Developments for the IPNS Data Acquisition System Upgrade

The Intense Pulsed Neutron Source has been an operating user facility for more than 20 years. Development of an upgrade for the data acquisition system has been in progress for some time now. Now that the initial installation on the test bed instrument (HRMECS) is completed new features and possibilities are starting to come forward. Run setup is moving from large monolithic programs to more flexible scripting. EPICS based controls allow flexible and extendable instrument configurations. Hardware is also being made more flexible. This flexibility allows implementation of new methods of binning data, that better match instrument resolution. This allows better use of memory and disk space. Increased flexibiliy has also allowed use of the new time-of-flight modules in applications past their original intent.