RTC
®
5 PC Interface Board
Rev. 1.9 e
10 Commands And Functions
528
Ctrl Command sync_slaves
Function stably synchronizes (with the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s 10 µs clock) all slave boards
connected in a master/slave chain to the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s SLAVE connector.
Call
sync_slaves()
Comments • For usage of this command, see page 84.
• SCANLAB recommends executing synchronization immediately after all boards have
been initialized via load_program_file and load_correction_file. Otherwise, all
involved boards (i.e. the master board and the downstream slave boards allocated to
the application) should already have been halted prior to the call of sync_slaves. To
avoid irregularities during execution of this command, you should neither apply
external stop signals to the boards nor trigger external list starts (these won’t get auto-
matically suppressed).
• During execution of sync_slaves, a simulate_ext_stop command is executed for the
addressed board. This will halt the addressed board and all downstream slave boards
in the master/slave chain (including boards not allocated to the application). It is the
user’s responsibility to ensure that a running process won’t be disrupted by
sync_slaves.
• After successful execution of the command, the scan system axes of all involved boards
will be in either the coordinate center position (0, 0 [,0]) or the HomeJump position
(possibly shifted by an offset set via set_offset, set_defocus or set_hi).
• The command sync_slaves (relating to synchronization) only affects RTC
®
5 boards
connected in a master/slave chain to the addressed RTC
®
5 board’s MASTER connector.
It doesn’t affect the addressed board itself or any boards connected to the addressed
board’s SLAVE connector. Therefore, if all slave boards of a master/slave chain shall be
synchronized with the master board, then sync_slaves must address the master board
of the master/slave chain. If no board is connected to the addressed board’s MASTER
connector, then the command has no effect.
• Synchronization of downstream slave boards via sync_slaves occurs even when the
boards’ BUSY or INTERNAL-BUSY status is set (they will be automatically halted). Never-
theless, the only slave boards to get synchronized will be those allocated to the appli-
cation (allocation isn’t requested automatically). If the application possesses access
rights for the addressed board but no further boards, then the command will have no
effect.
• During execution of sync_slaves, all get_startstop_info error bits will be cleared on all
boards (including upstream boards) allocated to the application.
• For each downstream slave board, the 10 µs clock is interrupted for a short term and
newly synchronized. Therefore, data transmission between the RTC
®
5 and scan system
may be disrupted for up to 20 µs per downstream board. Such disturbances could
induce hard galvanometer scanner jumps if the actual output values don’t correspond
to (0,0,[0]).
• The command is ignored (get_last_error return code:
RTC5_BUSY
) if the addressed
board’s BUSY status is currently set (list is being processed or has been halted via
pause_list) or the board’s INTERNAL-BUSY status is currently set. In contrast, the
command is executed when a list has been paused via set_wait (PAUSED status set).
RTC
®
4
RTC
®
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