Software

The firmware uses the IPBus protocol https://svnweb.cern.ch/trac/cactus to communicate from the FPGA to the host computer.

There are some example scripts in the firmware/scripts directory of the Git repository. They are designed to be run on Linux, but it may be possible to use them under Windows. They use an deprecated Python class, PyChips to communicate with the FPGA. The advantage of PyChips is that it is pure Python with no external libraries. The example script uses the CERN ROOT system to display histograms and store the data.

For higher performance use the newer pycohal or uHAL libraries described on the Cactus website.

Running test scripts

• Make sure you have Python 2.6 installed , together with the following libraries: logging , csv , OptionParser , threading , time , ConfigParser , itertools , binstr , Queue , sys , ROOT , time , math

* Clone the Git repository:

git clone git:https://www.ohwr.org/white-rabbit/maroc_csa.git

* Set up the environment (assumed bash):

cd maroc_csa/firmware/scripts
export PYTHONPATH=PyChips_1_5_0_pre2A/src

* Execute the takeMarocData.py script. It has options to set the IP-Address of the FPGA ( set with DIP switches on the board ) the output file , number of events to capture and configuration file.

python takeMarocData.py

Data will be stored in a ROOT file.