tlangfor / caenreader

A set of tools to read and process binary data produced by CAEN waveform digitizers.

About me

I'm a Research Computing Facilitator and recovering academic at the Yale Center for Research Computing. Coming from the data-intensive field of nuclear and particle physics I have an interest in helping researchers wrangle their computing needs.

I spent 15 years working on developing instrumentation to detect interactions from neutrons and neutrinos. After building these detectors I found myself needing software tools to collect, manage, simulate, and analyze large volumes of data. This lead me to working on a variety of HPC systems, mainly in a high-throughput mode of parallel computing.

After getting a taste of HPC, I got pulled into the world of research support, first for my colleagues and then as a part-time member of YCRC. I discovered that I really enjoyed helping people learn about HPC, and in early 2022 took the leap to join YCRC full-time.

Since becoming a full-time RCF I have taken a deep dive into tightly coupled parallel workflows and applying an experimentalist mentality to cluster benchmarking and node profiling. I currently help maintain YCRC's largest cluster, Grace, which hosts all our MPI-based workflows.

caenreader's Issues

Read fails when WaveDump is not saving headers

WaveDump alters the default data format in two ways. First, the traces are split into individual files, named wave#.dat. Then there is a user-defined option to include the event header, which is also in a different format (6 long words instead of 4, and different layout) from the default in the manual.

We will need to think about how best to alter the scope of this package to adapt to these quirks.

16ch compatibility

getNextTrigger fails to accurately handle triggers with channels 8-15 in use on x725 boards.

failed attempt #1

I followed the instructions to extract the trigger:

dataFile = CAENReader.DataFile('waves.dat')
trigger = dataFile.getNextTrigger()
trigger.display()

But on the first step I get the following error:

name 'CAENReader' is not defined

I ensured that the .py file was in the same directory as I was in the terminal. I don't know what else could cause this error.

Trigger Time Stamp

Hi, I wrote a similar soft but in C++ (check it here)
I found it smart you have added the trigger time from the beginning of the file of an event. However, I see that your time from the beginning of the file (in us) is calculated by multiplying the trigger time tag (triggerTime member) by the value of 8e-3. But it is not correct for all CAEN digitizers. For example, for the 724 series it must be 10e-3, and for 742 series it must be 8.5e-3. At least according to the WaveDump manual. However, it would be better to refer to the board documentation. The same is for the rollover value that you use: it is not 2³¹ for all CAEN digitizers.