Instruction/ maintenance manual of the product MI.20xx Spectrum Brands
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SPECTRUM SYSTEMENTWICKLUNG MICROELE CTRONIC GMBH · AHRENSFELDER WEG 13-17 · 22927 GROSSHANSDORF · GERMANY PHONE: +49 (0)4102-6956 -0 · FAX: +49 (0)4102 -6956-66 · E-MA IL: info@spec.
(c) SPECTRUM SYSTEMENTWICKLUNG MICR OELECTRONIC GMBH AHRENSFELDER WEG 13-17, 22927 GROSSHANSDORF, GERM ANY SBench is a registered trademark of Spectr um Systementwic klung Microelectronic G mbH.
3 Introduction .................................... ..................................... ............................. ............. .... 6 Preface ......................................................................................................
4 Programming the Board ......................... .................................... .................................... . 36 Overview .................. ..............................................................................................
5 Option Multiple Recording .......................................................... .................................... . 73 Recording modes ........................................................................ .................................
6 MI.20xx Manual Preface Introduction Introduction Preface This manual provides detailed information on the hardware featur es of your Spectrum instrumentation boar d. This information inc ludes tech- nical data, specifications, block diagram and a connector description.
Introduction Different models of the MI.20xx series (c) Spectrum GmbH 7 Different models of the MI.20xx series The following overwiew shows the different available models of th e MI.20xx series. They differ in th e number mounted generation modules and the number of available channels.
8 MI.20xx Manual Additional options Introduction Additional options Extra I/O (Opti on -XMF) With this simple-to-use enhancem ent it is possible to control a wide range of external instruments or other equipment. Therefore you have 24 digital I/O and the 4 analog outputs available.
Introduction Additional options (c) Spectrum GmbH 9 Starhub The star hub module allows the syn- chronisation of up to 16 MI boards. It is possible to synchronise boards of the same type with each other as well as different types. The module acts as a star hub for clock and trigger signals.
10 MI.20xx Manual The Spectrum type plate Introduction The Spectrum type plate The Spectrum type plate, which consists of the follo wing components, can be found on all of our boards. The board type, consisting of the two lette rs describing the bus (in this case MI for the PCI bus) an d the model number.
Introduction Hardware information (c) Spectrum GmbH 11 Hardware information Block diagram Technical Data Resolution 8 bit Dimension 312 mm x 107 mm Differential l inearity error (ADC) 0.5 LSB typ. Width (Sta ndard) 1 full size slot Integral linearity err or (ADC) 0.
12 MI.20xx Manual Hardware information Introduction Dynamic Parameters Dynamic parameter s are measured at ± 1 V input range (if no othe r range is stated) and 50 Ohm termination with the samplerate s pecified in the ta ble. Measured pa rameters are aver a- ged 20 times to get typical values.
Hardware Installation System Requirements (c) Spectrum GmbH 13 Hardware Installation System Requirements All Spectrum MI.xxxx instrumen tat ion boards are compliant to the PCI standard and require in genera l one fr ee full length slot. Depending on the installed options additional free slots can be necessary.
14 MI.20xx Manual Installing the board in the system Hardware Installation Installing a board wi th digital inputs/out puts Before installing the board you first need to unscrew and remove the dedicated blind-br ackets usually mounted to cover unused s lots of your PC.
Hardware Installation Installing the board in the system (c) Spectrum GmbH 15 Installing multiple boa rds synchronized b y starhub Hooking up the boards Before mounting several synchronized boards for a multi channel system into the PC yo u can hook up the boar ds with their s ynchr onization cables first.
16 MI.20xx Manual Installing the board in the system Hardware Installation Installing multip le synchronized boards Hooking up the boards Before mounting several synchronized boards for a multi channel system into the PC you can hook up the bo ards with the synchron ization cable first.
Software Driver Installation Interrupt Sharing (c) Spectrum GmbH 17 Software Driver Installation Before using the board a driver must be installed that matches th e operating system. The installati on is done in different ways depending o n the used operating system.
