Hi,

the latest software drs-5.0.0.tar.gz fails to compile on my freshly installed SuSE 13.1 whereas the previous 4.0.1 is compiling out-of-the-box.

My system has the wxWidgets 2.8.12 which is probably together with gcc 4.8.1 the reason of the problem. I applied a number of corrections, mainly some sort of proper (?) typecasts, a patch file is attached.

Maybe you could consider to take them into account for the next patch release?

Thanks and best regards

Hermann-Josef

Dear DRS community,

starting from this year, we ship the new evaluation board V5. This board has an improved internal timing calibration, with which one can measure the time with a precision down to a few ps. Following picture shows the time between two pulses, obtained with a function generator, a passive split and a delay cable. The single threshold time estimator of the DRSOsc program obtains with such signal a resolution of 2.5 ps (RMS).

Using more sophisticated algorithms such as cross-correlation, resolutions below 1 ps were already achieved.

The new board can now be ordered at the same price than the V4 board, delivery will start in March 2014.

Best regards,
Stefan Ritt
 

Hi Stefan,

thanks for the quick reply, I know that this solution works with drscl but not within my code.

I tried to track it down, but gave up very soon. Seems as if AnalyzeWF() which is called by CalibrateTiming() finds to much zero-crossings when it is called the second time.

Regards

  -- Hermann-Josef

I'm also having trouble installing drivers and running DRSOsc program on another computer running Windows 8.

The issue with the driver is that it's not digitally signed.

The issue with the DRSOsc is that it's failing to find libusb0.dll. libusb-win32 seemed to have installed upon DRS4 software install, however the supplied version is Windows 7/8 incompatible, so on Windows 7 computer I had to download libusb_win32 v1.2.6.0 from the official website and install it directly, then everything worked fine. However in Windows 8, I am unable to install libusb-win32 because in  libusb-win32 Inf Wizard installation program when you select for which device the libusb should be used, it asks to install a driver, but when I point to DRS' driver, it says "Unknown Error: 1" and that's that. One way around the libusb issue is to copy the required dll and sys file directly where the .exe is stored.

I will attempt to disable signed driver signature requirement, and see if the driver installs then, but this should really be fixed instead.

Hi,

I have an old v2.0 board that I just upgraded firmware on using v4.0.0 download package which has a drs4_eval1.bit for v2.0 boards containing firmware 15158. So I would like to use the latest DRS Oscilloscope program, due to the faster acquisition speeds and advanced calibration techniques, however I seem to be running into a problem.

v4.0 DRS Oscilloscope program displays flat lines in any configuration instead of a pulse that I provide to it (I can't tell if calibration works because all my traces are flat and nothing triggers) but provides ~460Hz. Any idea why v4.0.0 DRS Oscilloscope program does not work with DRS4 Eval Board v2.0 fw:15158?

v3.0 DRS Oscilloscope program actually works and displays the pulse that I input (calibration also works), however it only has 64Hz speed due to v3.0.0 not having multithreading capability which is provided in v3.1.0 software version of the program.

Can you please upload and post on the website the latest software packages for v2 and v3? I would like to use v3.1.0 DRS Oscilloscope version. (Both Linux and Windows, but Linux preferably)

Also, I would like to report that for some reason, I don't know if it happens with v3.0 program used on v2.0 board only or a general issue, but after each calibration of voltage and timing, the trigger does not work. I have to exit the oscilloscope program, and run it again, then the trigger works fine, and the device is calibrated.

Thank you

The DRSCallback *pcb is missing an if statement in the code when DRS Oscilloscope software isn't used when calibrating in function: int DRSBoard::CalibrateTiming(DRSCallback *pcb)

I had to add if (pcb != NULL) before each pcb call, like other functions are using so that the program doesn't segfault when the function is called like b->CalibrateTiming(NULL);

That's the only function that's missing this if statement for DRSCallback *pcb call, and there are 2 calls in this function to pcb that need fixing.

 So although it doesn't affect data retrieval, it's just dumb luck the function ends up being called with parameters that matter being exactly what they were meant to be.

  For http://www.psi.ch/drs/DocumentationEN/manual_rev20.pdf:

0 0x02 15..8 board_type 5 for DRS4 USB Evaluation Board 1.1 ---> should instead say Evaluation Board 2.0 ?

 1) if(i==100) should be if(i==1000) in function int DRSBoard::SetFrequency(double demand, bool wait)

Otherwise if PLL did not lock, i = 1000, and the if statement is evaluating it against 100, not 1000 so it never gets triggered and the error goes unnoticed.

      if (wait) {

         StartDomino();

         for (i=0 ; i<1000 ; i++)

         if (GetStatusReg() & BIT_PLL_LOCKED0)

            break;

         SoftTrigger();

         if (i==100) {

            printf("PLL did not lock for frequency %lf\n", demand);

            return 0;

         }

      }

 2) int DRSBoard::RegulateFrequency(double demand) does not seem to work at all, the frequency does not lock for either 2 or 5 GHz, tested using DRS4 v2.0 eval board with DRS v4.0.1 and v2.0.1 software's drscl tool.

