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===== Workshops :: TBB DAQ Busy Week (30 Mar - 03 Apr 2009, ASTRON, Dwingeloo) =====

  - [[#Invitation]]
  - [[#Schedule]]
  - [[#Planned activities]]
  - [[#Participants]]
  - [[#Tasks]]

==== Invitation ====

The new date for the //TBB data acquisition// busy week is:
**Monday 30. March -- Friday 3. April**

The main goal of this week is to get the (MAC/SAS ???) software up to a level so that the operators can generate a (not-triggered?) data dump from the TBBs and return a single hdf5-file with all the raw-data to the user. Secondary goals are to include metadata (e.g. the antenna positions) in the file and to get a triggered data dump. (Otherwise these issues are addressed at a later time.)

Side-topics will probably be the inclusion of the metadata into the TBB files and imaging from TBB data.

Everybody who plans to attend is kindly asked to send an e-mail to ''A.Horneffer''-//at//-''astro.ru.nl''

==== Schedule ====

^  Monday 30.3.|  **11:00**  | Start with a "kick-off" meeting, splitting into groups |
^  Wednesday 1.4.|  **13:00**  | Midpoint meeting |
^  Friday 3.4.|  **14:00**  | Wrap-up meeting (Muller Kamer) |
^  Friday 3.4.|  **afternoon**  | End |

==== Planned activities ====

== Work on the DAQ ==

Improve the TBB data acquisition so that the the following is (reasonably) conveniently possible (in decreasing importance):
  - non triggered data dumps into hdf5 files. Including:
    * read out the same (absolute) time range from several stations
    * generation of correct hdf5 files 
    * generation of a single hdf5-file (from all stations)
  - inclusion of basic metadata in hdf5 files (not really DAQ), i.e.:
    * antenna positions
  - externally triggered data dumps\\ including saving data around a given time
  - locally (on station level) triggered data dumps
  - centrally (at CEP, from beam-formed data) triggered data dumps

== Other activities ==

(Activities at lower priority, mostly done by people not directly involved with the DAQ work.)
  * generation of a beam-formed time-series (Kalpana, Olaf)
  * imaging of TBB data (Sef, Heino, Lars)
  * GUI / data inspection tool (Arthur, Heino)

Please add to this list, or send me(AH) an e-mail!

==== Participants ====

  * Kenneth Anderson (Fri. and maybe more)
  * Lars Baehren (*)
  * Arthur Corstanje (*)
  * Heino Falcke (Tue. and Wed.)  (#)
  * Jean-Mathias Griessmeier (from Tue. or Wed. on)
  * Joerg Hoerandel (Wed. and Fri.) 
  * Andreas Horneffer (*)
  * Olaf Scholten (Tue. and Wed. afternoon)
  * Kalpana Singh (*)
  * Sander Ter Veen (*)
  * Sef Welles (*)

(*): Room booked in the ASTRON guesthouse
(#): Room booked in the hotel De Borken

==== Tasks ====

^ Task ^ Responsible ^ Status ^
| Adjustment of initial timeout when starting up tbb2h5 to start listening for data coming at a designated port | Baehren | done (r2502) |
| Resorting of incoming data blocks in tbb2h5 | Horneffer | done (r2504) |
| Debugging of LOFAR_TBB: gives segmentation fault when adjusting blocksize after construction | --- | pending |
| Debugging of DAL routine to read string-valued attributes; after earlier changes on in some of the basic DAL functions by Joe, the retrieval of such attributes fails and therefore also causes TBB_LOFAR to crash. | Baehren | done (r2503) |
| Start writing out TBB data from the oldest entry in the buffer, such that frames sent off to CEP at least leave the station in chronological order | Donker | done |
| Clean up command line parameters passed to tbb2h5; some of the currently expected values appear not to even get used in TBB.cpp | bahren | pending |
| Create dynamic spectrum from dump of TBB data | ter Veen, Griessmeier | pending |
| Debugging of Beamformer: the retrieved weights which are applied to the data are all unity, which means that somewhere along the line values are not passed correctly | Baehren | pending |
| Reduce the output speed of the TBBs so that no packages are lost | Donker | pending |
| Fix tbb2h5 so that reading from a socket works | Horneffer | done (r2514) |
| Fix tbb2h5 so that it can handle different dipoles. | Horneffer | done (r2518) |

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