Control and Data Acquisition for the Spherical Tokamak MEDUSA-CR

The former spherical tokamak (ST) MEDUSA (Madison EDUcation Small Aspect.ratio tokamak, R\textless 0.14m, a\textless 0.10m, B$_{T}$\textless 0.5T, I$_{p}$\textless 40kA, 3ms pulse) [1] is being recommissioned in Costa Rica Institute of Technology. The main objectives of the MEDUSA-CR project are training and to clarify several issues in relevant physics for conventional and mainly STs, including beta studies in bean-shaped ST plasmas [2], transport, heating and current drive via Alfv\'{e}n wave, and natural divertor STs with ergodic magnetic limiter [2,3]. We present here the control and data acquisition systems for MEDUSA-CR device which are based on National Instruments (NI) software (LabView) and hardware on loan to our laboratory via NI-Costa Rica. The interface with the energy, gas fueling, and security systems are also presented. \\[4pt] [1] G.D. Garstka, PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1997\\[0pt] [2] C. Ribeiro et al., Proc. 25$^{\textrm{th}}$ Symposium on Fusion Engineering, San Francisco, US, 2013\\[0pt] [3] C. Ribeiro et al., Proc. 39$^{\textrm{th}}$ EPS Conf. Contr. Fusion and Plasma Phys., Sweden, 2012