A low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network cosmic ray detector
projects, providing digitized data from photomultiplier tubes via a standard
serial interface. To facilitate analysis of these data and to provide students
with a starting point for custom readout systems, a model interface has been
developed using the National Instruments LabVIEW(R) system. This user-friendly
interface allows one to initialize the trigger coincidence conditions for
data-taking runs and to monitor incoming or pre-recorded data sets with
updating singles- and coincidence-rate plots and other user-selectable
histograms.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Presented as Paper NS26-119 at IEEE-NSS 2003,
  Portland, OR, by R. J. Wilke

Berns, Hans

Burnett, T. H.

Claes, Dan

Gran, Richard

Kite, Jared

Snow, Gregory

Wheel, Graham

Wilkes, R. Jeffrey

English

arXiv

A low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network cosmic ray detector projects, providing digitized data from photomultiplier tubes via a standard serial interface. To facilitate analysis of these data and to provide students with a starting point for custom readout systems, a model interface has been developed using the National Instruments LabVIEW(R) system. This user-friendly interface allows one to initialize the trigger coincidence conditions for data-taking runs and to monitor incoming or pre-recorded data sets with updating singles- and coincidence-rate plots and other user-selectable histograms

Claes, Daniel R.

Snow, Gregory R.

UNL | Libraries

University of Nebraska - Lincoln 
DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln 
Gregory Snow Publications Research Papers in Physics and Astronomy 
11-14-2003 
LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card 
Hans Berns 
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 
T. H. Burnett 
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 
Richard Gran 
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 
Graham Wheel 
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 
R. Jeffrey Wilkes 
Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA 
See next page for additional authors 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssnow 
 Part of the Physics Commons 
Berns, Hans; Burnett, T. H.; Gran, Richard; Wheel, Graham; Wilkes, R. Jeffrey; Claes, Daniel R.; Kite, Jared; 
and Snow, Gregory R., "LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card" (2003). Gregory Snow 
Publications. 4. 
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssnow/4 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Research Papers in Physics and Astronomy at 
DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Gregory Snow Publications 
by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 
Authors 
Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey Wilkes, Daniel R. Claes, Jared Kite, and 
Gregory R. Snow 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/
physicssnow/4 
LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ 
Card 
Authors: Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey 
Wilkes, (Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA), Dan Claes, Jared Kite, Gregory 
Snow (Univ.of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE) 
 
(Submitted on 14 Nov 2003) 
 
Abstract: A low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network 
cosmic ray detector projects, providing digitized data from photomultiplier 
tubes via a standard serial interface. To facilitate analysis of these data and 
to provide students with a starting point for custom readout systems, a 
model interface has been developed using the National Instruments 
LabVIEW(R) system. This user-friendly interface allows one to initialize the 
trigger coincidence conditions for data-taking runs and to monitor incoming 
or pre-recorded data sets with updating singles- and coincidence-rate plots 
and other user-selectable histograms.  
 
Comments:  4 pages, 6 figures. Presented as Paper NS26-119 at IEEE-NSS 
2003, Portland, OR, by R. J. Wilkes 
 
Subjects:  Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); Data Analysis, 
Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) 
 
Report number:  UW/PT-03-29 
 
Cite as:  arXiv:physics/0311062v1 [physics.ins-det] 
Submission history 
From: R. Jeffrey Wilkes [view email]  
[v1] Fri, 14 Nov 2003 06:52:33 GMT (576kb) 
 
       
Abstract— As described elsewhere at this conference, a 
low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network 
cosmic ray detector projects, providing digitized data from 
photomultiplier tubes via a standard serial interface. To 
facilitate analysis of these data and to provide students 
with a starting point for custom readout systems, a model 
interface has been developed using the National 
Instruments LabVIEW® system. This user-friendly 
interface allows one to initialize the trigger coincidence 
conditions for data-taking runs and to monitor incoming or 
pre-recorded data sets with updating singles- and 
coincidence-rate plots and other user-selectable 
histograms. 
I. INTRODUCTION 
HE WALTA [1] project aims to create large-area 
extensive air shower (EAS) detector array for ultra-high 
energy (UHE) cosmic rays, by installing mini-arrays of 
scintillation counter detectors in secondary schools, in the 
Seattle, WA area. Data taken at individual school sites are 
shared via Internet connections and searched for multi-site 
coincidence events.  
WALTA collaborated with CROP [2], a similar project 
based at the U. of Nebraska at Lincoln, to salvage plastic 
scintillators, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and associated high 
voltage supplies from surplus equipment at the CASA detector 
[3] site at Dugway, UT.  
Individual detector stations each consist of 4 scintillation 
counter modules, front-end electronics, and a GPS receiver, as 
shown in Fig. 1. Preliminary training of secondary school 
teachers and students was conducted using obsolete NIM 
crates and fast electronics (discriminators, coincidence and 
scaler modules) loaned from Fermilab. These modules are now 
being replaced by the new DAQ cards, which add GPS timing 
and a simple RS232 computer interface.  
The QuarkNet [4] DAQ card provides a low-cost alternative 
to standard particle and nuclear physics fast pulse electronics 
modules. The board, which can be produced at a cost of less 
                                                           