18 MI.20xx Manual Windows 98 Software Driver Installation Windows 98 Installation When installing the board in a Win- dows 98 system the Spectrum board will be recognized automatically on the next start-up. The system offers the direct installa- tion of a driver for the board.
Software Driver Installation Windows 98 (c) Spectrum GmbH 19 After clicking the driver info button the detailed vers ion information of the driver is shown. In the case of a support question this information must be pr esented together with the board’s serial number to the support team to help finding a fast solution.
20 MI.20xx Manual Windows 2000 Software Driver Installation Windows 2000 Installation When installing the board in a Windows 2000 system the Spectrum board will be rec- ognized automatically on the next start-u p. The system offers the direct in- stallation of a driver for the board.
Software Driver Installation Windows 2000 (c) Spectrum GmbH 21 Driver - Update If a new driver version should be installe d no Spectrum board is allowed to be in us e by any software. So please stop and exit all software that could access the boards. A new driver version is direct- ly installed from the device manager.
22 MI.20xx Manual Windows XP Software Driver Installation Windows XP Installation When installing the board in a Windows XP system the Spectrum board will be rec- ognized automatically on the next start-up. The system offers the direct instal lation of a driver for the boa rd.
Software Driver Installation Windows XP (c) Spectrum GmbH 23 On the property page Windows XP shows the dat e and the version of the installed driver. After clicking the driver details button the detailed version inform ation of the driver is shown.
24 MI.20xx Manual Windows NT Software Driver Installation Windows NT Installation Under Windows NT the Spectr um dri ver mu st be i n- stalled manually. The driver is found on CD in the directory InstallWinNTDrv. Please start the „Setup.exe“ pro- gram.
Software Driver Installation Linux (c) Spectrum GmbH 25 Linux Overview The Spectrum boards are delivered with drivers for linux. It is necessary to install them manual ly following th e steps explaine d afterwards. The linux drivers can be found on CD in the directory /Driver/linu x .
26 MI.20xx Manual Linux Software Driver Installation Installing the device You connect a device to the driver with the mknod command. The ma jor number is the number of the driver as shown in the last st ep, the minor number is the index of the board starting with 0.
Software Software Overview (c) Spectrum GmbH 27 Software This chapter gives you an overview about the structure of the dr ivers and the software, where to find and how to use the exa mples.
28 MI.20xx Manual C/C++ Driver Interface Software C/C++ Driver Interface C/C++ is the main programming language for which the drivers have been build up. Theref ore the interface to C/C++ is the best m atch . All the small examples of the manual showing different parts of the hard ware programming are done with C.
Software C/C++ Driver Interface (c) Spectrum GmbH 29 Other Windows C/C++ compilers Include Driver To access the driver, the driver functions must be loaded from the driver dll. This can be easily done by standard windows func tions. There is one example in the directory /Examples/ other that shows the process.
30 MI.20xx Manual C/C++ Driver Interface Software Function SpcSetPa ram All hardware settings are based on software registers that can be set by the function SpcSetParam. This function sets a registe r to a defined value or executes a command. The board must first be initialized.
Software C/C++ Driver Interface (c) Spectrum GmbH 31 Under Linux the additional parameter nBytesPe rSample must be used for this function. For all boards with 8 bit resolution the p arameter is „1“, for all boards with 12, 14 or 16 bit resolution this paramet er has to be „2“.
32 MI.20xx Manual Delphi (Pascal) Programming Interface Software Delphi (Pascal) Pr ogramming Interface Type definiti on All Spectrum driver functions are using pr e-defined variable types to cover different operating systems and to use the same dri ver interface for all programming languages.
Software Delphi (Pascal) Programming Interface (c) Spectrum GmbH 33 This function is only available on generator or i/o boar ds. The function is not available on acquisition boards. Function SpcGetData Reads data from the board from a specific me mo ry channel.
