Hephaestus: Hardware Control for SeaQuest Trigger and Tracking Systems

E906/SeaQuest is a fixed-target Drell-Yan experiment using Fermilab's 120 GeV Main Injector to measure cross sections for dimuon production in p$+$p and p$+$A collisions over a wide Bjorken-x range. Data from these collisions will be used to measure the d-bar/u-bar asymmetry in the proton sea, clarify the nature of parton energy loss in cold nuclear medium, and explore the shadowing/anti-shadowing effects observed by the European Muon Collaboration (EMC). In order to streamline operations, a hardware control program was developed for our hodoscope high voltage (HV) supply and level shifter boards (LSB), which control the front-end electronics for our wire chambers. This program has several advantages over the current software, including full integration into SeaQuest's software framework and a user-friendly command syntax. This presentation will focus on SeaQuest's physics motivations, as well as the motivation for and prominent features of the hardware control program, Hephaestus.