Temperature Controller
Overview
A TemperatureController in Blackchirp is a device that monitors the temperature of one or more sources. The original use case is buffer-gas cells, but any multi-channel temperature monitor fits the same role. The temperature of each active channel is recorded as both rolling data and auxiliary data, so it can be used as a validation condition to terminate an acquisition when a channel drifts outside an acceptable range.
Note
Blackchirp does not control setpoints for PID-regulated devices; temperature controllers are read-only here.
Settings
Most settings are exposed in the hardware dialog with inline labels and tooltips. The poll interval defaults to 500 ms; raise it for instruments whose temperature update rate is the bottleneck during an acquisition. Per-channel settings (display name, enabled flag, decimal places, and display units) are edited in the channels table; units default to K and the decimal count defaults to 4.
Drivers
Virtual
A dummy driver that returns a random value near 4 K for each enabled channel.
Lakeshore 218
The Lakeshore 218 Cryogenic Temperature Monitor is an 8-channel device designed for cryogenic applications. It connects via RS232 with a 500 ms timeout and \r\n termination.
Warning
This driver has not been thoroughly tested against live hardware.