34 MI.20xx Manual Visual Basic Programming Interface Software Visual Basic Prog ramming Interfa ce The Spectrum boards can be used together with Microsoft Visual Ba sic as well as with Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications. T his allows per example the direct access of the hardwa re from within Microsoft Ex cel.
Software Visual Basic Programming Interface (c) Spectrum GmbH 35 Function SpcGetParam The function SpcGetParam reads out software registers or status information. The board must first be initialized. The available software re- gisters for the driver are listed in the board specific part of th e documentation below.
36 MI.20xx Manual Overview Programming the Board Programming the Board Overview The following chapters show you in detail how to program the different aspects of the board. For every topic there’s a small ex ample. For the examples we focussed on Visual C++.
Programming the Board Initialization (c) Spectrum GmbH 37 This means as a result that it is not nece ssary to check each driver call for an error but to check for an error before the boa rd is started to see whether all settings ha ve been vali d. By reading all the error information one can easily examine wher e the error occure d.
38 MI.20xx Manual Initialization Programming the Board Hardware versi on Since all of the MI, MC and MX boards from Spectrum are modular boards, they consis t of one base board and one or two (only PCI and CompactPCI) piggy-back modules. This register SPC_PCIVERSION gi ves information about the revision of either the base board and the mo- dules.
Programming the Board Initialization (c) Spectrum GmbH 39 Installed features and options The SPC_PCIFEATURES register informs you about the options, that are installed on the b oard. If you want to know about one opti on being installed or not, you need to read out the 32 bit value and mask the interesting bit.
40 MI.20xx Manual Powerdown and reset Programming the Board Example program for the board initialization The following example is only an exerpt to give you an idea on how easy it is to initialize a Spectrum board. Powerdown and reset Every Spectrum board can be set to powerdown mode by software.
Analog Inputs Channe l Selection (c) Spectrum GmbH 41 Analog Inputs Channel Selection One key setting that influences all other possible settings is th e channel enable register. An unique feature of the Spectrum b oards is the possibility to program the number of channels you want to use.
42 MI.20xx Manual Setting up the inputs Analog Inputs Setting up the inputs Input ranges This analog acquisition board uses separate input amplifiers and converters on each ch annel. This gives you the possibility to set up the de- sired and concerning your application best suiting input range also separately for each ch annel.
Analog Inputs Setting up the inputs (c) Spectrum GmbH 43 Input offset In most cases the external signals will not be symm etrically re- lated to ground. If you want to acquire such as ymmetrical sig- nals, it is possible to use the smallest input range that matches the biggest absolute signal am plitude without exceeding the range.
44 MI.20xx Manual Setting up the inputs Analog Inputs Input termination All inputs of Spectrum’s analog boards can be terminated separately with 50 Ohm by so ftware programming. If you do so, please m ake sure that your signal source is able to deliver the higher output currents.
Standard acquisition modes General Information (c) Spectrum GmbH 45 Standard acquisition modes General Information The standard mode is the easiest and mostly used mode to acquire analog data with a Spectrum A/D board.
46 MI.20xx Manual Programming Standard acquisition modes The values depend on the number of activa ted channels and on the type of board being used. The minimum stepsizes for setting up the mem- size and the postcounter are shown in the table below.
Standard acquisition modes Programming (c) Spectrum GmbH 47 Command register If the board is started in the interrupt mode the task calling the start function will not return until the board has finished.
48 MI.20xx Manual Programming Standard acquisition modes Please refer to the relating chapter earlier in this manual. Th e examples in this section are written in Visual C++ for Windows , so the examples differ a little bit for the use with linux.
FIFO Mode Overview (c) Spectrum GmbH 49 FIFO Mode Overview General Information The FIFO mode allows to record data continuously and trans- fer it online to the PC (acquisi tion boards) or allows to write data continuously from the PC to the board (generation boards).
50 MI.20xx Manual Programming FIFO Mode When using FIFO mode together with one of the options that allow to have gaps in the acquisiton like Multiple Recording or Gate d Sampling one can even run the board with higher sample rates.
