VEGAS Pulsar Project Meeting: 2015 July 20th 2:00 - 3:00pm ET

Room / Connection Details

• GB-137 / Soc 280
• 192.33.117.12##7144
• 434-817-6443

Housekeeping Details

• Main wiki page
• gbsapp Mailing List
• Location and regular date and time of meeting - agreed weekly on Mondays; GB-137 / Soc-280; 2-3pm ET
• ETK codes:
  • Electronics: 432510.GB3015
  • Software: 893252.GB3015
  • Science: 432540.GB3015

Resource Allocations

Present

Agenda

General Updates

• BOF Files
  • Spectral line modes had blocks to control switching signal; do we want to incorporate these into pulsar modes?
    • GUPPI uses the DCR as switching signal master, and we could keep this set-up as long as config tool knows what to do
    • May simplify things to incorporate everything into VEGAS
• Manager/software
  • Manager worked well in GBT tests. A few minor issues to still work out (most of which Justin is working on):
    • rf_frequency is being set properly in Coordinator but not being updated automatically in bank Managers (this may now be fixed in the latest version of the Manager)
    • Manager is not locating the tempo executable for fold-mode
    • IF Manager seems to be hanging in "Activating" very frequently during tests. Not sure if this is related but we should look into it more.
    • Starting scan numbers are being set to "odd" values (i.e., not 1). Again, not sure if this is related to new Manager but worth looking into.
    • There is a numpy version conflict between the version set in gbtenv and the version used by the parfile package in Ryan's set-up script. Ryan needs to clear this up.
  • Ryan testing coherent modes in sim environment
    • tfold and scan length were off by a factor of 10 and bandpass shows 8 spikes, no cal signal
    • Error: (3) can't find guppi_57223_CAL_0001_cal_0001.fits.pdf in CICADA
    • Incoherent mode seems to work fine
    • Error: (3) can't find guppi_57223_CAL_0002_cal_0001.fits.pdf in CICADA
• GBT Tests
  • Successfully able to observe C-band noise diode from 4 - 7.2 GHz
    • Used 4 banks each with 800 MHz, 512 channels
    • 
  • 1500 MHz x 512 channel mode is only showing signal across ~50% of the band. IF path looks OK.
    • Need to test other bofs, including old DIBAS builds.
    • Error: (3) can't find guppi_57219_CAL_0030_cal_0001.fits.pdf in CICADA
  • Tried to get some on-time morning of July 20. Ryan was able to get fluxcal and noise diode scans but pulsar scans failed because manager could not find tempo, and output data directory was defaulting to /home/gbt instead of /lustre/gbtdata (this is now fixed). Ryan did not want to fill up /home/gbt with a search-mode scan.
• Wideband AP
  • Randy is about half way through designing the new board and expects to hand it off to a tech by end of this week
  • Has already begun locating critical components

Date / Time of Next Meeting

• July 20