TACTIC

TACTIC

• computer: daq18.triumf.ca
• midas: https://daq18.triumf.ca
• elog: https://elog.triumf.ca/Tactic/General/ (has a "tactic" user account)

Old V1740 DAQ

Overview

Uses 2x V1740 via CAEN USB interface. 64 channels each - can read out 2 of the 8 TACTIC "sectors".

These programs should be running:

• mhttpd (web server)
• Logger (writing data to disk)
• feMKS (gas mixer)
• fetactic (data readout from digitizers)
• ana (online analysis of data)

Wiring diagram and trigger logic

Trigger and v1740 connections:

• both v1740 trigger outputs go to logic OR. pulser goes into the same OR
• from this OR, they fan out to v1740 trigger inputs
• analog output of first v1740 provides the run gate (via polarity inverting kludge)
• analog output of second v1740 provides a "buffer-half-full" trigger veto (via polarity inverting kludge)

Trigger notes: (KO 7-oct-2024)

• trigger signal is not synched with the v1740 clock, actual "adc stop" time will have a jitter between the two v1740 of 1-2 clock periods
• actual event time jitter between the two v1740 is around 2 clock (from looking at event timestamps).
• because v1740 busy are not synced (and busy from first v1740 is missing), the second v1740 often has extra events. sometimes the first v1740 has an extra event. fetactic.exe has workaround against this, mostly by dropping mismatched data.

Analyzer notes

• Code is in /home/tactic/newTACTIC/manalyzer.
• Not source-controlled.
• Contains many hard-coded thresholds/settings/limits. Also includes a hard-coded mapping between digitizer channel number and hardware sector/pad number.
• Used for both online and offline analysis of data.

Re-compilation

# Rebuild fetactic.exe
cd /home/tactic/newTACTIC/v1740mt
make
ls -l fetactic.exe

# Rebuild analyzer
cd /home/tactic/newTACTIC/manalyzer
make
ls -l ./tacticana.exe

New V2745 DAQ

Overview

Uses 6x CAEN V2745 digitizers, with option for reading 8 digitizers if needed. With 8 digitizers can read all 8 sectors from the hardware.

Digitizers are readout over 1G ethernet, and run DPP_ZLE firmware to reduce the data rate significantly. Future versions of TACTIC may run DPP_PHA or custom firmware to further reduce the data rate.

Wiring diagram and trigger logic

The trigger is a global OR of every channel of every digitizer (though we can suppress certain channels if desired).

Digitizers are set to NIM logic levels, and OR is done using standard NIM fan-in/fan-out modules. Trigger-OR is sent to 9 locations (8 digitizers + 1 visual scaler) so we use a 16x FI/FO. Busy-OR is only sent to 8 locations, so can use an 8x FI/FO.

Digitizer configuration is done via the VX settings webpage. The concept is that the "default" value is applied to all digitizers, unless you specifically override the value for a certain digitizer. This means it's more efficient to change settings, as you only have to change one "default" parameter rather than 8 separate board-specific parameters. Settings that have been overridden for one or more boards appear with a YELLOW background on the webpage.

Settings that users may want to configure:

• Readout channel mask - which channels get read out when a trigger is accepted
• Ch over thresh A en mask - which channels contribute to the self-trigger logic
• Chan over thresh thresholds - the thresholds in ADC RELATIVE TO THE BASELINE
• Scope/ZLE waveform length - how long the waveforms should be.
• Pre-trigger for ZLE mode - where in the waveform the trigger pulse should appear
• ZLE threshold (ADC) - how many ADC below baseline a signal must be before it gets read out. Note this is different to the trigger threshold! You could trigger readout if the signal goes 50ADC below baseline, but then read out any data that's 10ADC below baseline.
• ZLE look back (samples) - how many samples to read out before the signal went below the ZLE threshold
• ZLE look forward (samples) - how many samples to read out after the signal goes back above the ZLE threshold
• Ch over thresh A gate width(ns) - set this to roughly how long you expect a "real" event to last. If you set it too short then the NIM OR module will output triggers multiple times for a single event (e.g. for the first channel to get hit, and then 100ns later for another channel, and then 300ns after that for another channel, ....). The digitizers would still only read out data for the first trigger, but the visual scaler will show a much higher rate, which would be very confusing for debugging.
• DC offset (pct) - set the baseline between 0ADC and 65535ADC, as a percentage
• Signal offset (uV) - extra tweak to the input signal
• VGA gain - 0-40dB in 0.5dB increments

Important settings that are different for the first digitizer in the chain:

Setting	First board	Other boards
Run start source	Start acq on midas run start	Start acq on encoded CLKIN
Use external clock	True	False

Other important settings that shouldn't be changed:

• Run start delay (ns) - 0 for the last board, increasing by 48ns for each board in the chain (240, 192, 144, 96, 49, 0).
• Trigger out mode - ITLA - ensure we output the self-trigger signal
• Trigger on external signal - True - ensure we only trigger on the global OR that gets fed back in to the board
• ZLE enable - True for all channels
• Ch over thresh A multiplicity - 1 - in principle you could require 2+ hits simultaneously before we trigger (to reduce triggering on noise/bad topology events), but this setting only applies within a single board. So you'll get weird geometric efficiencies (more likely to trigger on tracks that hit multiple pads in the same sector vs pads in different sectors). If we want to trigger on 2+ hits across multiple boards we can use the DAC or LVDS connectors, and connect them to a board running custom firmware.
• Chan over thresh rising edge - False - TACTIC uses negative pulses
• Veto source / Veto when source is high - Disabled / True
• Use NIM IO - True
• Enable clock out - True
• GPIO mode - Busy
• Busy in source - SIN
• Sync out mode - Run
• Enable DC offsets - True

Analyzer notes

• Code is in /home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana on daq18, and https://bitbucket.org/ttriumfdaq/tacticana/src/master/ on bitbucket.
• Uses JSON files to define histogram limits, channel mapping etc. See README.md file in the repository for details.
• Specify which config file to use via the --config flag.

# Run online using the v2745.json config file:
/home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana/tacticana.exe --midas-progname tacticana -R8081 -- --conf /home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana/v2745.json

# Run offline using the v2745.json config file:
/home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana/tacticana.exe /path/to/something.mid -- --conf /home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana/v2745.json

# NOTE THE --config FLAG MUST COME AFTER A '--'!!!!!

Re-compilation

# Rebuild vx2740_group_fe.exe
cd /home/tactic/newTACTIC/dsproto_vx2740/build
make install -j

# Rebuild analyzer
cd /home/tactic/newTACTIC/tacticana
make -j