Manuscript received October 29, 2003. This work was supported in part by 
the U.S. Department of Energy, Quarknet, and the U.S. National Science 
Foundation. Contact: wilkes@u.washington.edu. 
 
than US$500, produces trigger time and pulse edge time data 
for 2 to 4-fold coincidence levels, via a universal RS-232 serial 
port interface, usable with any PC. Details of the DAQ card 
have been presented elsewhere [5]. 
The DAQ cards produce a stream of data in the form of 
ASCII text strings, in distinct formats for different functions. 
However, the highly compact data format, using hexadecimal 
coded data items without user-friendly prompts, makes use of 
the card via a simple terminal window rather challenging for 
typical users. 
The user’s host computer, a desktop PC which may have a 
Windows, Mac or Linux OS, is connected to the DAQ card via 
a standard RS232 serial cable. For schools that have relatively 
new Macintosh models, with USB ports only, a commercial 
USB-to-RS232 adapter can be inserted. The board and GPS 
unit are powered by a conventional 5VDC, 800 mA power 
adapter of the type available at consumer electronics stores.  
 
Fig. 1.  School-network air shower detector stations. CROP and WALTA 
use PMTs and counters salvaged from the CASA experiment. Initial 
installations used NIM crates borrowed from Fermilab PREP, which will be 
replaced by the DAQ cards described in this paper. 
 
LabView® Interface for School-Network DAQ 
Card 
Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey Wilkes, Univ. of Washington, 
Seattle, WA 
Dan Claes, Jared Kite, Gregory Snow, Univ.of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 
T 
NIM Crate or DAQ card
PC
Scintillator 
counters 
Internet
GPS 
antenna 
PMTs
GPS Module 
 The simplest way to operate the board is by opening a 
terminal window linked to the PC’s serial port. Table I shows 
the help screen displayed upon board startup, listing the 
functions implemented. Fig. 2 shows a typical terminal screen 
during data-taking. 
Commands can be directly entered via the keyboard, and the 
resulting output viewed (and if desired, captured to a log file) 
from the screen. Typically, the user would enter commands to 
define the trigger logic level (1- to 4-fold majority), and enable 
counting. At the end of the desired time interval, counting can 
be disabled and the trigger count read out. For each trigger, the 
display shows one or more lines of hexadecimal encoded data, 
providing time of trigger, pulse leading and trailing edge times 
relative to the trigger time, and information needed to 
determine the GPS time of the trigger to 24 ns precision. Other 
commands can be used to directly interrogate the GPS module, 
or act upon the counter registers, etc.  
 
 
Fig. 2.  Typical terminal window, showing raw data stream from the 
QuarkNet DAQ card. Commands and responses shown illustrate reading the 
on-board barometer and temperature sensor, reading scaler contents, and the 
data stream produced while logging coincidences. These data serve as input to 
the LabView module. 
 
Users may also prepare a script to implement a sequence of 
commands, or compile custom software to operate the card 
directly.  
II. THE WALTA LABVIEW INTERFACE 
We have developed an interface to the QuarkNet DAQ card 
using the National Instruments LabView® environment [6]. 
This interfacing environment is available at low cost to 
educational institutions, has a very large user base worldwide, 
and provides a simple graphical user toolkit with which it is 
possible to construct highly capable real-time programs. The 
large base of applications and program elements makes it easy 
for users to acquire help and training. 
 
TABLE I 
DAQ CARD COMMANDS (HELP SCREEN DISPLAY) 
 
 
The QuarkNet LabView® interface software allows the user 
to send setup and operating commands to the card, and to log 
data of various types. Log files can be output in MS Excel-
compatible format, for direct handling by users who do not 
have programming skills. 
The GUI is divided into pages with different functions, for 
setup, housekeeping data, routine data-taking, etc. Figure 3 
shows the configuration window, which can be opened from 
any tab of the GUI. Figures 4 through 6 show examples of the 
console, GPS record [7] and event timing windows. 
 
Fig. 3.  DAQ card configuration window.. 
 
 
 
 Fig. 4.  Event timing data window. 
 
Fig. 5.  “Console” data tab, showing raw hexadecimal data stream and 
allowing manual input of commands. 
 
