Getting Started

What is necessary for a succesful installation and first test

Hardware

• Transient Digitizer mounted in a rack
• Power cord
• Data cable
• AT-DIO-32HS, PCI DIO-32HS, DIO6533 (PCMCIA) or PXI 6533
• PC with a free ISA-, PCI- , a Notebook with a free PCMCIA-Slot or a PXI rack

Software

• Driver Software from National Instruments for the DIO-32HS
• LabView, if you would like to start under Windows or MacOS
• Softwaremodules from Licel

Signals

• The trigger input demands a signal of more than 2.5V@50Ohms for longer than 100ns to start the acquisition.

First Step - LabView installation

• If you wish to work with LabView and you dont have it already on your machine install first LabView.
• If you are running LabView versions below 4.0, you can either upgrade LabView or run only the DOS-Version of the software
• If you are running LabView 4.0 or 5.0 please upgrade to 4.0.1 or 5.0.1. These version are more stable than the previous one. The software will not run under 5.0.
• The software has been tested under LabView 5.1.
• Labview 6.0 users should upgrade LabView 6.0i to 6.02.
• The software has been tested with LabView 6.1.

Second Step NIDAQ Installation

• Check wether you find Measurement and Automation Explorer in your National Instruments program group or aNIDAQ configuration Utility in your LabView program group.
• If present start them and look for the NIDAQ-Version. We found that the most reliable version is 5.1.1, 6.5.1, 6.9.3
• The NIDAQ-Versions 6.0 - 6.1 do not work properly with the interface card, so please use 5.1.1 or a higher version if you have these versions already on your PC.
• There has been reports about crashes with NI-DAQ 6.8.x under Win98.
• If not present install the NIDAQ-Software, preferable 6.9.3, as indicated in the NIDAQ Manual.

Third Step Card Installation

• All of the above listed cards are Plug and Play enabled cards.
• Windows95 detects the plug and play cards during the boot process.
• *** Configuring ISA Plug and Play Devices for Windows NT 4.0

  If you plan to use ISA Plug and Play DAQ devices on Windows NT 4.0, you must first install the Windows NT 4.0 ISA Plug and Play driver before configuring your device with the NI-DAQ Configuration Utility. This driver is not installed by default. Follow these steps to install the driver:

  1. Insert your Windows NT 4.0 CD.
  2. Go the \Drvlib\Pnpisa\X86 directory.
  3. Right-click once on the Pnpisa.inf file, select the Install option, and follow the instructions.
  4. After you have installed the Pnpisa.inf file, shut down your computer.
  5. Install your ISA Plug and Play DAQ device.
  6. Turn on your computer. When Windows NT 4.0 detects your ISA Plug and Play DAQ device, it will specify the necessary driver files. Because this will result in a configuration change, restart your computer.
  7. After you have restarted your computer, run the NI-DAQ Configuration Utility to configure your device.
• PCI boards will be detected during the boot process.
• Turn the computer off
• Insert the card and boot the machine
• The card will be detected during the boot process.
• The following resources are necessary
  • I/O Ports
  • one Interupt
  • one DMA Channel
• The configuration can be changed under the Windows9x in the system manager and under Windows NT with the NIDAQ Configuration utility.

Forth Step NIDAQ + Card

• Assuming that you have managed to bring up the machine again without any dirty messages about resource conflicts ..., you have to test wether the NIDAQ software recognizes the DIO-32HS
• On a PC the things depend from the operating system.
  • On Windows9x machines open the Measurement and Automation Explorer utility in the Labview program group. The bad news is that you can change the configuration only inside the hardware manager, where reboot is necessary to bring the changes into use. So press the configure/test button. Select the test configuration entry. If you have resource conflicts you should go back to the hardware manager and change the configuration there, reboot and repeat the game. If you your configuration is valid, remove all cables from the DIO-32HS and select the same port port for input and output. After setting some lines in the output to TRUE you should see the same lines true in the input port, because the card reads back the output lines. If it does not work you have to change the configuration again and repeat the procedure above..
  • On Windows NT machines open the Measurement and Automation Explorer utility in the Labview program group. You can test the I/O process as described above and change the settings also inside the program.

Fifth Step - Software installation

• PC: Create a Subdirectory for the transient recorder software
• Copy the libraries from the CDROM containing Labview llb-files.
• PC: Create a subdirectory for the C-Software and copy the files from the C-Sources directory. The further use of the C-software is described in the software manual.
• Change the properties of the LLB-files from write-protected to the unprotected state.
• Open LabView and select the item mass compile from the File-menu. Compile the HS-Track.llb and HS-Acquis.llb. Compiling errors in the vi's indicate a damage of the libraries. Please download a new version of the files from our ftp-server if you encounter any problems.

