An Overview of the Main Control System for the Facility for Laboratory Reconnection Experiments (FLARE)

Set to study magnetic reconnection in the parameter space directly relevant to natural plasmas, the newly built FLARE device at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory relies on many interacting systems to achieve its scientific goals. Among them, the Main Control System orchestrates when, for how long, and at what currents the coils are run, while also signaling other systems, triggering digitizers, saving logs, and monitoring system health.

We provide a behind-the-scenes overview of the Main Control System’s key components—both hardware and software—and the techniques used to integrate them with each other and the experiment’s operators. The system uses FPGA programming to efficiently operate NI cRIO modules that control seven capacitor banks. Each bank controller runs custom Python code to monitor power supplies, receive instructions, and execute commands. Event timing is managed with an NI-7841R digitizer, while 26 DTACq digitizers handle data acquisition. Operator interfaces (OPIs), developed with the Phoebus platform and run on Linux workstations, allow users to control capacitor parameters, digitizers, and shots. Systems communicate via EPICS, and data is stored in a Highly Scalable Data Storage (HSDS) system hosted on a dedicated high-speed network server.