verbose output to be written into a file called elogd.log in the same directory as the elog's on Nodus.

I haven't restarted the elog yet because someone might be using it. I'm planning to do it later on today.

So be aware that:

We'll be restarting the elog today at 6.00pm PT. During this time the elog might not be accessible for a few minutes.

2303   Thu Nov 19 18:49:55 2009 AlbertoConfigurationelogElog debugging output - Down time programmed today to make changes

 Quote: We want the elog process to run in verbose mode so that we can see what's going. The idea is to track the events that trigger the elog crashes. Following an entry on the Elog Help Forum, I added this line to the elog starting script start-elog-nodus: ./elogd -p 8080 -c /cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/elogd.cfg -D -v > elogd.log 2>&1 which replaces the old one without the part with the -v argument. The -v argument should make the verbose output to be written into a file called elogd.log in the same directory as the elog's on Nodus. I haven't restarted the elog yet because someone might be using it. I'm planning to do it later on today. So be aware that: We'll be restarting the elog today at 6.00pm PT. During this time the elog might not be accessible for a few minutes.

I tried applying the changes but they didn't work. It seems that nodus doesn't like the command syntax.

I have to go through the problem...

The elog is up again.

2562   Tue Feb 2 18:15:47 2010 AlbertoUpdateelogElog restarted it

Zach made me notice that the elog had crashed earlier on this afternoon.

I just restarted it with the restarting script.

Instructions on how to run the last one are now in the wiki page. Look on the "How To" section, under "How to restart the elog".

2567   Wed Feb 3 10:46:12 2010 AlbertoUpdateelogelog restarted

Again, this morning Zach told me that the elog had crashed while he was trying to post an entry.

I just restarted it.

2569   Thu Feb 4 00:59:52 2010 ranaUpdateelogelog restarted

I restarted the ELOG on NODUS just now. Our attempt to set up error logging worked - it turns out ELOG was choking on the .ps file attachment.

So for the near future: NO MORE .PS files! Use PDF - move into the 20th century at least.

matlab can directly make either PNG or PDF files for you, you can also use various other conversion tools on the web.

Of course, it would be nice if nodus could handle .ps, but its a Solaris machine and I don't feel like debugging this. Eventually, we'll give him away and make the new nodus a Linux box, but that day is not today.

2669   Fri Mar 12 13:52:18 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

The elog was down and I ran the restart script.

2702   Tue Mar 23 15:38:26 2010 AlbertoUpdateelogelog just restarted

I found the elog down and I restarted it.

Then, after few seconds it was down again. Maybe someone else was messing with it. I restarted an other 5 times and eventually it came back up.

2739   Wed Mar 31 10:34:02 2010 josephbUpdateelogElog not responding this morning

When I went to use the elog this morning, it wasn't responding.  I killed the process on nodus, and then restarted, per the 40m wiki instructions.

2758   Fri Apr 2 08:52:21 2010 AlbertoUpdateelogelog restarted

i just restarted the elog for the third time in the past 12 hours.

I checked the elog.log file to debug the problem. It doesn't contain eveidence of any particular cause, except for png/jpg file uploads happened last night.

I'm not sure we can blame Image Magic again because the last crash seems to be occurred just after an entry with e jpg picture was included in the body of the message. I think Image Magic is used only for previews of attachments like pdfs or ps.

Maybe we should totally disable image magic.

2817   Tue Apr 20 13:00:52 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

I restarted the elog with the restart script as it was down.

2853   Wed Apr 28 08:55:19 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

Restarted the elog with the script as it was down.

2854   Wed Apr 28 09:21:16 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

And again.

 Quote: Restarted the elog with the script as it was down.

2979   Tue May 25 07:58:23 2010 kiwamuUpdateelogelog down

I found the elog got down around 7:30 am in this morning.

So I restarted it by running the script: "start-elog-nodus" as instructed on the wiki.

http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/40m/How_To/Restart_the_elog

3071   Sat Jun 12 18:03:00 2010 sharmilaUpdateelogTemperature Controller

Kiwamu and I setup a serial port terminal for receiving data from TC200 via a RS-232 USB interface. It was done using a Python code. Some command definitions need to be done to get the output from TC-200.

