CUSTOMIZATION AND TUNING OF THE CONTROL SYSTEM FOR THE TIME OF FLIGHT DETECTOR OF THE ALICE EXPERIMENT

The control system of the ALICE TOF detector is based on PVSS, a SCADA system that has been selected by CERN as the common platform for the LHC experiments. Although PVSS has been extended to offer standard tools to the different detectors, the TOF controls required specific developments to include the communication with custom electronics and to fulfil the requirements by the physicists on data archiving and retrieving, and for quick graphical and statistical analysis. This paper will present the TOF Detector Control System, describing monitoring and control functions for the various subsystems: high and low voltages, gas and cooling, and readout electronics. While high and low voltages are monitored via OPC, electronics monitoring and controls use the DIM client-server system, to allow a common integrated interface implemented in PVSS. TOF has organized several tests to check the performance and robustness of fully equipped and simulated systems where a large amount of data has to be monitored in a moderately hostile environment; the results of these tests are presented