GDA setup and troubleshooting

To setup correctly the experimental session in GDA, please read the step by step guide or watch the tutorial video(s) available at the Manuals and tutorials section.

Briefly, GDA can be launch by typing in a terminal from any I14 Linux workstations:

Alternatively, if your session freezes or it is becoming slower, you may want to consider close the GDA window and the corresponding eLog, and type:

without --reset, which would keep all the settings pre-selected in the session. If the session keeps failing, you should reset it by following all the instructions explained above.

If the Attocube stages goes into error (if you see them "wobbling" after you pull the sample from the spigot), the 'Stage Z' on the EPICS software will be in RED font. To sort this out, select the Z value with the mouse and click 'ENTER' on your keyboard (this should change the value to the usual blue font, "matching" the value to the "green-font" value below – All stage X,Y,Z positions should match the older positions (green-font values) by selecting the value and clicking enter subsequently).

If the problem persists, follow the next steps for a more comprehensive reset:

Step 1 - Click the Diamond Light Source logo at the top-right of the session, then ‘Beamlines' → 'BL14I Hard X-ray nanoprobe’. This will (eventually) launch the EPICs software, which allows inspecting the motions & systems at I14.
At the 'Synoptic EH2' tab (bottom-section of the software), select the icon 'TAB' which will open a large controller interface, where the stage X, Y and Z are shown. Opening the stage using the "metallic gears" symbol, each stage has to be 'killed' individually.

Step 2 - Open Firefox (red hat on the Linux session, if you're getting a Firefox error you can type 'firefox --profilemanager' in a terminal to get a new session setup) --  http://10.114.2.98/operation
- stop attocubes
- start attocubes – wait for bouncing to stop (use camera view or wait 10-20 secs to be sure)
- in a terminal, connect to:

- brick IP-address 10.114.2.97 (first line in TCP/IP Ethernet option - Port is still 1025)
- reinitialise axis 1 2 and 3 using #1$*#2$*#3$*

Step 3 - Back to the EPICs controller, set the stage X, Y, Z positions to 0, 0, 0

A complete list of the more common issues when using GDA can be found here.