 
 
Fig. 6.  GPS record data tab. 
 
 
III. FUTURE PLANS 
We are currently refining the software described, with high 
school groups as well as UW undergraduates serving as beta 
testers. We anticipate that participating students and teachers 
will contribute to the further development of this software. 
IV. ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
We wish to thank Mark Buchli, Paul Edmon, Ben Laughlin, 
and Jeremy Sandler for valuable assistance in testing and 
debugging the boards, and the CROP and WALTA teachers 
for their patience with the development process. Special thanks 
are due to Tom Jordan, Director of the QuarkNet program, for 
his support. 
 
V. REFERENCES 
[1] See http://www.phys.washington.edu/~walta/. 
[2] See http://physics.unl.edu/~gsnow/crop/crop.html. 
[3] M. Borione, et al, Nucl. Instr. And Meth. A, vol. 346, p. 329, 1994 
[4] See http://quarknet.fnal.gov/. 
[5] See S. Hansen, et al, Paper N8-1, this conference. 
[6] See http://www.ni.com/labview/. 
[7] See H. Berns, et al, Paper N26-84, this conference. 


LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card

DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Gregory Snow Publications Research Papers in Physics and Astronomy 11-14-2003 LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card Hans Berns Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA T. H. Burnett Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA Richard Gran Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA Graham Wheel Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA R. Jeffrey Wilkes Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssnow  Part of the Physics Commons Berns, Hans; Burnett, T. H.; Gran, Richard; Wheel, Graham; Wilkes, R. Jeffrey; Claes, Daniel R.; Kite, Jared; and Snow, Gregory R., "LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card" (2003). Gregory Snow Publications. 4. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssnow/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Research Papers in Physics and Astronomy at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Gregory Snow Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Authors Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey Wilkes, Daniel R. Claes, Jared Kite, and Gregory R. Snow This article is available at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssnow/4 LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card Authors: Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey Wilkes, (Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA), Dan Claes, Jared Kite, Gregory Snow (Univ.of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE)  (Submitted on 14 Nov 2003)  Abstract: A low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network cosmic ray detector projects, providing digitized data from photomultiplier tubes via a standard serial interface. To facilitate analysis of these data and to provide students with a starting point for custom readout systems, a model interface has been developed using the National Instruments LabVIEW(R) system. This user-friendly interface allows one to initialize the trigger coincidence conditions for data-taking runs and to monitor incoming or pre-recorded data sets with updating singles- and coincidence-rate plots and other user-selectable histograms.   Comments:  4 pages, 6 figures. Presented as Paper NS26-119 at IEEE-NSS 2003, Portland, OR, by R. J. Wilkes  Subjects:  Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det); Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an)  Report number:  UW/PT-03-29  Cite as:  arXiv:physics/0311062v1 [physics.ins-det] Submission history From: R. Jeffrey Wilkes [view email]  [v1] Fri, 14 Nov 2003 06:52:33 GMT (576kb)         Abstract— As described elsewhere at this conference, a low-cost DAQ card has been developed for school-network cosmic ray detector projects, providing digitized data from photomultiplier tubes via a standard serial interface. To facilitate analysis of these data and to provide students with a starting point for custom readout systems, a model interface has been developed using the National Instruments LabVIEW® system. This user-friendly interface allows one to initialize the trigger coincidence conditions for data-taking runs and to monitor incoming or pre-recorded data sets with updating singles- and coincidence-rate plots and other user-selectable histograms. I. INTRODUCTION HE WALTA [1] project aims to create large-area extensive air shower (EAS) detector array for ultra-high energy (UHE) cosmic rays, by installing mini-arrays of scintillation counter detectors in secondary schools, in the Seattle, WA area. Data taken at individual school sites are shared via Internet connections and searched for multi-site coincidence events.  WALTA collaborated with CROP [2], a similar project based at the U. of Nebraska at Lincoln, to salvage plastic scintillators, photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and associated high voltage supplies from surplus equipment at the CASA detector [3] site at Dugway, UT.  Individual detector stations each consist of 4 scintillation counter modules, front-end electronics, and a GPS receiver, as shown in Fig. 1. Preliminary training of secondary school teachers and students was conducted using obsolete NIM crates and fast electronics (discriminators, coincidence and scaler modules) loaned from Fermilab. These modules are now being replaced by the new DAQ cards, which add GPS timing and a simple RS232 computer interface.  The QuarkNet [4] DAQ card provides a low-cost alternative to standard particle and nuclear physics fast pulse electronics modules. The board, which can be produced at a cost of less                                                            Manuscript received October 29, 2003. