RE: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

[Mark Rivers via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>]

Hi Abdalla,

 

The screenshot you sent says that you are using 1024 channels/spectrum.  When the driver reads the spectrum from the device the data is binary, 4 bytes/channel, so the total data read is 4096 bytes.  At 9600 baud the data rate is about 960 bytes/s (with 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit).  That means it takes 4096/960 = 4.3 seconds to read the spectrum.  You are only reading the spectrum when acquisition stops, but you are reading the status at 10 Hz.  Reading the status actually requires asking for the first channel of the spectrum,  and also involves significant communication and thus time.

 

You should enable asynTrace so you can see the communication between the driver and the device.  If you can send that output it would be very interesting to see the time delays.  You should do it both when you are trying to read the temperature and when you are not reading temperature.  It may be that polling the status is using the entire 9600 baud bandwidth and so the temperature query never gets to run and so times out.

 

Is it possible to increase the baud rate to a value greater than 9600?

 

Mark

 

 

From: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2025 12:50 AM
To: Mark Rivers <rivers at cars.uchicago.edu>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: RE: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

 

Hello Mark

 

Thanks for the feedback. Right now, the beamline scientists reported good performance with beam and the current baud rate (9600 8N1) seems to be OK and it does not show any performance issues. I am curious about the scan rate of the temperature and status, why setting it to passive solved the issue? To recap the issue, when doing Erase/Start, asynTrace showed timeout handler every 1 second while reading the temperature.

 

Best Regards,

Abdalla Al-Dalleh

Control Engineer

SESAME

 

From: Mark Rivers <rivers at cars.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2025 4:25 PM
To: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

 

Hi Abdalla,

 

Sorry for the delay in replying.

 

Setting “Read spectrum every” setting to “Event” does not actually do anything, since you have probably not triggered any Events in your IOC.  You should just set it to Passive.  The spectrum will always be read when acquisition completes as long as Check Done is not Passive.

 

If you are collecting for more than a few seconds and want to see periodic spectrum updates then you can set “Read spectrum every” to 5 seconds and it won't slow things down too much.

 

What baud rate are you using?  Is it possible to increase the baud rate to improve communication speed?

 

Mark

 

 

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From: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2025 2:03 AM
To: Mark Rivers <rivers at cars.uchicago.edu>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov <Tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: RE: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

 

Hello Mark

 

Yes, we are using the serial port to communicate with the detector. I turned on asynTrace options and I noticed that the freezing and unresponsive buttons issues are caused due to a timeout during acquisition, this is confirmed because “timeout handler” message gets printed almost every 1 second (not all the time), and after that the temperature PV gets processed. So I switched the scan rate on the main GUI to passive just to test and the acquisition works fine for now.

 

Also, I noticed that the spectrum takes 1 or 2 seconds more than the real time, I looked into the MCA setup GUI and changed the “Read spectrum every” setting to “Event”, seems a bit more responsive than before. I attached the current MCA settings screenshot. What do you think?

 

Best Regards,

Abdalla Al-Dalleh

Control Engineer

SESAME

 

From: Mark Rivers <rivers at cars.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 4:19 PM
To: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>; tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: Re: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

 

Hi Abdallah,

 

Are you communicating with the XFlash over a serial port or over their QM100 high-speed interface?

 

If it is over a serial port then you should enable asynTrace to see the communication stream.

 

Mark

 

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From: Abdalla Ahmad <Abdalla.Ahmad at sesame.org.jo>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2025 4:55 AM
To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov <Tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Cc: Mark Rivers <rivers at cars.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Issues in MCA module with XFlash detector

 

Hi

 

We have the MCA module running on a Windows 10 machine to control the XFlash detector from Bruker. We started to face the following issues:

• When the IOC starts, the state is always acquiring without pressing the start button.
• The buttons to erase/stop/start the acquisition have no effect, they do not stop or start the acquisition.
• The real time and live time show weird values on startup, like in 10s or 100s. of seconds.
• If I wait long enough, the acquisition stops but pressing the start button again, say for a real time of 1 second, it starts acquiring for fraction
  of a second and then freezes, nothing is progressing.

 

Despite what is mentioned, the IOC log shows no error messages. The Bruker software seems to acquire just fine, but not tested thoroughly. We even

Installed the IOC on a different laptop and a PC and still the same behavior. Any idea on what might went wrong with the detector or IOC?

 

Best Regards,

 

Abdalla Al-Dalleh

Control Engineer

SESAME