Dear Stefan Ritt,

Yes I use Windows 7, If the DRS Oscilloscope program stays on for a couple of hours without saving the data, the problem will occur. It seems it happens more often when there is data writing and when the rate of events is slow, about 100 events per second, at high rates it almost doesn't happen. Can it be temperature related?

Daniel

At hight rates I worked with files of up to 20 GB so I don't think this is the problem.

I will try to run it under Ubuntu and see if i can recreate the problem.

Thank you very much for the quick responses and help.

I too have air conditioning in the room, not sure to which power line it is connected, but I'll try to check this aswell.

Thank you very much.

I'd like to be able to know which channel (0,1,2,3 or external) was responsible for the trigger.  DRSBoard::GetTriggerSource() seems to always return 1.  Is there a way to get this information?  Using the DRS4 evaluation board and software version 5.0.3.

Thanks,

Cosmin

I am trying to use 4 evaluation boards with a powered USB hub (since eventually, I will have to do this on a laptop).  It seems like destroying the DRS object is insufficent to properly close the boards when on the hub (i.e. I get usb read errors next time I run my program). When all the boards are plugged into the computer, all is fine.  This is on Linux using libusb1. My guess is something about resetting the port doesn't work properly (but maybe that's this particular hub's fault?).  Has anyone else experienced a similar issue. If not, can someone recommend a hub that is known to work?

Hello everybody,

I am completely new to this, so please bear with me.

I am trying to install the applications on my laptop. I downloaded and untar-ed the drivers and applications for Linux as described in the evaluation board manual. However, when I do the make, I get the following error:

drs-4.0.0$ make
g++ -g -O2 -Wall -Wuninitialized -fno-strict-aliasing -Iinclude -DOS_LINUX -DHAVE_LIBUSB -DUSE_DRS_MUTEX -c src/musbstd.c
In file included from src/musbstd.c:14:0:
include/musbstd.h:17:17: fatal error: usb.h: No such file or directory
 #include <usb.h>
 

Can anybody help me please?

Thanks.

Thank you Stefan, that was just what I needed.

Also, I have another question, if I am allowed to ask on this forum. I am trying to study how the time calibration of the DRS is done. Can you point me to the script in which this is done?

Thank you,

Christian

Hi Stefan,

I have already read the paper. I was just unsure where the calibration code was located. Thank you so much for all your help.

Christian

Hello everybody,

I was trying to create a stand-alone program that would perform a time calibration on the board. My goal would be the following.

- acquire  about 10k sinus waveforms

- write them to disk (also for later reanalysis)

- run the time calibration on the recorded data

- store the clibration results in a file / database

Being not an expert, my question here is the following. Would it be easier to try to isolate the time calibration part from the DRS.cpp source code or re-write entirely the code from scratch?

Thanks.

Hi Stefan,

Thank you for your reply. I have read the paper already. I looked through the code and I understand that the LTC and GTC are performed by the AnalyzeSlope and AnalyzePeriod functions, respectively, correct? It seems to me to be a complicated business to re-write that part from scratch, at least for an inexperienced programmer like me. It made more sense to try to isolate that part from the original DRS.cpp. Ideally, I would like to have a stand-alone program that would work on any SCA without references to the drs hardware specifics.

Thank you for your help Stefan. I will try to get the TC part isolated.

Hi,

I would like to use the DRS4 board with LabView for fast readout.
Do you know anyone who has written a VI for that?

Thanks,
Christian

 Hi,

    Is there a straightforward way to convert the xml file format into the binary format?  I have some runs taken mistakenly with xml.

Best,

Chris

I am new to this forum. I have ordered a DRS4 evaluation board for doing experiments with very fast PET detectors. It has not arrived yet. The version of the manual I downloaded today shows software  installation instructions for Windows 7 and earlier versions. I intend to use it on a 64bit PC running Windows 8.1. Will the Windows 7 driver work, or is there an updated version for Windows 8 or 10?

I tried this suggestion of changing the startup settings to ingore driver license signing (as suggested in the post # 434), but when I tried to install the software I got a error message which I captured from the screen and I have attached. Perhaps I have the wrong version, or, as suggested, the file I downloaded from your site is incomplete?

I tried restarting Windows 10 in a way the allowed me to use "advanced startup options" Option 7 suggested it was to restart without mandatory driver signing. However, the error persists. Has anyone tested this latest version 5.0.4 on Windows 10? My hardware arrived today, and I am anxious to test it.!!!!

On a hunch, I tried downloading V 5.0.3 instead. This works, and I now have the oscilloscope mode displaying signals! (just to make sure, I re-tire version 5.0.4 and still get the same error. So, in summary V 5.0.3 seems to install successfully and work with Windows 10, but the newer V5.0.4 does not install... I assmume that I am missing something though, as the newer version is 10 Mbytes bigger!

I am attempting to use the DRS4 to measure the timing resolution of a pair of SensL silicon photomultipliers (SiPM). In order to do this I need to trigger the DRS4 only when there is a coincidence between the two input signals, and hopefully make histograms of the relative detection times of each detector.

There are two completely separate issues. (1) I think this may just be a labelling error. In the first image (OR_mode_selected) one can clearly see two pulses which are very similar. In this mode, both signals are present, and are always present. I think this should be the "AND", not "OR" of the two signals. Contrast this with the second image where I have selected "AND_mode". Clearly only one signal is present, and either signal trigges an event, so this should be "OR", not "AND"

The second issue is, for me, much more serious. I want to sample the leading edge of this event in order to determine its "time". The little "T" at the top of each image is, I believe the "trigger point" in the first two images. However, this is well after the part of the signal I am interested in. The first two images were at 2 GigaSamples/sec. The third is at 5 GigaSamples/sec. Clearly the event I am interested in processing is over by then. At the lower sampling rate, I can see well before the "T", but at the higher one I can only see after the "T". I had built an external "coincidence circuit" and the "external trigger mode" hoping to to circumvent this issue by using very long cables to delay the signals inut to the DRS4, But even then I have not been successful in getting the to work.

I am using version 5.0.3 on a PC as the version released after that did not work.

I hope some can help!

Chris Thompson

I needed a fast pulse inverter in order to feed signals from the recent SensL SiPMs into a conventional CFD which only accepted negative signals. I got a very small ferite torridal transformer from Coilcraft and wired up to invert signals then inserted into in 50 ohm coax cable and it works fine. These things cost only a few cents each!

The coilcraft part number is: JA4220-ALB. Iordered two of them and they were sent as free samples. You might want to buy some slightly bigger ones. I found them so small it was very hard to solder the coax cable to the connectors. Since I got them, I managed to damage one as they are quite fragile! In the confirmation email I got there was some contact info which may be useful for you: "For help, contact Victoria Berner at 847-516-5551  vberner@coilcraft.com "  BTW every time I use this forum I'm told that my password is not valid. Each time I reset it according to the "Lost pasword preceedure. Then I can log on again. Its quite annoying.