I just heard a lady say in all seriousness that 5 times 4 is 14.
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First success in FPGA programming.

Hardware Issues, but this time it's not quite as much CAEN's fault.

The discriminator I was using for the experiment died at some point this morning. It just started blowing out noise on most channels, regardless of if there were inputs or not. It took a little while to diagnose, but I just swapped it out. With this, however, I need to reset my data acquisition gate because now it would seem as though alot of my muon signals are getting cut off because the gate is too late.

This afternoon I'm going back to the Cosmology lab to keep learning how to use FPGAs. I've got (almost?) all the software instialled. There remains only this one package that I should be able to get under trial, but... can't, for a lack of a better term. More to come as things happen. 

I just saw a man wall by with a fox tail hanging out of his pocket.
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Strange New World

I currently sit in a lab on the second floor where I will be learning how to work with FPGAs such that I can start doing my Master's project. The muon decay experiment is coming along. I need to modify my code such that I can access both the QDC and TDC simultaneously, which may be trickier than it seems. I've got a pretty good idea as to how to do it the lazy way. 

They've all got really pretty screens in here. I'm so jealous. 

Also, I just downloaded a 900MB file in less than 20 minutes over wifi.

More to come as things develop.

Today will be a day to remember... My main goals: set up the muon counter and not break anything.
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I swear, one day I'll prove that time passes slower on the train than it does in the rest of the word.
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Beneath me.

Considering the heat today, and how humid it is on the train, I've decided that it's no longer beneath me to sit down cross legged on the train rather than standing in the midst of flamboyant blouses and black ties.Also, my back is in contact with this big aluminium sheet which acts as a very nice heatsink. 

--
-=//\=-

It is bloody hot in the lab today.
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Wierdest Wikipedia crawl ever.

Yesterday, I was looking at the Wikipedia page about the toys coming out for the new Transformers movie (pretty decent action flik, by the way). About an hour later I realized that I had somehow made my way to the page corresponding to 'The Land Before Time V" and somewhere in the middle I had stopped to read about the Terminator franchise. How did this happen!

CAEN Documentation

An except from a documentation file I'm reading:

Writes the specified value to the specified threshold register. If
threshold_id is CVT_V792_THRESHOLD_ALL every threshold will be setted
to the same value.
Parameters:
p_data Pointer to board data
threshold_id The threshold to set. It must be a
cvt_V792_threshold_id valid id.
value The value to set : Threshold value and Kill
bit (CVT_V792_THRESHOLD_KILL_MSK) If the kill bit be isn't setted the
channel will be disabled

...

What does "If the kill bit be isn't setted the channel will be
disabled" mean? Also, how hard is it to either punctuate or not
punctuate your sentences?

I'o still smug about having gotten the TDC to work.
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SUCCESS

After 6 weeks of banging my head against the wall, I've managed to get
the TDC working. It wasn't obvious, and I had to manually write some
functions that weren't very pretty, but it works. What I think it was
is that the default configuration the CAEN TDC came with was set to
look at a range outside the TDC's capabilities, so it wouldn't take
data.

This does not, however, explain why it wouldn't acquire data until I
had loaded it into LabView. My best guess is that there was something
strange configured in the TDC itself that the standard code was
struggling with, but when LabView was loaded it reset everything to a
usable state.

Now I need to loop over all the channels and export the data to files.
Not as obvious as it seems, in fact, considering once again CAEN has
half-assed their code and defined functions which do not work.

I'm ambitious this morning.

Over the weekend I think I figured out how to get the CAEN TDC to
work. Friday, it miraculously decided to talk to the computer, but in
doing so, stopped taking data. I'm pretty sure the (only?) thing I've
to do now is set up some arbitrary data and then in theory add one or
two lines of code to a configuration file.

I'm quite curious as to what I'll tackle once all this CAEN stuff is done.

...VME....

In my final attempt to get the VME hardware working, I've downloaded a 3rd party application that CAEN has software for. It's all GUI, and what few papers I have found that use this hardware all use it. The only catch is that I once mentioned it  omy supervisor, about a month ago, and he wasn't totally enthusiastic. Even if the trial lapses, I do have the opportunity to test the TDC and see if it works at all.

I just noticed that my last phone calls made to or from my cell were over 10 days ago.


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Symmetries

It would seem as though working alone in the machine shop leads to many fewer chances of messing up a measurement or motion. It also means you can be twice as fast working with a milling machine. The rack brackets I made this time around were perfectly symmetrical and fit nicely into the racks.

While making them, however, I did somehow manage to get the sawblade to jump off it's track on the band saw, which produced a mighty scary noise, but had no other ill effects. I'm hoping that I get to spend more time in the machine shop, albeit I don't know if my supervisor has any more work for me to do there. I can think of 1001 different <i>personal</i> projects to work on, but I don't think that David would appreciate paying me while I cut custom components for my launch pad.

Today, I test out an HV power supply and try to get the last data points required to finish my PMT calibration.

Back in the Machine Shop today. I've got to make some more rack
mounts. Hopefully this time they'll come out symmetric.

This could have ended badly.

Whatever you do, do not type 'c string' into the address bad of
Firefox and hit enter when you share an office with 5 other people.

Oh, and if you do happen to do it, try not to leave it up on your main
monitor for something on the order of 10 minutes while you work on
your netbook.

For the record I was looking for programming aide. Man, the internet
sure is something.

Whatever you do, do not type 'c string' into the firefox address car and hit enter when you are at wor
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Machining Parts

I got my first taste of the machine shop today. We were making brackets for the equipment racks and it all went more or less well, except the two parts we made weren't symmetric, but it worked all the same. I don't know why, but it wrecked me pretty good. 

Tomorrow, I'm going to calibrate the PMTs I'm going to use in the muon asymmetry experiment. 

I love tech support

The entire time I've been dealing with CAEN, they've told me that I have all the proper software to get my TDC working.

Until today.

I got an email from someone I've been corresponding with only to find out that I don't have the up-to-date version of the software. This isn't because I accidently downloaded the wrong version, at the time of writing this, there was only one version available for download. Now, I have V1.01 of some software I got via a special URL whereas if you're going to their website you can only get V1.00 which doesn't have all the libraries you need to get the (supposedly) supported VME cards to work. How the hell is anyone supposed to figure out that the company supplied software, which advertises its module compatibility, <i>isn't compatible</i>. Excuuuuuuse me, CAEN for not having the magic space brain (Zero Punctuation, anyone?) required to figure out that the driver installation process requires a month of back and forth emailing with various employees.

All that said, even having the updated software doesn't get the damn TDC to work.

Almost quitting time. In 15 minutes if my supervisor isn't ready he's going to release me.

VME woes... no more!

I've managed to figure out what was broken on the CAEN QDC I was debugging. In a nutshell, it comes down to the power supply for the card being damaged. We have to send it back to CAEN where they will either repair or replace it.

Time to jump on the TDC, and figure out why I can't save any of the data I've been taking with the CAEN software. 

On another note, I just got this new 20" Dell LCD to replace my office monitor. It's so shiny and pretty.

I just say a guy give his dog a thumbs up.
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I have a presentation to do Thursday on essentially what my Master's project is going to be on in front of the research group. Also, I have to learn how to program in ROOT and get the VME crate working as well. The work is certainly starting to pile up.