Configuring alibava

There are a number of ways in which you can configure alibava-gui. Once this is done, one can always save that configuration. To save the current configuration click on the Save or Save As items on the File menu of the main window. Saved configurations can be loaded afterwards either by given the configuration file path when starting alibava-gui or by choosing a configuration file through the Open item in the File menu. Most of the configuration parameters can be accessed through the Settings menu as shown in Figure 4. Each of the menu items will allow to configure different aspects of the alibava-gui behavior.

Figure 4Settings accessible through the Settings item in the main window menu bar

4.1. DAQ configuration

The DAQ has a number of parameters:

  • sample size: this is the number of events stored in the mother board memory before sending them to the PC. This is only used in Pedestal, Laser and Source modes
  • number of events: maximum number of events. When then number of events acquired equals this value the run stops
  • Delay: if no data arrives after this delay, alibava-gui will believe there is a communication problem
  • Monitor channel: This is the channel whose characteristics curve will be shown in the monitor window

All those parameters can be set by clicking on the DAQ item of the Settings menu as show in Figure 5

Figure 5DAQ configuration window

4.2. Beetle configuration

The Beetle parameters are set by clicking on the Beetle item of the Settings menu as show in Figure 6. At the top of the dialog you can select which chips will be active during the acquisition.

Figure 6Beetle configuration

4.3. Trigger configuration

The trigger for the Source run can be configured by clicking the Trigger item in the Settings menu or the Trigger button by the RS run radio button. The dialog is show in Figure 7

Figure 7Trigger configuration

Units are in mV.

4.4. Analysis configuration

The data is monitored while acquiring data and this is displayed in a number of histograms. The parameters defining how to find clusters, etc. are displayed in the analysis configuration window shown in Figure 8

Figure 8Analysis configuration

4.5. Laser config

The only parameter of the Laser run is the delay (in ns) that can be wet in the Laser item of the Settings menu or in the text entry by the Laser radio button.

Figure 9Laser config

Units are in nano seconds

4.6. Plugin configuration

The plugin configuration dialog box appears in Figure 10.

Figure 10Plugin configuration dialog

There you can specify the plugin language, which can be either C++ or Python, a folder to add to the search path, the name of the library or Python module to load and the function to call. The Find Symbols button will open another window with a list of all the callable functions in the plugin. Select one and click OK. Otherwise you will have to type the function (or hook) name. Also note that when clicking on Browse for the Library, both the path and the library file name will be filled. alibava-gui will also select the language based on very simple assumptions.

4.7. Pedestals

alibava-gui can compute pedestals on-line either by making a pedestal run at the very beginning or estimating the pedestal and noise while taking data. However, for some run types pedestal calculation makes not sense. This is the case of the calibration, laser synchronization and laser since, a priori, some channels will always have the same amplitude. Nevertheless, we would like to see the real pedestals subtracted on th emonitoring histograms. To solve this we can either make a pedestal run or load a pedestal file via the Load Pedestals item in the Settings menu. Likewise, we can always save on a separate file a set of pedestals we are proud of via the Save Pedestals item in the Settings menu.

The format of that pedestal file is:

  • each line corresponds to one channel with line zero for channel 0
  • each line contains the pedestal value, followed by a white space-like character (space or tab) and then the noise value