Minicom alternative - CAEN HV interface (Freeman)

Quick Reference

• Login as root on host jlabdaq
  • type su in a terminal window
  • Then type the root password
    • Note: This program uses lock files to lock a serial port. There may be a way to set permissions on the /var/lock directory so that you do not have to login as root. As of this writing though....you will need the root password
• Type SW1470 on the command line, logged in as root .
• Top left of screen you will see, File => Add new N147x Board

• This pops up a new window:

• Window Settings:
  • Connection type: USB
  • Comm port: ttyUSB0 and 9600 (for USB port 0 and baud rate of 9600)
  • Module address: 0 (For non daisy chained module)
• This should pop up a window with the 4 HV channel settings. (if not, see troubleshooting below)

Introduction

I was assigned to implement an alternative interface to the CAEN N1470 HV card. The original plan was to see if something existed already, then use this as a model to program something. I found that CAEN provides a java interface to their board. It requires the RXTXComm java library as the Serial interface. Getting this library to work was challenging. I just happened to find an updated .rpm package, which had updated libraries, which I was ultimately able to get working on the current installation of CentOS, on host jlabdaq. Originally, I used an older version of the RXTXComm library which was giving segmentation faults when triing to connect to the ttyUSBx port. Do to time constraints I was not able to program something, so the following sections highlight the installation and troubleshooting of CAEN's interface.

Installation

The following are links to the download pages used for this installation.

External Download Pages:
CAEN java interface
rxtx_java-2.2pre2-16.1.x86_64.rpm

Local Copies:
CAEN java interface
rxtx_java-2.2pre2-16.1.x86_64.rpm

CAEN Software

Download and unpack the tarball:

cd <home dirctory>
mkdir caen
cd caen
cp <path to file>/CAEN_SW1470_1.0.tgz ./
tar xvfz CAEN_SW1470_1.0.tgz

Execute the install.sh script, as superuser:

./install.sh

This installs SW1470.sh to /usr/local/N1470/ , and creates a symbolic link from /usr/bin

RXTXComm library Installation

1. Download the rpm to your home directory then install it as superuser:

yum install rxtx-java-2.2pre2-16.1.x86_64.rpm

2. To check to see what was installed and where, type:

rpm -qlp rxtx-java-2.2pre2-16.1.x86_64.rpm

3. Check to see what java version you are using:

java -version

4. Copy RXTXcomm.jar to the current jre, get the version from Step 3 and substitute the x's for the version number:

cd /usr/lib/jvm/<jre-x.x.x>/lib/ext
cp <find directory path from Step 2>/RXTXcomm.jar ./

5. Copy serial library to current jre architecture specific directory:

cd /usr/lib/jvm/<jre-x.x.x>/lib/<current acrh (amd64)>
cp <directory found in step 2>/librxtxSerial.so ./
cp <directory found in step 2>/librxtxParallel.so ./

6. Add users to the groups lock and uucp:

edit /etc/group to include users under groups lock and uucp