FIFO Mode Programming (c) Spectrum GmbH 51 Analog acquisition or generation boards Digital I/O (701x or 702x ) or pattern generator boards (72xx) Digital I/O board 7005 only We at Spectrum achieved best results when programming the buffer leng th to a number of samples that can hold approximately 100 ms of data.
52 MI.20xx Manual Programming FIFO Mode FIFO mode In normal applications the FIFO mode will run in a loop and process one buffer after the other. There are a few special command s and regi- sters for the FIFO mode: The start command and the wait command both wa it for the signal from the driver that th e next buffer has to be processed.
FIFO Mode Programming (c) Spectrum GmbH 53 The following example shows how to sort the channel data when us ing 4 channels in FIFO mode: Sample for mat The sample format in FIFO mode does not differ from the one of the standard (non FIFO) mode. Please refer to the relating passa ge concerning the sample format in the st andard acquisition chapter.
54 MI.20xx Manual Overview Clock generation Clock generation Overview The Spectrum boards offer a wide variety of different clock mode s to match all the customers need s.
Clock generation Internally generated sample rate (c) Spectrum GmbH 55 Maximum internal sample rate in MS/s Using plain quartz with no PLL In some cases it is useful for the application not to have the on-board PLL activated.
56 MI.20xx Manual Internally generated sample rate Clock generation Termination of the clock input If the external connector is used as an in put, either for fee ding in an external reference clock or for external clocking you c an enable a 50 Ohm termination on the board.
Clock generation Internally generated sample rate (c) Spectrum GmbH 57 External cloc k with divide r The extra clock divider can be used to divide an external fed in clock by a fixed value. The exte rnal clock must be > 1 MS/s. T his divided clock is used as a sample clock for the board.
58 MI.20xx Manual General Description Trigger modes and appendant registers Trigger modes and appendant registers General Description The trigger modes of the Spectrum MI, MC an d MX A/D boards are very complex and give yo u the possibility to detect nearly any t rigger event, you can think of.
Trigger modes and appendant registers External TTL trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 59 If you choose an external trigger mode th e SPC_TRIGGEROUT register will be overwri tten and the trigger connector will be used as an input anyways. As the trigger connector is used as an input, y ou can decide wh ether the input is 50 Ohm terminated or not.
60 MI.20xx Manual External TTL trigger Trigger modes and appendant registers Positive and negative TTL trigger This mode is for detecting the ri sing and falling edges of an ex- ternal TTL signal. The board will trig ger on the first rising or falling edge that is detected after starting the board.
Trigger modes and appendant registers External TTL trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 61 TTL pulsewidth trigger for long LOW pulses This mode is for detecting LOW pu lses of an external TTL signal that are longer than a programm ed pulsewidth. If the pulse is shorter than the programmed pulsewidth, no trigger will be detec- ted.
62 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger Overview of the channel tri gger registers The channel trigger modes are the most common modes, compared to external eq uipment like osc ill oscopes. The 17 different channe l trigger modes enable you to observe nearly any part of the analog signal.
Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 63 Triggerlevel All of the channel trigger modes listed above require at least one triggerlevel to be set (except TM_CHXOFF of course). Some li ke the window trigger require even two levels (upper and lo wer level) to be set.
64 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers The resulting trigge r step wi dth in mV can easily be calculated from the returned value. It is assumed that you know the actually selected input range. To give you an example on how to us e this formular we assume, that the ±1.
Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 65 Detailed descripti on of the channel trigger modes Channel trigger on po sitive edge The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate.
66 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel pulsewidth trigger for long pos itive pulses The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. If the programmed triggerlevel is crossed by the channel’s signal from lowe r to hi gher values (rising edge) the pulsewidth counter is started.
Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 67 Channel pulsewidth trigger fo r short positive puls es The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. If the programmed triggerlevel is crossed by the channel’s signal from lowe r to hi gher values (rising edge) the pulsewidth counter is started.
