Commissioning a Remote Test Station for the CMS Hadron Calorimeter at Baylor University

As Run 3 commences at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, many components of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector are taking data from collisions for the first time following upgrades performed during Long Shutdown 2 (Dec 2018 - Apr 2022). One of these systems is the Hadron Barrel (HB) Calorimeter, which has been equipped with new on-detector electronics based on silicon photomultipliers. While the upgraded system is performing quite well, it is helpful to perform studies on a test setup in order to improve the quality and efficiency of data collection. This presentation describes the setup of a small-scale slice of the HB detector, from scintillator tiles to data acquisition, using identical hardware and electronics to the actual CMS detector. This test station allows members of the Baylor CMS team to diagnose runtime issues that arise at CERN. In addition, the setup allows undergraduate and graduate students to gain a detailed understanding of the operation of the HB detector system, while remotely located at Baylor.