Scanlab RTC 5 PC Interface Board, Installation And Operation Manual

Page: 528 / 622

RTC
®
5 PC Interface Board
Rev. 1.9 e
10 Commands And Functions
528
innovators for industry
Ctrl Command sync_slaves
Function stably synchronizes (with the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s 10 µ s clock) all slave boards
connected in a master/slave chain to the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s SLAVE connector.
Call
sync_slaves()
Comments • For usage of this command, see page 84 .
• SCANLAB recommends executing synchronization immediately after all boards have
been initialized via load_program_file and load_correction_file . Otherwise, all
involved boards (i.e. the master board and the downstream slave boards allocated to
the application) should already have been halted prior to the call of
sync_slaves . To
avoid irregularities during execution of this command, you should neither apply
external stop signals to the boards nor trigger external list starts (these won’t get auto-
matically suppressed).
• During execution of sync_slaves , a simulate_ext_stop command is executed for the
addressed board. This will halt the addressed board and all downstream slave boards
in the master/slave chain (including boards not allocated to the application). It is the
user’s responsibility to ensure that a running process won’t be disrupted by
sync_slaves .
• After successful execution of the command, the scan system axes of all involved boards
will be in either the coordinate center position (0, 0 [,0]) or the HomeJump position
(possibly shifted by an offset set via
set_offset , set_defocus or set_hi ).
• The command sync_slaves (relating to synchronization) only affects RTC
®
5 boards
connected in a master/slave chain to the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s MASTER connector.
It doesn’t affect the addressed board itself or any boards connected to the addressed
board’s SLAVE connector. Therefore, if all slave boards of a master/slave chain shall be
synchronized with the master board, then
sync_slaves must address the master board
of the master/slave chain. If no board is connected to the addressed board’s MASTER
connector, then the command has no effect.
• Synchronization of downstream slave boards via sync_slaves occurs even when the
boards’ BUSY or INTERNAL-BUSY status is set (they will be automatically halted). Never-
theless, the only slave boards to get synchronized will be those allocated to the appli-
cation (allocation isn’t requested automatically). If the application possesses access
rights for the addressed board but no further boards, then the command will have no
effect.
• During execution of sync_slaves , all get_startstop_info error bits will be cleared on all
boards (including upstream boards) allocated to the application.
• For each downstream slave board, the 10
µ
s clock is interrupted for a short term and
newly synchronized. Therefore, data transmission between the RTC
®
5 and scan system
may be disrupted for up to 20
µ
s per downstream board. Such disturbances could
induce hard galvanometer scanner jumps if the actual output values don’t correspond
to (0,0,[0]).
• The command is ignored ( get_last_error return code :
RTC5_BUSY
) if the addressed
board’s BUSY status is currently set (list is being processed or has been halted via
pause_list ) or the board’s INTERNAL-BUSY status is currently set. In contrast, the
command is executed when a list has been paused via set_wait ( PAUSED status set).
RTC
®
4

RTC
®
5 new command