[Pafgbt] PAF/GBT code

[Richard Black]

Dr. Fisher,

I designed section 4.3 to describe all the commands that would be used by
the M&C system to control the DAQ. However, I would take those descriptions
with a grain of salt; I just realized that additional information will be
needed. Hopefully the DAQ's command descriptions will be finished by the
end of the week; I need to finalize the specifications with Dr. Jeffs and
Dr. Warnick tomorrow.

Regarding the correlator mode, that's been sitting in a code freeze for a
month or so.  We'll pull it out and dust it off and get back to you. Last I
checked, we had the correlator working for 32 elements, but this hasn't
been formally verified yet.

We've been working on a single system. If there's anything else about the
system that I can inform you about, feel free to let me know.

Thanks,

Richard Black


On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Rick Fisher <rfisher at nrao.edu> wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> It's been awhile since we last communicated on PAF/DAQ so just thought I'd
> touch base to take stock.  Aside from a question on whether the DC channel
> was counted in the spectral channel count, I think we had pretty well
> converged on my understanding of the streaming data packet format.  I've
> started rounding up some code to write a data display for this format
> that might help with data integrity checks at the beginning of a data
> acquisition session.
>
> It looks like section 4.3 of your documentation spells out what we need to
> control the streaming mode.  That will be next on our TODO list and will
> be the beginning of writing the "Modification Request" that we need to
> provide to the GBT control system programmers.
>
> I think that your data acquisition mode of greatest interest for tests of
> the beamforming array on the telescope will be the Correlator.  Data from
> this mode allows us to calibrate the array and gives us the most
> information about array performance and anomalies.  How far along are you
> in bench testing and documentation of this mode?  When you have some
> sample data from the correlator we can start writing a software reader on
> our end.  The streaming data sample that you provided was really
> instructive.
>
> Dr. Jeffs may have told me this and I've since forgotten, but are you
> building two copies of the data acquisition hardware (one for development
> and one to go to either Green Bank or Arecibo as needed) or just one?
> Quite some time ago we received a list of components that went into your
> system, but we haven't thought much more about whether we should invest in
> a copy of this hardware.  We should give this more thought now that it's
> clearer who is available here to work on that part of the project.
>
> Best regards,
> Rick
>
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