3181   Thu Jul 8 17:29:20 2010 Katharine, SharmilaUpdateelog

Last night, we successfully connected and powered our circuit, which allowed us to test whether our OSEMs were working.  Previously, we had been unable to accomplish this because (1) we weren't driving it sufficiently high voltage, and  (2) we didn't check that the colored leads on our circuit actually corresponded to the colored ports on the power supply (they were all switched, which we are in the process of rectifying), so our circuit was improperly connected to the supply .  Unfortunately, we didn't learn this until after nearly cooking our circuit, but luckily there appears to have been no permanent damage .

Our circuit specs suggested powering it with a voltage difference of 48V, so we needed to run our circuit at a difference of at least 36-40 V.  Since our power supply only supplied a difference of up to 30V in each terminal, we combined them in order to produce a voltage of up to double that.  We decided to power our circuit with a voltage difference of 40V (+/- 20V referenced to true ground).  The current at the terminals were 0.06 and 0.13 A.

To test our circuit, we used a multimeter to check the supplied voltage at different test points, to confirm that an appropriate input bias was given to various circuit elements.  We identified the direction of LED bias on our OSEM, and connected it to our circuit. We were extremely gratified when we looked through the IR viewer and saw that, in fact, the LED in the OSEM was glowing happily .

We hooked up two oscilloscopes and measured the current through the coil, and also through the LED and photodiode in the OSEM.  We observed a change in the photodiode signal when we blocked the LED light, which was expected.  The signal at the PD and the LED were both sinusoidal waves around ~3 kHz.

We then went back to our levitation setup, and crudely tried to levitate a magnet with attached flag by using our hands and adjusting the gain (though we also could have been watching the PD current).  The first flag we tried was a soldering tip; we couldn't levitate this but achieved an interesting sort of baby-step "levitation" (levitation .15) which allowed us to balance the conical flag on its tip on top of the OSEM (stable to small disturbances).  After learning that conical flags are a poor idea, we switched our flag to a smaller-radius cylindrical magnet.  We were much closer to levitating this magnet, but were unable to conclusively levitate it .

Current plan:

Adjust the preset resistors to stabilize feedback

Check LED drive circuit.

Finish calculating the transfer function, and hook up the circuit to the spectrum analyzer to measure it as well.

Observe the signal from the photocurrent as disturbances block the LED light.

Play with the gain of the feedback to see how it affects levitation.

3200   Mon Jul 12 21:26:02 2010 Katharine, SharmilaUpdateelogmaglev coils

The connection between our coil wires and BNC terminals was pretty awful (soldered wires broke off ) so we removed the old heat shrink and re-soldered the wires.  We then chose more appropriately sized heat shrinks (small one around each of the two soldered wires, a medium-sized shrink around the wires together, a large one covering the BNC terminal and the wire) and used the solder iron and heat gun to shrink them.

3212   Wed Jul 14 01:05:27 2010 Sharmila,KatharineSummaryelogMaglev

Yesterday we hooked up the Quadrant Maglev control to the power supply to test the components in the Input/Output part of the circuit.

The output from the buffer was an unexpected high noise signal which was caused by some circuit components.

## Consequently these were replaced/removed after confirming the source of noise.

The following is a story of how it was done.

To test the components of input/output, we measured the output across TP_PD3(Test Point -Photo Diode 3).
We got a high noise signal with a frequency of several kHz.

We tested the values of various electronic components. The resistances R5 and R6 did not measure as mentioned(each had a value of 50 K in the schematic). The value of R6 was 10 K and we replaced R5 with a 10 K resistor. We still got the noise signal at 5.760 kHz with a Pk-Pk voltage of 2.6 V. The resistors in R-LED measured 1.5 K instead of the marked 2.2 K.

We had three suspects in hand:

• BUF634P : A buffer from the Sallen-Key filter to the LED.
• C24 : A capacitor which is a part of the Sallen-Key filter.
• C23 : A capacitor in the feedback circuit of the Sallen-Key filter.

BUF634P : The data sheet for the BUF634P instructed a short across the 1-4 terminals in the presence of capacitive load.  We followed this to overcome the effect(if any) of the extra-long BNC cables which we were using. The oscilloscope still waved 'Hi!' at a few kHz. We removed the buffer and also the feedback resistor R42 from the circuit, what we were testing boiled down to measuring the output of the Sallen-Key filter. The output still contained the funny yet properly periodic signal at a few kHz.

