B. van Eijk, D. Fokkema, R. Hart, A. de Laat, Nikhef, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The HiSPARC Control System
High-Energy Cosmic Ray Air Shower Research & Outreach
ICALEPCS 2013, San Francisco, USA
References
[1] HiSPARC home page: http://www.hisparc.nl/
[2] D. Fokkema, “The HiSPARC Experiment”; PhD thesis [3] R. Hart, “HiSPARC Station Software Installer”
Research & Outreach:
-Detection of air showers on a large surface
-2013: more than 100 stations in the Netherlands -Also stations in Denmark and England
-Recording atmospheric conditions:
- weather, lightning
-Students build the detectors and analyse the data -Educational materials for high-school teachers and junior and senior students
Organization:
-Joint effort science institutes
-Coordination @ Nikhef Amsterdam:
- data collection and processing
- organization, management, development
HiSPARC Detector
Hardware:-2 plastic scintillators-2 photo multiplier tubes (-12 V) -2 ski-boxes
-GPS device and antenna
- timestamps ~5 ns accurate -HiSPARC II control box
- USB 2.0
- Each channel @ 400 MHz - 12 bit ADCs (-2V < Vin < 0V) - Buffer for 3 events/channel
Data Acquisition
Status & Control
DAQ Software uses:
-NI run-time engine -Python
-SQLite -MySQL
Data quality:
HiSPARC @
http://github.com/HiSPARC/
High School Project on Astrophysics Research with Cosmics
Typical HiSPARC station with 2 detectors.
School’s finance: ~US$ 6,000
Option: 4 detectors → reconstruction of shower direction
Physics Data
weatherstation
http://data.hisparc.nl/
Stations in the Netherlands
Public Database:
- Based on Django web-framework
- Administration: station, certificates, contact info - Online histograms, analysis, physics data
Status & Control uses:
-OpenVPN -TightVNC -Nagios -Django
