Design and Development of Atmega 2560 AVR Microcontroller Based Control and Monitoring System of a Two Jaw Slit

The K-500 Superconducting Cyclotron of Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) is designed for acceleration of multiply charged heavy as well as light positive ions at different energy levels. 14.45 GHz ECR Ion Source is used for the generation of these heavy gaseous as well as metallic ions which are being transported from the ECR plasma chamber to cyclotron beam chamber through the injection beam line. For higher charge state resolution and characterization of transverse beam two jaw slit has been indigenously designed and developed in VECC. This slit is installed before the analyzing magnet as one of the beam diagnostic elements. One Atmega 2560 MCU based control and monitoring system is designed and developed for the interfacing with the slit system. The control unit is capable to work both in local and remote mode where it interfaces with the NI FP modules and Lab-VIEW based centralized control system of ECR. This paper represents the detailed design parameters of the control and drive system as adopted for its operation along with other beam line elements.