.

C24: Removing C24 did not do any good.

C23: As a final step C23 was removed. And ... We got a stable DC at 9.86 V(almost stable DC with a low noise at a few MHz). C24 and the buffer were replaced and output seemed fine. The output was a high frequency sine wave which was riding on a DC of 9.96 V.

We rechecked if the LED was on and the infrared viewer gave a positive signal.

We went ahead obtaining the transfer function of the feedback control for which we used a spectrum analyzer.

The input for feedback system is a photo current whereas the spectrum analyzer tests the circuit with a voltage impulse.  Hence the voltage input from the spectrum analyzer needs to be converted into current of suitable amplitude(few microamps) for testing the spectrum analyzer.  Similarly the output which is a coil current needs to be changed to a voltage output through a load for feeding into the channel of the spectrum analyzer. We used a suitable resistance box with BNC receiving ends to do this. We obtained a plot for the transfer function which is shown below.

Future plans:

- Check the calculated transfer functions with the plot of the spectrum analyzer

- Model the entire(OSEM, magnet, actuators etc.) system in Simulink and calculate the overall transfer function

- Stable levitation of the 1X1 system

3234   Fri Jul 16 12:36:00 2010 Katharine, SharmilaUpdateeloglevitation

After last night's challenge (or inspiration), we levitated our magnet this morning.  Since the nice Olympus camera is not currently in the 40m, we had to use my less stellar camera, but despite the poor video quality you can still see the magnet returning to its stable equilibrium position.  Once we recover the better camera, we will post new videos.  Also, we haven't yet figured out how to put videos in line in the elog entry, so here are the youtube links:

levitation 1

levitation 2

We adjusted the gain on coil 1 so that the resistance from the pots was 57.1k (maximum gain of 101.2,).

currents from power supply, pre-levitation: 0.08 A and 0.34 A

post levitation: 0.08 A and 0.11 A

note: we're not sure why changing the gain on coil 3 changes the current through the power supply, so we'd like to investigate that next.

3250   Tue Jul 20 11:55:15 2010 Sharmila,KatharineUpdateelogMaglev

We plotted the transfer functions for the maglev control circuit and compared them with the plots from the spectrum
analyzer. We were stuck for sometime because

1) we had wrongly entered the value of one of the resistors which was off by a factor of 2000.
2) The plots were not done in right units. So we couldn't figure out differences quite well.

The two plots are shown below. We are still off by a factor of 3 which we'll figure out soon.

3382   Sat Aug 7 10:47:38 2010 KojiSummaryelogelog restarted / source of the trouble eliminated

Nancy notified me that the elog crashed. It was fixed.

I restarted elog, but it kept crashing. Some of the entries on Aug 6th caused the trouble.

I tried to refresh the pictures in entries 3376, 3377, 3378. Still it kept crashing.
I started to dig into the elog file itself. (/cvs/cds/caltech/elog/elog-2.7.5/logbooks/40m/100806a.log)

FInally I found that there was some invalid reply links in the entry 3379.

Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 19:29:59 -0700 Reply to: 3379 In reply to: 3379

The entry is refering this entry itself. That is weird. So I deleted the reply-to and in-reply-to lines.
Then elogd got happy.

In fact, 3379 was a dupulication of 3380, so I deleted this entry.

3390   Tue Aug 10 01:05:17 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

Elog was down. Restarted with the script.

3396   Wed Aug 11 02:44:37 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

You'll never guess what happened: the elog crashed!

I restarted it with the script. Yay.

3401   Wed Aug 11 16:13:59 2010 JennaUpdateelogelog restarted

The elog crashed, so we restarted it again.

3406   Thu Aug 12 11:39:27 2010 ZachUpdateelogelog restarted

with script

3415   Thu Aug 12 23:17:54 2010 ZachUpdateelogrestarted

script

3416   Thu Aug 12 23:41:48 2010 JenneUpdateelogrestarted

 Quote: script

More of the same.

Who is putting weird figures into the elog?!?!  I haven't checked lately, but this is what usually crashes the elog.  It's been happening a lot lately, and it might be the .pdf's.

