Introduction.

alibava-gui is a graphical user interface that controls the ALIBAVA card. It is able to configure the device, receive the data that the card sends via the USB bus and store it in a file for further analysis. alibava-gui also monitors the data while in acquisition mode so that the user can detect problems or just find the proper parameters to run the system in an optimal way.

1.1. What is alibava-gui?

The alibava firmware provides 5 run modes

  • Pedestals: makes a pedestal run. Alibava generates an internal trigger that will allow to compute the baseline or pedestals and its variation (the noise)
  • Calibration: makes a calibration run. Alibava programs the Beetle chips to inject calibration pulses to all the channels in order to charactirize the electrical behaviour of the ASICs.
  • Laser synchronization: Alibava is able to send a pulse that can be used to trigger a laser system. This run mode scans the delay between the pulse sent by alibava and the acquisition so that the system will sample at the maximum of the signal produced by the laser.
  • Laser: makes a laser run. One needs to run the in laser synchronization mode before in order to read back the optimal signal produced by the laser.
  • Source: makes a run in which the acquisition is triggered by signals above the threshold in the input connectors.

Figure 1 shows the main window

Figure 1Alibava main window

As one can see, the run types are selected on the right hand side of the window. Right by the run type name there are buttons that, when clicked, will open a dialog window to configure the run parameters. All the settings can be stored in a configuration file by clicking save in the File menu. One can load different configurations clicking on Open in the File menu. There are more configuration settings that can be set by clicking on the different items of the Settings menu.

On the left hand side you can see the DAQ button. This button starts or stops the acquisition. You can monitor the number of acquired events, the elapsed time, the acquisition rate and the efficiency.The rate is integrated in 1 second time windows, so expect 0 values while the data is being read out from the USB port. The efficiency is the number of events that pass the criteria defined in the Analysis dialog window (Section 4.5 ― Analysis configuration).

In the middle of the window there is a collection of tabs that will allow to monitor the data during the data acquisition and on some of the tabs one can find buttons that will refine the information displayed on the histograms.

alibava-gui also provides the possibility to load user defined plugins that will allow to perform non-standard actions at different stages of the acquisition process. Those plugins can be written both in C++, as shared libraries, or in Python, as normal Python scripts. However, the plugin is not active by default. In order to activate or deactivate it one needs to toggle the state of the button named Plugin in the main window (See Figure 1).

Finally, note the Reconnect button. Sometimes you unplug the alibava system from the USB plug without quitting alibava-gui. When that happens you shoul dpress this button. It will close any open device and reopen it.