| | | Setting up scaler readout | |
The readout skeleton supports periodic readout of run time scalers. At the end of each scaler interval, scalers are read and cleared. Thus the scaler data in the data buffers is incremental. Using incremental scalers means that you do not generally have to worry about scalers overflowing, however reading scalers incrementally can not be done atomically so there will be some lost scaler counts. The scaler busy output can be used to approximate the severity of this effect and correct for it. See Setting up the electronics.
As is the case for event readout, two types of scaler readout are supported, a composite scheme and a traditional scheme:
The structured scaler readout scheme allows you to structure scalers in to banks, and insert scalers of different types into those banks for readout. Predefined classes support the common scalers in use at the NSCL.
The traditional scaler readout scheme provides an object oriented wrapper for the simplified scaler readout of the old skeleton.cpp file. For simple experiments, you can use the traditional scaler readout scheme to quickly port your software to the new system, however for more complex setups, and for apparatus that are expected to run in conjunction with other apparati, I would reccomend that you make the effort to port your scaler readout to the structured system.
| | | Setting up scaler readout | |