Let's play a new game.  We'll call this game "Everyone only use .png files for the next week" Ready? GO!

3420   Fri Aug 13 13:11:30 2010 DmassUpdateelogrestarted

Quote:

 Quote: script

More of the same.

Who is putting weird figures into the elog?!?!  I haven't checked lately, but this is what usually crashes the elog.  It's been happening a lot lately, and it might be the .pdf's.

Let's play a new game.  We'll call this game "Everyone only use .png files for the next week" Ready? GO!

Do we know what causes the crashes for definite? Let's give the whole knowledge gathering a shot. Surfs welcome to post. Please follow the format and keep it brief. P.S. if the elog stops responding or hangs while you're trying to edit a post or write a post, you may have crashed it.

Person

• Crashes

Dmass

• I have crashed the elog with downsized jpegs (~300-900kB).
• I see jpegs on the front page of the 40m (which seem to have not crashed it?)
• I have posted pdf's with and without png thumbnails (associated automatically via the Mac program preview) without problem.

Edit this post to add your own experience using the above format

3426   Mon Aug 16 23:13:25 2010 ZachUpdateeloge to the log

Zach

• I get so many freebies it's ridiculous
3429   Tue Aug 17 09:06:08 2010 AlbertoUpdateelogelog was down

I just restarted the elog after I found it down a few minutes ago.

3431   Tue Aug 17 23:59:46 2010 KatharineUpdateelogMaglev update

Katharine, Sharmila

Update:
We haven't been posting in the elog regularly, for which we are very sorry.  We have been taking notes in our log books, but we ought to have posted here as well.  We apologize and now present an overview of what we've been up to.

Some time ago, we created a Simulink model to predict the response of our system, but for the model to be useful we needed to include approximately correct gains for each block in the diagram, including the magnet force and coil force gradients and OSEM "gain." We also needed to better quantify the 1x1 levitation.

The circuit which converts current to voltage in the Quadrant maglev control has a variable resistor. This is useful as it gives us a way to zero the current when the levitated object is in the equilibrium position. It was done as follows. The output voltage from the circuit converting current to voltage is fed into the oscilloscope. The voltage values for zero and complete blockage of the LED is noted(say 2V). We adjust the resistor to make the voltage output to be V when the flag completey bolcks the LED. This gives a zero current when the flag is in the equilibrium position.

OSEM Calibration:

The OSEM works by blocking the light that goes into the photodetector from the LED by a flag. To simulate the model we had on simulink, we needed to find what the gain of the OSEM was. The gain of the OSEM is the current it gives per unit displaccement of the flag. To determine this we attached a micrometer to the OSEM flag. The micrometer was long eneough to push the flag to completey block the OSEM. We connected the output of the PD test point (which was the voltage after the photodiode current was converted into voltage) to the oscilloscope. We noted down the voltage difference in the oscilloscope with a fixed reference for different positons of the flag. From the oscilloscope output, we were able to get the PD current. We then selected a linear region of the plot of PD current vs flag position(which is usually in the middle) to fit the graph with a straight line. The slope gives the OSEM gain.

Magnet strength
We need to know about the relative strengths of our magnets (levitated and fixed in the coil) in order to do magnet matching.  We used a Gaussmeter to measure the field from each coil magnet at  ~2 mm away from the center (the probe was fixed to an aluminum block, so that the tip had the same vertical separation for each of the four fixed plate magnets).  We labeled each of the four magnets and calculated the field at this distance to be 0.206 kG, 0.210 kG, 0.212 kG, and 0.206 kG,  respectively, for coils 1-4.  However, each measurement had a rather large uncertainty of 0.01 kG, because the field strength varied a lot with position on the magnet, and the measurements were limited by how well we could align the probe tip with the center.

Fixed Plate Magnets - magnetic field (kG)            meas't    1        2        3        4 1       0.205    0.213    0.209    0.204 2       0.211    0.219    0.223    0.207 3       0.199    0.205    0.211    0.201 4       0.207    0.203    0.206    0.213 average 0.206    0.210    0.212    0.206 stdev   0.005    0.007    0.007    0.005

We also planned to take the same measurements for the coil magnets.  We noted that the magnetic field varied a lot depending on the probe's location, but not in the way we would expect.  At the edges of the magnet, the field was much stronger (~2 kG) than at the center (~0.5 kG).  We initially thought this might have to do with how we were holding the probe -- for instance, if we measured the force towards the edge by moving the tip all the way across the center of the magnet, there might be some kind of integration effect which does not accurately represent the field.   However, we measured the field at the edge with the probe across the magnet and also with the probe, so this is clearly not the case.

