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Reports until 11:23, Friday 06 January 2012
H2 SUS
jeffrey.kissel@LIGO.ORG - posted 11:23, Friday 06 January 2012 (1987)
BSFM Actuation Sign Flip
H2 SUS FMY's damping loops are no longer stable with the settings I'd confirmed working yesterday. HOWEVER, they are stable if the signs of all the loops are changed (i.e. change H2:SUS-FMY_M!_DAMP gains from negative to positive).

I had logged in this morning (~10a ET, 7a PT) to take some transfer functions on ITMY, noticed in passing that H2 SUS FMY's watchdog had tripped and thought "no big deal," something must have glitch and tripped it over night, and left it be. When I had finished ITMY's measurements, I went back to clean up my work and re-damp everything so that seismic could get to work, and noticed 
(1) FMY's Master switch was off (was on when I glanced at it)
(2) FMY's COILOUTF filter's outputs were off

I, by-hand, turned the switches back on, and blindly turned on the the damping loops. The slowly but surely became unstable within a few seconds.

Totally confused, I flailed about for a bit looking for sign errors etc. Regrettably I didn't BURT capture FMY after yesterday's confirmation that the damping loops were running yesterday.

So, I've BURT restored to the snapshot where the loops were confirmed stable last, in 
${RTCDSROOT}/userapps/release/sus/h2/burtfiles/fmy/fmy_dampfilter_111004.snap
as per Jeff G.'s aLOG 1506.

All loop signs are the same as what I expected (and as I had them set to yesterday) -- the only tweak I needed to do was to select the correct filters in the COILOUTF banks, because Jeff G's snapshot was taken before the filter bank upgrade, mentioned here.

After this they're still unstable!

In trying to figure out what the heck is wrong, I flipped the sign on the DAMP Filter gains from - to +, and they're stable (?!?!).

Still investigating ... Richard has to make some changes to the DC powr supplies at 11a PT, so for now I've turned off all digital control to both ITMY and FMY. 

I'm looking for something electronic (chassis, ADCs, computers, networks, etc.) or digital (MEDM setting, model changes, CDS software changes) that might cause the sign of the actuation to flip -- and only on FMY. It's VERY strange. Perhaps the timing glitch, and Dave's subsequent reboot of everything and BURT restore, 
mentioned in passing here, changed something digital upstream of the FMY signal chain (like the IOP)? Sounds unlikely, but possible ...

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