ITC503

It is an oxford instruments Piece of kit. It is used as the cryostat as part of the 7.5T magnet (see also ips which has more detailed documentation about the 7.5t magnet). It is also used as part of the MuSR 3He Refrigerator (though that lives in its own IOC see here).

Gotchas

  • Scans very (very) slowly. This is necessary for communication with device.

  • It is stolen from diamond.

  • Occasionally device will ignore first character of command, e.g.

2018/05/16 16:57:02.169 \\.\COM2 write 3
R9\r
2018/05/16 16:57:02.190 \\.\COM2 read 3
?9\r
2018/05/16 16:57:02.189831 L0 TE:NDW1799:ITC503_01:I: Input "?9" mismatch after 0 bytes
2018/05/16 16:57:02.189842 L0 TE:NDW1799:ITC503_01:I: got "?9" where "R" was expected

Usually it should reply with something like R+5.000 to that command. The ?9 response suggests that the device has dropped the first character. I tried various things to get this to work but it is just a fail on the device’s part.

Getting weird stuff on serial line

  • Check serial settings (9600 baud/8 bits/No parity/2 stop bits)

  • Check you only have one device on the end of the line. ITC/ILM systems can be addressed, if they both share a line then you can get interleaved replies from both devices which looks like nonsense on a serial line

ISOBUS addresses

ITC and ILM devices can be addressed by an ISOBUS address. There is a utility in C:\LabVIEW Modules\Oxford Software\COMMDEV.llb\Instruments?.vi which will scan all ISOBUS addresses on a COM port and tell you what device(s) are connected to each one.