Sixth step - First tests with the transient digitizer

• Run the HS-Licel Initialize DIO card.vi from the HS-Licel.llb, there should be no error, otherwise the card is not installed in the right way.
• Connect the data cable from the transient recorder housing to the computer and turn the transient recoder one you should see some light from the LED at the front panel.
• Connect a trigger to the transient recorder.
• Open the HS-track.vi from HS-Track.llb.
• Select in the Transient field at the top of the vi a number corresponding to the hardware address of the desired transient recorder.
• Press the Run button of the vi. The Host I/O LED at the specified transient recorder should be bright. Otherwise an error message indicating a time out will be generated.
• Press the start button below the waveform graph. If a trigger is connected to the transient recorder the shotnumber indicated at the bottom right side should start to increase up to 4094.
• If there is no trigger the indicated shotnumber remains at 0. If you have connected a trigger to the transient recorders, look wether the trigger is connected to the transient recorder with the bright Host I/O LED. Check further wether the trigger fullfills the in the beginning mentioned requirements.
• Restart the acquisition and press the stop button some seconds later to stoop the acquisition process.
• Press the show button to display the results.
  • The data set displayed after pressing the show button is selected by the Mode switch left from the Transient field at the top of the vi. With Photon counting the cumulated data from the counting chain are displayed, and with Analog regime the ADC data is displayed.
  • The data set is further specified by the Memory switch also at the top of the vi. The Memory A corresponds to acquisition which where triggered by Trigger A, and the Memory B corresponds to acquisitions triggered at input B. If only one trigger input is connected to the trigger source, only one memory can hold data different from 0.
• Press button Continue to continue the accumulation of profiles without clearing the memory. Start clears both memories.
• Press again Stop and then Show to see how the SNR has increased.
• Change the input sensivity with the Range knob at the bottom of the vi. The tree indicated millivolt values show the full scale negative voltages.
• Make a new acquisition to see the influence of the input range.
• Connect a signal from a Photomultiplier to the signal input.
• With the Discriminator slide you can change the discriminator level between 0 and 63. Change to the Photon counting mode and make some acquisitions to see how the count rate is influenced by the disciminator setting.
• Turn the Damping switch on and make a new acquisition. The counting rate is reduced since the discriminator setting is four times higher.
• The triggered lamp between the Damping switch and the Shotnumber indicator is turned on if a shot is acuired while the program makes a status request.
• The armed lamp below the trigger lamp is bright when the transient recorder is waiting for the next trigger event while the program makes a status request.
• Press the Enable switch to stop the program.

Seventh Step - First acquisitions

• Create a subdirectory (folder) for the data-files.
• Open the HS-Acquis Global info.vi from the HS-Acquis.llb to change the default information, here the geographical information is stored.
  • Change the geographical information ( Location, Longitude, Latitude and Height above see level) to be valid for your site.
  • Change the working directory, to the former created directory for data files.
  • Select a first letter for your data files ( the naming convention is outlined in the Software manual), we recommend T for test files.
  • Make entries for the wavelengths of your lasers in the arrays Laser 1 wavel and Laser 2 wavel.
  • Adapt the laser repetition rates for the lasers in the data fields frequency1 and frequency2.
  • Select the entry Make Current Values Default from the Operate menu.
  • Save the vi.
  • Close the vi.
• Open the HS-Acquis Init_tr.vi from the HS-Acquis.llb to change the default information, here the dataset specific information is stored.
  • Number in the right upper part corresponds to the transient recorder hardware address. Change this number to get access to the data sets for different transient recorder.
  • With the boolean controls Analog Mem A, Photon Mem A, Analog Mem B, Photon Mem B you select the datasets which should be transfered from the transient recorder specified by the above described number. Analog Mem A corresponds to the analog data triggered at input A. Photon Mem A to the photon counting data for that trigger line. Analog Mem B and Photon Mem B are triggered by trigger input B. Red highlighted data sets are marked as active.
  • For the active data sets the number of bins to be red from the transient recorder should be indicated.
  • The data reduction factor indicates how much primary bins are collected into one bin (2^n). So 0 gives 7.5m wide bins, 1 - 15m, 2 - 30m, 3 - 60m ....
  • Set the desired discriminator level if at least one photon counting data set is marked as active.
  • Set the desired input range if at least one analog data set is marked as active.
  • Set the wavelengths corresponding to trigger line A and B, and the polarisation state.
  • Change the PM Voltage.
  • Repeat that procedure for every transient recorder you want to use.
  • Select the entry Make Current Values Default from the Operate menu.
  • Save the vi.
  • Close the vi.
• Open the HS-Acquis acquis.vi from the HS-Acquis.llb
• Run the vi.
• Change the data set information if necessary in HS-Acquis Init_tr.vi and accept the information in the vi pressing the continue button.
• Change the site information if necessary in HS-Acquis Global info.vi and accept the information in the vi pressing the continue button.
• Press the start button in the single acquisition group. The transient recorders with active data sets should now acquire data (bright Acquire LED), if they are supplied with trigger signals.
• Stop the acquisition in the same group by pressing the corresponding button.
• Changing the line number right to the waveform graph you can now flip trough the acquired datat sets. For each data set the wavelength and the acquisition mode (analog/Photon counting) is indicated.
• If you are satisfied with the data press save. The file is now renamed from temp.dat to a unique identifier.
• For multiple acquisitions set first number of shots which should be contained in every file. The shotnumber should be so large that files are not saved faster than every 10 seconds. (This requirement comes from the naming convention)
• Press the start button in the multiple acquisition group.
• The start buttton changes to a stop button, where you can stop the multiple acquisition process.
• You can change the data set configuration by pressing the config button. Changes are lost after finishing the HS-Acquis acquis.vi. For permanent changes you should change the default values as described above.
• Press exit for finishing the vi.

The HS-Pulse.llb contains a pulseheight distribution measurement module, and the HS-Live Display.llb just does what the name promises. The region between the two cursors is averaged and displayed on the left side. The idea is a far field average.

Last change:Tuesday, October 29, 2002 10:38:07