We also noticed that the cylindrical magnet we used for single-magnet levitation was not attracted to the coil magnets in the way we expected.    Though the cylindrical magnet was oriented so that it was strongly attracted to the coil magnet, it was attracted more to the edges than the center, so that it seemed to be repelled by the centers of the coil magnets.  Though this follows somewhat from the Gaussmeter readings, it is not the behavior we would expect when considering the coil magnets as magnetic dipoles.

Attempting single-magnet levitation for each coil:
We attempted to levitate single magnets using all four OSEM/coil combinations.   We assembled the magnets and OSEMs using Haixing's mount, and, adjusting the height of the OSEM plate, attempted to levitate the single magnet with a flag with which we were previously successful.   This was completely unsuccessful using all of the coil magnets (and when we tried to levitate using the south magnets, we flipped the cylindrical magnet's orientation).
Since we had already achieved this levitation, this seemed particularly wrong.  We disassembled the fixed OSEM plate in Haixing's mount and built a cursory OSEM mount, similar to the one we had used for levitation before, and did not fix it in place.  After a little experimenting with the height and position of the OSEM, we were able to achieve levitation with coils 1 and 4.
We noted the levitation magnet separation (~4.5 mm) and the height of the OSEMs at which levitation was achieved (147 +/- 1 mm for coil 1, 146 +/- 1 mm for coil 4).  Then, we reassembled Haixing's OSEM plate and tried to levitate the cylindrical magnet at coil 1 and coil 4, respectively, adjusting the OSEM plate so that the height of the OSEM of interest was the same as when we achieved single-magnet levitation.  This was unsuccessful, which leads us to believe that there is some alignment issue between the fixed coil magnets and the OSEMs in the mount,  possibly due to the unusual field from the fixed coil magnets.
We also were completely unable to levitate using coils 2 and 3.  Coils 1 and 4 have identical circuit paths, whereas 2 and 3 differ slightly.  With more time, we need to investigate this further.

Force-distance measurements
We also measured the repulsive force between the cylindrical magnet and the coil magnets as a function of separation.  We fixed each of the coil magnets, individually, on a stack of sticky notes on a precision balance (the stack of sticky notes was to prevent the coil magnet from interacting with the digital balance) and zeroed the balance.  We then fixed the cylindrical magnet (oriented so that it would be repelled by the coil magnet) to a teflon rod, and mounted the rod so that we could slide it up and down a long cylindrical post.  Noting the position of the rod and cylindrical magnet, we were able to measure the repulsive force as a function of separation (see Excel graph).
However, because the magnetic field varied so much with position on the coil magnet, there is a lot of uncertainty associated with these measurements.    We tried to keep the cylindrical magnet in the same horizontal position, but it was impossible to keep the exact position while sliding the mounted teflon rod up and down the posts.    In spite of this, we fit the linear region of this graph, near the equilibrium separation of the magnets, for a very approximate measurement of the magnetic field force gradient. The slope gives the force per unit distance of the magnet.

Coil-force measurement
We measured the force by changing the current through the coil of wire, using a very similar setup as described above.  Since we are concerned with the magnetic force as a function of current, not separation, we fixed the teflon rod so that the cylindrical magnet and coil magnet were separated by ~4.5 mm, the approximate levitation separation of the two magnets.   We then completely blocked the OSEM with the flag, creating a maximum PD current, and measured the coil current using an oscilloscope when the LED was fully blocked and the current when we removed the flag.  At the same time, we measured the repulsive force by looking at the precision balance.
Unfortunately, we had difficulty taking further readings, because our circuit starting behaving oddly (described below).  Otherwise, we would repeat this process by blocking the OSEM LED by various amount and measuring the change in coil current, and the corresponding reading on the precision balance.   However, the force should be linearly dependent on coil current, and we ought to know one other point: when there is no current in the coil, there should be no magnetic force from the coil to the magnet.  Using this information, we can determine the slope of magnetic force by coil current, but it's not very reliable as we have only one real data point.
One additional aspect makes this reading questionable.  When we switched on the power supply, the reading on the precision balance changed, before we had blocked the OSEM LED at all. Since no light was blocked, theoretically no photocurrent should be coming from the PD and there should not be a coil current from the feedback, so the force should not be changing. We are not sure why this is.

