Using SSDAQ for data acquisition¶

The SSDAQ software package contains applications for CHEC-S pushed data acqusition and writing that data to disk, but can also be use as a python library to write custom subscribers, and to read and write slow signal, trigger, timestamp, log or monitoring data.

Applications¶

A range of applications are provided in the SSDAQ software package and if the install is sucessful these should all be in your path. The majority of the applications are different types of subscribers and the executables are prefixed with chec-<name>-<type>, where <type> is the type of subscriber which will be explained shortly and <name> refers to the data which it subscribes to. Currently there are three types of subscribers, chec-dumpers which dump the content they receive directly in the terminal std output, chec-writer are as the name suggests subscribers that write to file and lastly we have the chec-daq-dash, a simple terminal dash showing monitoring data from the receivers.

Starting and stopping the receivers should be done with the control-ssdaq application which starts the receivers as deamons and configures the logging so that it is output on a dedicated port. More on how to use control-ssdaq follows in the next section.

All the applications provide help options explaining the needed input.

Using `control-ssdaq`¶

The control-ssdaq application manages the receiver and file writer daemons. The program consists of a number of commands and subcommands and each of the commands and subcommands provides a --help -h option and the top help message is shown here:

Usage: control-ssdaq [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Start, stop and control receiver and writer daemons

Options:
  -v, --version  Show version
  -h, --help     Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  roa-ctrl  Send control commands to a running readout assembler daemon
  start     Start receivers or data writers
  stop      Stop a running receiver or writer daemon

The program provides two main commands start and stop for starting and stopping the daemons. Additionally there is the roa-ctrl command to send control commands to the readout assembler.

Start and stop receiver daemons¶

The recommended way of starting the receivers is by using the command:

control-ssdaq start daq

which starts all receivers that are configured in the default configuration. To start with a custom configuration one can specify a file with the --config, -c option. The start daq command also takes arguments that select which receivers to start e.g:

control-ssdaq start daq Trigg Read

will only start the TriggerPacketReceiver and ReadoutAssembler. Note that you only have to spell out enough of the receiver class name to make it unique. An empty arg list will start all receivers as seen earlier.

Receivers can be stopped in by using the stop daq command in the same manner that we started them, i.e:

control-ssdaq stop daq

would stop all running receiver daemons while:

control-ssdaq stop daq Trigg Read

would only stop the TriggerPacketReceiver and ReadoutAssembler daemons.

Start and stop filewriter daemons¶

Currently only the ReadoutFileWriter daemon is supported and it is started with:

control-ssdaq start dw  path/to/configfile.yaml -d

and stopped with::: control-ssdaq stop dw

Note that if -d is ommited the writer will not run as a daemon, which can be good sometimes during testing, and output it’s log messages directly in the terminal. To stop it type ctrl+C.

List of receivers¶

Receiver	Usage
ReadoutAssembler	Receives slow signal data from the FEE TMs and assembled them into a full camera readout
TriggerPacketReceiver	Receives trigger pattern packets from the backplane
TimestampReceiver	Recieves timestamps from the timing board
LogReceiver	Receives logs that are send on port 10001
MonitorReceiver	Receives monitor data that is pushed on port 10002
TelDataReceiver	Queries the ASTRI telescope database

List of standard port numbers used¶

Port	Usage	Which application
17000	“listen (UDP)”	ReadoutAssembler
8307	“listen (UDP)”	TriggerPacketReceiver
6666	“subscribe (TCP/ZMQ)”	TimestampReceiver
9001	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	LogReceiver
9002	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	TriggerReceiver
9003	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	TimestampReceiver
9004	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	ReadoutAssembler
9005	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	MonitorReceiver
9006	“publish (TCP/ZMQ)”	TelDataReceiver
10001	“listen (TCP/ZMQ)”	LogReceiver
10002	“pull (TCP/ZMQ)”	MonitorReceiver

Configuration¶

<ServerName>:
  Daemon:#Daemon configuration
    stdout: '/tmp/server.log'
    stderr: '/tmp/server.log'
    set_taskset: true #Using task set to force kernel not to swap cores
    core_id: 0 #which cpu core to use with taskset
  Receiver:#Receiver server configuration
    class: <ReceiverServerClass> #class defined in ssdaq.receivers
    listen_ip: 0.0.0.0
    listen_port: 17000
    #Server specific arguments go here
  Publishers: #Listing publishers
    <PublisherName>: #name
      class: ZMQTCPPublisher #class defined in ssdaq.core.publishers
      ip: 127.0.0.101
      port: 9004

<WriterName>:
  Daemon:
    #redirection of output (should be /dev/null when logging is fully configurable)
    stdout: '/path/to/writer.log'
    stderr: '/path/to/writer.log'
  Writer:
    class: <WriterClass>
    file_enumerator: date #enumerates with timestamp (yr-mo-dy.H:M) or `order` which enumerates with numbers starting from 00001
    file_prefix: FileNamePrefix
    folder: /path/to/folder
    ip: 127.0.0.101
    port: 9004
    filesize_lim: 600

Configure location of config files¶

control-ssdaq will look for a file called .ssdaq_config.yaml in the home folder in which writer-config sets the location of the location of the writer configuration file and daq-config sets the location of the configuration of the receiver servers.