pytlu

DAQ software and firmware for the EUDAQ Trigger Logic Unit (TLU).

Description

The main features of the DAQ software and FPGA firmware are:

• Protocol compatible with original EUDAQ TLU firmware
• Integrated TDC (1.5625ns resolution, 640 MHz)
• Configurable input inversion
• Configurable input acceptance based on the pulse width
• Trigger acceptance based on the distance of the input pulse leading edge
• Continuous data storage of accepted triggers (trigger ID, timestamp, TDC)
• Testbench for software and firmware
• Example FPGA module provided by basil: TLU/trigger FSM
• Data monitoring provided by the online_monitor package

The data of all accepted triggers will be stored in a HDF5/PyTables file. It contains the following data:

• Timestamp of the trigger (64-bit number, 40 MHz)
• Trigger ID (32-bit number)
• Distance between leading edge of input pulse and generation of trigger signal for each input channel (each of them 8-bit numbers)

Online Monitor

The pytlu online monitor displays the trigger rate vs. time.

Installation

Installation of Anaconda Python or Miniconda Python is recommended.

Install dependencies:

conda install numpy psutil qtpy pyqt pyyaml pyzmq pytables
pip install pyusb pySiLibUSB
pip install basil-daq>=3.0.0

Install pytlu from PyPI:

pip install pytlu

or install pytlu from sources:

python setup.py develop

For development/testing see .travis.yml for details.

USB Driver

Install libusb library by following the pySiLibUSB installation guide.

If you are using the TLU for the first time, you need to add a permanent udev rule in order to access the TLU. Create the file /etc/udev/rules.d/tlu.rules and add the following lines. For a RedHat-based distribution (e.g., SL7/Centos 7) use:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="165d", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", GROUP="NOROOTUSB", MODE="0666"

OR for a Debian-based distribution (e.g., Ubuntu) use:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="165d", ATTR{idProduct}=="0001", MODE="0666"

Usage

In order to get a description of the possible input arguments run:

pytlu -h

In order to start pytlu online monitor run:

pytlu_monitor

Example:

pytlu -t 10000 -c 10000 -oe CH1 --timeout 2

Test beam usage

A detailed description of the TLU can be found here. Do not forget to adjust the trigger threshold using the small screw on the front side of the TLU (counter clockwise increases the threshold).

EUDAQ integration

Pytlu can connect to the data acquisition framework EUDAQ 1, which is the common run control software used at pixel test beams. For the installation of EUDAQ 1.x please follow this wiki. To use the EUDAQ libraries within pytlu a python wrapper is used. This wrapper is not build with default settings, thus the following cmake option must be specified when building EUDAQ -DBUILD_python=ON.

Example minimal installation

The following commands setup EUDAQ 1.x development version for pytlu with minimum requirements (no ROOT, no Qt) and are tested on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. This installation is sufficient to use and test the pytlu eudaq producer. The paths /home/user/git have to be adjusted to your system, of course.

Install dependencies

EUDAQ needs a recent cmake3 version that might not be shipped with your distribution. This is a known issue. To install a recent version under Ubuntu do

wget https://cmake.org/files/v3.11/cmake-3.11.1.tar.gz
tar xf cmake-3.11.1.tar.gz
cd cmake-3.11.1
./configure
make -j 4
sudo apt-get install checkinstall
sudo checkinstall

Install eudaq

git clone -b v1.x-dev https://github.com/eudaq/eudaq
cd eudaq/build
cmake -DBUILD_python=ON -DBUILD_gui=OFF -DBUILD_onlinemon=OFF -DBUILD_runsplitter=OFF -DUSE_ROOT=OFF ..
make install -j 4

The producer has to know the installation path of EUDAQ. One way is to specify PYTHONPATH to include the python folder in the EUDAQ directory, e.g.:

export PYTHONPATH="${PYTHONPATH}:/home/user/git/eudaq/python"

This is not needed when you mention the path of the eudaq installation for every call to pytlu_eudaq (see below).

Run control GUI

When you want to have the run control GUI for more convenient testing change the CMAKE option to:

-DBUILD_gui=ON

Warning: you have to avoid calling cmake within the anaconda environment, since the anaconda QT5 version cannot easily be used to build code.

Usage with Pytlu

A simple command line interface is provided to start the pytlu producer:

pytlu_eudaq --help

Please read the help output for program parameters. Since there are configuration parameters which exist within the EUDAQ TLU controller but not within the pytlu producer and vice versa, only the following configuration parameters can be set using the EUDAQ config file:

• TriggerInterval
• AndMask
• DutMask

These are mapped properly to the format needed by pytlu. Of course, the usual parameters supplied by pytlu can be specified, e.g.:

pytlu_eudaq --timeout 5  -f /path/to/data/

Please note that the settings specified in the EUDAQ configuration file will overwrite the settings specified by the command line interface.

If you did not add the EUDAQ directory to the PYTHONPATH explicitly after installation (see above) you can give the path when running pytlu_eudaq, e.g.:

pytlu_eudaq --path /home/user/git/eudaq

Debugging and testing

Replay feature

It is possible to replay a recorded pytlu raw data file with correct timing to test the system. This allows development and debugging without hardware. To replay a pytlu raw data file one has to type:

pytlu_eudaq --replay /home/user/git/pytlu/data/tlu_example_data.h5

Sometimes it is not needed to replay the data in real time. You can delay the data sending for every read out by an arbitrary time by specifying a delay parameter. For example to add a delay of one second you can type:

pytlu_eudaq --replay tlu_example_data.h5 --delay 1

Unit test

A unit test is also available to test the complete chain: pytlu producer + DataConverter + Run Control. To test if everything is setup correctly open a console and make sure you added eudaq to you python path (see above). Then go to the pytlu/tests folder and type

python test_eudaq.py

This test succeeds if everything is setup correctly.