SciDigitizer — Open Hardware Readout Software

SciDigitizer is the Windows readout and analysis application for the Nuclear Instruments Open Hardware digitizers. It connects to the board, configures the acquisition, and shows the data as it arrives: energy spectra, oscilloscope traces, count rates and diagnostics. Runs can be recorded to disk in a choice of text and binary formats, and a Python package is provided to read them back for offline analysis.

Supported boards

Several boards can be used at the same time: they are synchronized and each one writes its own data file. The register map of every model is read at startup from the register files installed with the application, so a firmware revision that only adds or moves registers does not require a new version of the software.

What you can do with it

Multi-channel analyzer

Live energy spectra per channel, with logarithmic or linear scale, rebinning to any length, and energy calibration. Regions of interest can be placed on the spectrum and fitted, on any channel of the board, with the fit results shown next to the peak.

Oscilloscope

Waveform display with trigger source and level, pretrigger and decimation. Free running, single shot and multi-acquisition modes. Traces from channels configured with negative polarity are drawn mirrored, the way the filter processes them, while the recorded data keeps the raw ADC counts.

Statistics

Per-channel counters and rates: input and output count rate — instantaneous, over the last second, or averaged since the beginning of the run — together with transferred, pile-up rejected and saturated event counts.

Data recording

Acquisitions are written to a folder of your choice with a configurable base file name, in energy list mode, as waveforms, or both:

Energies are stored as integers, and waveform timestamps are the time elapsed since the start of the recording, in clock ticks of the sampling frequency written in the file header. The binary formats are documented in BinaryFileFormat.md.

Service tools

Offset calibration, channel mapping, EEPROM write tool and dead time / count rate diagnostics.

Python tools

The python folder contains the scidigitizer package and ready to run examples for every file format, plus two small applications:

• spectrum_viewer.py — opens a recorded spectrum and browses it channel by channel
• waveform_viewer.py — steps through recorded traces
• example_coincidence.py, example_timestamp_linearity.py and one example_read_*.py per format, as a starting point for your own analysis

cd python
pip install .

Installation

Run the installer and follow the wizard. It installs into C:\OpenHardware\OHReadout\ and requires administrator rights, because it also installs what the application needs:

• Microsoft Visual C++ redistributables (2012 and 2022, x86), only if missing
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8, only if missing
• FTDI drivers, offered at the end of the installation: D2XX for the DT1260 and D3XX for the DT5550X family

The FTDI driver steps are optional: install only the one for the board you use. A USB board is not recognized until its driver is installed.

Getting started

1. Connect the board — USB, or Ethernet with the board reachable at its IP address
2. Start Open Hardware Readout Software from the Start menu
3. Pick the board model and the connection in the connection window
4. Configure the acquisition in the settings tabs, then start the run

Channels are numbered CH 0 to CH N-1, matching the labels printed on the hardware and the channel identifier written into the data files.

Support

Nuclear Instruments — www.nuclearinstruments.eu · www.sci-compiler.com

The version in use is shown in the application title bar and in the installed program list; quote it when reporting a problem, together with the board model and firmware version.