3) In int DRSBoard::SetTriggerDelayPercent(int delay) and int DRSBoard::SetTriggerDelayNs(int delay), what is the purpose of Read and setting of "reg" if it's not being used or exported anywhere else outside of that function? Seems like Read and reg are called for nothing.

      Read(T_CTRL, &reg, REG_TRG_DELAY, 2);

      reg = (reg & 0xFF00) | ticks;

      Write(T_CTRL, REG_TRG_DELAY, &ticks, 2);

Also, I don't understand why in int DRSBoard::SetSyncDelay(int ticks), the code changes to 
      Read(T_CTRL, &reg, REG_TRG_DELAY, 2);
            
      reg = (reg & 0xFF) | (ticks << 8);
            
      Write(T_CTRL, REG_TRG_DELAY, &reg, 2);

In particular, reg = (reg & 0xFF00) | ticks; and reg = (reg & 0xFF) | (ticks << 8);  I'm not really sure but doesn't Read() with size 2 return a value that has a maximum value of 0xFF, or 8bits?   But ticks << 8, since ticks == 255 max, makes 255 << 8 => 65280, which is now a 16bit value and size 4. No? I might be wrong here, and if I am then I don't understand what's going on.   Can you please explain? In v2.0.1 the ticks were a maximum of 511 or 9bits, why did it change to 8bits?
            

4) A function is being called incorrectly in GetWave() in DRS.cpp

int DRSBoard::GetWave(unsigned int chipIndex, unsigned char channel, float *waveform)
            
{
            
   return GetWave(chipIndex, channel, waveform, true, fStopCell[chipIndex], false, 0, true);
            
}
            

The return is calling the following overloaded function:
int DRSBoard::GetWave(unsigned int chipIndex, unsigned char channel, float *waveform, bool responseCalib, int triggerCell, int wsr, bool adjustToClock, float threshold, bool offsetCalib)
            the problem is that int wsr is not passed to the function and it thus causes implicit conversions where false is being cast into int, 0 into bool, and true into float.
            

 Hi

Question:

In v4 board, which channel has best calibration ?

Should it be possible to simulate v5 board and read calibration values for v4 board by other method .. for example using external calibration signal source connected to all channels? 

Is it  needed to detach all input signals from EVM board during calibration ?( I see there are switches on channel inputs.)

Some comments: averager.h, averager.cpp are missing in windows v.5 sources (it should be copied from linux sources)

PF2014 and thank You for development new EVM 5 and new time precision.

Martin

 Dear Stefan

Thank you very much for the answer. I did not have a chance to implement this yet.

I have a  follow up question: 

Is the following sequence already implemented in the DRS oscilloscope program? Could you point me to an example of such a sequence?

- arm DRS4 board

- wait for trigger by calling IsBusy()

- read out DRS4 board

- call StartDomino(), which re-enables also the trigger through

Cheers

Dmitry

There are indeed several methods. You can output the trigger number at the DRS evaluation board via the trigger output, but you would have to implement this yourself in the firmware.

The send-though of recorded triggers is already implemented in the board, so you could use that. The only thing to make sure is to to readout and re-enable the PSI46 board before you readout the DRS4 board. If you would first read the DRS4 board, and re-enable the DRS4 board via StartDomino(), then there could be the next trigger going through to the PSI46 board without that board being ready. So the sequence is

- connect trigger out of DRS4 to PSI46

- arm PSI46 board

- arm DRS4 board

- wait for trigger by calling IsBusy()

- read out PSI46 board

- read out DRS4 board

- call StartDomino(), which re-enables also the trigger though

Best regards,

Stefan

Last month I was using a DRS4 evaluation board to digitise the signal from the charged particles in piM1 beam line at PSI. The beam in piM1 is a mixture of pions with a small percentage of protons. Pions are close to minimum ionising and were producing the signals on the order of 250 mV (Landau distributed). The protons at this momentum (250 MeV) are not minimum ionising  and produced much higher signals ( I could not exactly measure them because they were of scale for the DRS4 board). The pulses were on the order of 0.5 usec long. At low rate (~1kHz) the board was able to handle them, but when I turned the rate of particles to about ~300 kHz, the channel went flat. My question is whether the evaluation board has some type of input protection that would be possible to replace? Or does that mean that I have burned the input of the DRS4 board itself? Other channels behaving normal.

I m trying to measure lifetime in our lab and I intend to take
measurement with DRS4 at that point I have a little bit confused about
DRS4 time range.In My system I opened 10 us gate but after triggering
DRS4 measure nearly 1.2 us. Because of this I want to extend DRS4 time range that
measurement range from 1.2us to 10 us.