68 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel steepness trigger for flat positi ve pulses The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. If the programmed lower level is crossed by the channel’s signal from lowe r to hi gher values (rising edge) the pulsewidth counter is started.
Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 69 Channel steepness trigger for steep po sitive pulses The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. If the programmed lower level is crossed by the channel’s signal from lowe r to hi gher values (rising edge) the pulsewidth counter is started.
70 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel window trigger for entering signals The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. The upper and the lower level defin e a win- dow. Every time the signal enters the the window from the outside, a triggerevent will be detected.
Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel Trigger (c) Spectrum GmbH 71 Channel window trigger for long inner signals The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. The upper and the lower levels defi ne a win- dow. Every time the signal enters the window from the out- side, the pulsewidth counter is startet.
72 MI.20xx Manual Channel Trigge r Trigger modes and appendant registers Channel window trigger for short inner signals The analog input is continuous ly sampled with the selected sample rate. The upper and the lower levels defi ne a win- dow. Every time the signal enters the window from the out- side, the pulsewidth counter is startet.
Option Multi ple Record ing Recording modes (c) Spectrum GmbH 73 Option Multiple Recording The option Multiple Recording allows the acquisition of data bloc ks with multiple trigger events without restarting the hardwa re. The on-board memory will be divided into several segments of the same size.
74 MI.20xx Manual Trigger mode s Option Multiple Recording Resulting star t delays The following example shows how to set up the board for Multiple Recording in standard mode. The setup would be simila r in FIFO mode, but the memsize register would not be used.
Option Gated Sampling Recording modes (c) Spectrum GmbH 75 Option Gated Sampling The option Gated Sampling allows the data acquisition controlled by an e x t e r n a l g a t e s i g n al . D a t a w i l l o n l y b e r e c o r d e d , i f t h e programmed gate condition is true.
76 MI.20xx Manual Trigger mode s Option Gated Sampling Due to the structure of the on-board memory there is another delay at the end of the gate interval.
Option Gated Sampling Example program (c) Spectrum GmbH 77 Channel trigger Example program The following example shows how to set up the board for Gated Samp ling in standard mode. The setup would be similar in FIFO mod e, but the memsize register would not be used.
78 MI.20xx Manual General information Option Timestamp Option Timestamp General information The timestamp function is used to record trigger events relative to the beginn ing of the measurement, relative to a fixed time- zero point or synchronized to an external radio clock.
Option Timestamp Timestamp Status (c) Spectrum GmbH 79 The HIGH part counts the seconds that have elapsed sinc e the la st counter reset with the reset command TS_RESET. The LOW part i s reset to zero on every seconds signal and is clocked with the actual sample rate.
80 MI.20xx Manual Reading out timestamp data Option Timestamp Reading out all the timestamps with SpcGetData When using the function SpcGetData the data stored in th e timest amp FIFO will be read out in one block by the driver. The usage of the function SpcGetData is described in the re lating section earlier in this manual.
Option Timestamp Example programs (c) Spectrum GmbH 81 Example programs Standard ac quisition m ode Acquisition with Multip le Recording // ----- Allocate memory for the timestam p data buffer ----- p.
82 MI.20xx Manual Digital I/Os Option Extra I/O Option Extra I/O Digital I/Os With this simple-to-use enhancement it is possible to control a wide range of external ins trume nts or other equipment. Therefor e you have several digital I/Os and the 4 analog outp uts available.
Option Extra I/O Analog Outputs (c) Spectrum GmbH 83 Analog Outputs In addition to the digital I/Os there are fo ur analog outputs available. These output s are directly programmed with the voltage values i n mV. As the analog outputs are driven by a 12 bit DAC, the output vo ltage can be set in a ste psize of 5 mV.
84 MI.20xx Manual The different synchronization options Synchronization (Option) Synchronization (Option) This option allows the connection of multip le boards to generate a multi-channel syst em. It is possible to synchronize multiple Spectrum boards of the same type as well as different board types.