Recent Circuit Behavior
Some noise in the circuit appears to be hugely amplified when the gains of each coil are high, resulting in a high frequency signal of a few hundred kHz.  When the gains are all sufficiently high, this noise can saturate the coil current so that when PD current changes, there is no visible change in coil current.
On Saturday, we noticed some odd behavior from the circuit.  We hooked up the oscilloscope so we could see both PD current and coil current, and were very surprised that the PD current signal was oscillating and continually changing even when no flag was inside the OSEM.   This was also affecting the coil current as well.  We thought this might be due to some component burning out in our circuit, or RC coupling somewhere, but we did not get a chance to pinpoint the origin of this problem.

Modeling
Initially we had attempted to model the force-distance treating the two cylindrical magnets as dipoles, and finding the attraction/repulsions between the four distinct poles.  However, the resulting equation did not have a maximum, which is what we got in our measured values, so it seems this is not the best approach.  We would like to try the current loop approximation.

3436   Wed Aug 18 19:14:59 2010 JenneUpdateelogelog dead again

The elog was so dead this time that the restart script didn't work.  I followed the restart-by-hand instructions instead, with success.

3439   Thu Aug 19 01:49:14 2010 JenneUpdateelogelog dead again

 Quote: The elog was so dead this time that the restart script didn't work.  I followed the restart-by-hand instructions instead, with success.

Just for added interest, I tried a different method when the restart script broke.  The "start-elog-nodus" script has a line "kill elogd".  This seems not to be actually killing anything anymore, which means the elog can't restart.  So this time I went for "kill <pid number>", and then ran the startup script.  This worked.  So it's the "kill elogd" which isn't working reliably.

3440   Thu Aug 19 09:51:43 2010 josephbUpdateelogelog dead again

I found the elog dead again this morning, and the script didn't kill again. I modified the script to use the following line instead of "pkill elogd":

kill ps -ef | grep elogd | grep -v grep | grep -v start-elog-nodus | awk '{print \$2}'

Hopefully the script will be a bit more robust in the future.

Quote:

 Quote: The elog was so dead this time that the restart script didn't work.  I followed the restart-by-hand instructions instead, with success.

Just for added interest, I tried a different method when the restart script broke.  The "start-elog-nodus" script has a line "kill elogd".  This seems not to be actually killing anything anymore, which means the elog can't restart.  So this time I went for "kill <pid number>", and then ran the startup script.  This worked.  So it's the "kill elogd" which isn't working reliably.

3445   Thu Aug 19 21:56:02 2010 ZachUpdateelogrestarted

script

3446   Fri Aug 20 13:09:53 2010 josephbUpdateelogRebooted elog

I had to restart the elog again.

At this point, I'm going to try to get one of the GC guys to install gdb on nodus, and run the elog in the debugger, that way when it crashes the next time, I have some error output I can send back to the developer and ask why its crashing there.

3453   Sun Aug 22 16:20:24 2010 ZachUpdateelogrestarted (with my phone this time)
3454   Mon Aug 23 00:08:24 2010 JenneUpdateelogJoe, I think this's your cue...
3464   Tue Aug 24 14:29:18 2010 josephbUpdateelogElog down for 1 minute

I'm going to take the elog down for one minute and restart it under gdb (using a copy of gdb stolen from fb40m since I couldn't figure out how to install an old enough version on nodus from source).  The terminal with information is running on Rosalba under the "Phase Noise" panel, so please don't close it.  Ideally, the next time the elog crashes, I'll have some output indicating why or at least the line in the code.  I can then look at the raw source code or send the line back to the developer and see if he has any ideas.

3465   Tue Aug 24 17:57:57 2010 ZachUpdateelogrestarted

Restarted the elog using the script. I had to do it twice for it to work. This is not the first time this has happened---does anyone know why this might be?

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