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, Quarknet, and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Contact: wilkes@u.washington.edu.  than US$500, produces trigger time and pulse edge time data for 2 to 4-fold coincidence levels, via a universal RS-232 serial port interface, usable with any PC. Details of the DAQ card have been presented elsewhere [5]. The DAQ cards produce a stream of data in the form of ASCII text strings, in distinct formats for different functions. However, the highly compact data format, using hexadecimal coded data items without user-friendly prompts, makes use of the card via a simple terminal window rather challenging for typical users. The user’s host computer, a desktop PC which may have a Windows, Mac or Linux OS, is connected to the DAQ card via a standard RS232 serial cable. For schools that have relatively new Macintosh models, with USB ports only, a commercial USB-to-RS232 adapter can be inserted. The board and GPS unit are powered by a conventional 5VDC, 800 mA power adapter of the type available at consumer electronics stores.   Fig. 1.  School-network air shower detector stations. CROP and WALTA use PMTs and counters salvaged from the CASA experiment. Initial installations used NIM crates borrowed from Fermilab PREP, which will be replaced by the DAQ cards described in this paper.  LabView® Interface for School-Network DAQ Card Hans Berns, T. H. Burnett, Richard Gran, Graham Wheel, R. Jeffrey Wilkes, Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA Dan Claes, Jared Kite, Gregory Snow, Univ.of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE T NIM Crate or DAQ cardPCScintillator counters InternetGPS antenna PMTsGPS Module  The simplest way to operate the board is by opening a terminal window linked to the PC’s serial port. Table I shows the help screen displayed upon board startup, listing the functions implemented. Fig. 2 shows a typical terminal screen during data-taking. Commands can be directly entered via the keyboard, and the resulting output viewed (and if desired, captured to a log file) from the screen. Typically, the user would enter commands to define the trigger logic level (1- to 4-fold majority), and enable counting. At the end of the desired time interval, counting can be disabled and the trigger count read out. For each trigger, the display shows one or more lines of hexadecimal encoded data, providing time of trigger, pulse leading and trailing edge times relative to the trigger time, and information needed to determine the GPS time of the trigger to 24 ns precision. Other commands can be used to directly interrogate the GPS module, or act upon the counter registers, etc.    Fig. 2.  Typical terminal window, showing raw data stream from the QuarkNet DAQ card. Commands and responses shown illustrate reading the on-board barometer and temperature sensor, reading scaler contents, and the data stream produced while logging coincidences. These data serve as input to the LabView module.  Users may also prepare a script to implement a sequence of commands, or compile custom software to operate the card directly.  II. THE WALTA LABVIEW INTERFACE We have developed an interface to the QuarkNet DAQ card using the National Instruments LabView® environment [6]. This interfacing environment is available at low cost to educational institutions, has a very large user base worldwide, and provides a simple graphical user toolkit with which it is possible to construct highly capable real-time programs. The large base of applications and program elements makes it easy for users to acquire help and training.  TABLE I DAQ CARD COMMANDS (HELP SCREEN DISPLAY)   The QuarkNet LabView® interface software allows the user to send setup and operating commands to the card, and to log data of various types. Log files can be output in MS Excel-compatible format, for direct handling by users who do not have programming skills. The GUI is divided into pages with different functions, for setup, housekeeping data, routine data-taking, etc. Figure 3 shows the configuration window, which can be opened from any tab of the GUI. Figures 4 through 6 show examples of the console, GPS record [7] and event timing windows.  Fig. 3.  DAQ card configuration window..     Fig. 4.  Event timing data window.  Fig. 5.  “Console” data tab, showing raw hexadecimal data stream and allowing manual input of commands.    Fig. 6.  GPS record data tab.   III. FUTURE PLANS We are currently refining the software described, with high school groups as well as UW undergraduates serving as beta testers. We anticipate that participating students and teachers will contribute to the further development of this software. IV. ACKNOWLEDGMENT We wish to thank Mark Buchli, Paul Edmon, Ben Laughlin, and Jeremy Sandler for valuable assistance in testing and debugging the boards, and the CROP and WALTA teachers for their patience with the development process. Special thanks are due to Tom Jordan, Director of the QuarkNet program, for his support.  V. REFERENCES [1] See http://www.phys.washington.edu/~walta/. [2] See http://physics.unl.edu/~gsnow/crop/crop.html. [3] M. Borione, et al, Nucl. Instr. And Meth. A, vol. 346, p. 329, 1994 [4] See http://quarknet.fnal.gov/. [5] See S. Hansen, et al, Paper N8-1, this conference. [6] See http://www.ni.com/labview/. [7] See H. Berns, et al, Paper N26-84, this conference. 

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LabView Interface for School-Network DAQ Card

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