Synchronization (Option) The setup order for the different synchronization options (c) Spectrum GmbH 85 When the boards are synchronized by the option starhub there will be no delay between the connected boards.
86 MI.20xx Manual The setup order for the different synchr onization options Synchronization (Option) Example for data writing (4) Define the board(s) for trigger master At least one board must be set as the trigger master to get sync hronization running.
Synchronization (Option) The setup order for the different synchronization options (c) Spectrum GmbH 87 Even if a board is not using the synchr onization tri gger, it must have been set as a triggerslave before even if you exclude the board with the SPC_NOTRIGSYNC register.
88 MI.20xx Manual The setup order for the different synchr onization options Synchronization (Option) (10) Start all of the trigger master boards After having armed the synchronized boar ds, you must start all of the boards, that are defined as trigger masters.
Synchronization (Option) The setup order for the different synchronization options (c) Spectrum GmbH 89 Setup synchronizati on for use with FIFO mode and eq ually clocked boa rds Most of the steps are similar to the setup routine for standard synchronization mentioned before.
90 MI.20xx Manual The setup order for the different synchr onization options Synchronization (Option) (9) Start all of the trigger slave boards After having armed the synchronized boards, you must start all of the boards, that are defined as trigger slaves first.
Synchronization (Option) Additions for synchronizing different boards (c) Spectrum GmbH 91 Additions for synchron izing different boards General information Spectrum boards with different speed gr ades, different number of channels or even just differen t clock settings for the same ty pes of boards can be synchronized as well.
92 MI.20xx Manual Additions for synchronizing differ ent boards Synchronization (Option) Setting up the clock divider The clock divider can easily be set by the following register. Plea se keep in mind that the divider mu st be set for every synch ronized board to have synchronization working correctly.
Synchronization (Option) Additions for synchronizing different boards (c) Spectrum GmbH 93 Additions for equal boards with differ ent sample rates In addition to the possibility of synchroniz ing diff.
94 MI.20xx Manual Error Codes Appendix Appendix Error Codes The following error codes could occur when a driver function has been called. Please check carefully the allow ed setup for the register and change the settings to run the program. error name value (hex) value (dec.
Pin assignment of the multipin conne ctor (c) Spectrum GmbH 95 Pin assignment of the multipin connector The 40 lead multipin connector is the main connecto r for all of Spectrum’s digital boards and.
96 MI.20xx Manual Pin assignment of the internal multipin connector Pin assignment of the in ternal multipin connector The 26 lead internal connector is used for the option “Extra I/O“ (-XIO) without the external connector described before. The connector mentioned here is m ounted on the bottom side of the Extra I/O modu- le.
An important point after buying a device Spectrum Brands MI.20xx (or even before the purchase) is to read its user manual. We should do this for several simple reasons:
If you have not bought Spectrum Brands MI.20xx yet, this is a good time to familiarize yourself with the basic data on the product. First of all view first pages of the manual, you can find above. You should find there the most important technical data Spectrum Brands MI.20xx - thus you can check whether the hardware meets your expectations. When delving into next pages of the user manual, Spectrum Brands MI.20xx you will learn all the available features of the product, as well as information on its operation. The information that you get Spectrum Brands MI.20xx will certainly help you make a decision on the purchase.
If you already are a holder of Spectrum Brands MI.20xx, but have not read the manual yet, you should do it for the reasons described above. You will learn then if you properly used the available features, and whether you have not made any mistakes, which can shorten the lifetime Spectrum Brands MI.20xx.
However, one of the most important roles played by the user manual is to help in solving problems with Spectrum Brands MI.20xx. Almost always you will find there Troubleshooting, which are the most frequently occurring failures and malfunctions of the device Spectrum Brands MI.20xx along with tips on how to solve them. Even if you fail to solve the problem, the manual will show you a further procedure – contact to the customer service center or the nearest service center
