MCA mapping mode

These are the records for MCA Mapping mode. They are contained in dante.template.

EPICS record names Record types drvInfo string Description
CurrentPixel longin DanteCurrentPixel In MCA Mapping mode this is the current pixel number. In List mode it is the total number of x-ray events received so far.
MappingPoints, MappingPoints_RBV longout, longin DanteMappingPoints The number of spectra to collect in MCA mapping mode.

In MCA mapping mode the GatingMode can be “Free running”, “Trig rising”, “Trig falling”, or “Trig both”. In free-running mode the Dante will begin the next spectrum when the PresetReal time has elapsed. In triggered mode the Dante will begin the next spectrum when a trigger occurs or when the PresetReal time has elapsed, whichever comes first. To advance only on trigger events set the PresetReal time to a value larger than the maximum time between triggers.

The MCA spectra are copied into NDArrays of dimensions [NumMCAChannels, NumBoards]. For a 1-channel Dante NumBoards is 1. The run-time statistics for each spectrum are copied into NDAttributes attached to each NDArray. The attribute names contain the board number, for example “RealTime_0”.

The NDArrays can be used by any of the standard areaDetector plugins. For example, they can be streamed to HDF5, netCDF, or TIFF files.

The following is the MEDM screen NDFileHDF5.adl when the Dante is saving MCA mapping data to an HDF5 file.

_images/dante_mapping_hdf5.png