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Event Control Window


The Event Control window allows you to control the events displayed.

This window pops up automatically when an event file is opened or a dispatcher connection is made. It can also be selected through the File Menu.

Clicking on Next causes the next event matching the filter settings to be displayed. Events are read from the file or dispatcher until a matching event is found. If the end of file is reached, the event control automatically switches to Off and file is rewound to the beginning. (Note: When reading SNO ZDAB data, XSNOED will read across sub-run files and will only rewind to sub-run 000 if no more sub-runs are available). Clicking on Continuous causes the display to be continuously updated with new events at the interval specified by the Period slider. With Continuous selected, XSNOED either suspends reading of the input file, or discards incoming dispatcher data for the specified period after displaying each event. An exception is when summing events. In sum mode, XSNOED reads and sums events as quickly as possible, but only updates the display at the specified interval.

The NHIT Threshold, Trigger Mask and PMT/NCD settings are used to determine which events to display. These settings are explained later in this section.

History

The history controls allow you to look back at events before the displayed event. There are 3 separate 100-event history buffers. The first buffer contains the previously displayed 100 events (the "cut" history). This buffer is active when Cut is selected. With Cut deselected, you are able to scan through the uncut history of the previous 100 events read from the file or dispatcher. These buffers don't necessarily contain the same events if an NHIT threshold was used to filter events for display. The final buffer is the "future" buffer, and is a forward extension of the uncut history, giving a look ahead into the next 100 events that will be read from disk or dispatcher.

To maintain this "future" buffer, XSNOED continues to read events from the file or dispatcher until the future buffer is full. Any messages generated while reading ahead in a file are queued and displayed as the corresponding event is read from the future buffer. The Event Times window displays the status of the events in this (as well as the "uncut") buffer by plotting their 50 MHz clock times in histogram form.

The -1 and -10 buttons step backward through the "cut" or "uncut" histories by one and ten events respectively, to a limit of -100 events. When viewing the "cut" history, the +1 and +10 buttons step forward until the most recent event, History(0), is displayed. Beyond this, the next available event from file or dispatcher is displayed as if Next had been pressed. The "uncut" history maintains a buffer of up to 100 future events that are displayed if the +1 or +10 buttons are used to view events after History[0].

Note: The brackets around the index of the event in the history buffer are round () when viewing the "cut" history, and square [] when viewing the "uncut" history.

NHIT Threshold

When a non-zero number is entered into the NHIT Thresh: text field, only events with NHIT greater than or equal to this number are displayed. You can also specify hit types and logic operations using >, <, >=, <= and <>. Operations can be combined to allow display of events within a range of NHITs for different tube types. If no tube type is specified, NHIT is assumed. Valid types are given in the following table:
NHITAny type of PMT hit
NormalNormal PMT
OWLOutward looking PMT
LGLow gain PMT
NeckPMT in vessel neck
BUTTSPMT on Berkeley sled
FECDFECD channel
ShaperNCD Shaper channel
MUXNCD MUX channel
ScopeNCD Scope channel
GeneralGeneral NCD record
If no operator or value are specified, > 0 is assumed. If no operator is specified but a value is given, >= is assumed. If more than one expression is used, a logical and is assumed, unless or is specified. The or operator takes precidence over and. The use of brackets is not supported. The changes take effect when you press Return, or click on the Continuous or Next buttons. All blanks and unrecognized characters in the text field are ignored. Pressing the Tab key causes the current input to be converted to standard form.

Here are some examples of possible NHIT threshold settings:

NHIT Thresh Displays Events With...
50 NHIT >= 50
>30 NHIT > 30
>=20,<200 NHIT >= 20 and NHIT < 200
<=20 or >200 NHIT <= 20 or NHIT > 200
<>100 NHIT not equal to 100
Owl>20 Greater than 20 OWL tubes
>45,Neck=0 NHIT > 45 and no Neck tubes
30,Owl>0 or Neck>0 NHIT >= 30 and at least one Owl or Neck tube
Scope At least one NCD scope fired (same as scope > 0)
Scope,MUX Events where both NCD MUX and scope fired
Shaper>2 Events where more than 2 NCD shapers fired
Note that tube type names may be abbreviated by specifying only enough characters to unambiguously identify them (i.e. B for BUTTS, or NE for Neck). Also, the symbol | may be used in place of or.

Trigger Mask

This text field allows you to type in the names of the triggers for events to be displayed. If a number of triggers are specified, events will be displayed if any of the specified trigger bits are set. You can specify that a particular trigger bit must be set by placing a plus sign (+) before the trigger name, or that a particular bit must be off by placing a minus sign (-) before the name. In addition, a star (*) before the trigger name forces the event to be displayed regardless of the NHIT threshold setting.
ExampleDisplays events with...
+100L -100HNHIT100LO on, and NHIT100HI off
100L -100HNHIT100LO on, or NHIT100HI off
OWLEL OWLEH OWLNat least one of OWLELO, OWLEHI or OWLN is on
ORPHANonly orphan events
-ORPHANonly non-orphan events
*HYDROalways display HYDRO events, regardless of NHIT settings
Pressing the Tab key converts the trigger string to standard form, and any incomplete or ambiguous trigger bit names are converted to the closest valid name. Note that this is also done automatically when a new trigger is applied.
Valid trigger bit names:

OWLELoutward looking tubes energy low
OWLEHoutward looking tubes energy high
PULGTpulse global trigger
PRESCLprescaled NHIT 100 low
PEDpedestal
PONGGPS time pong signal
SYNCGPS time sync signal
EXTAexternal asynchronous trigger
HYDROhydrophone
EXT3external 3
EXT4external 4
EXT5external 5
EXT6 1external 6
NO_CLK 2indicates a clock failover condition
EXT7 2external 7
NCDSHAP 1NCD shaper trigger
EXT8external 8
SRAWspecial raw
NCDMUX 1NCD MUX trigger
SOFGTsoftware global trigger
MISSmissed event flag
ORPHANwhole MTC word zero (synthesized trigger bit)
NONEall trigger bits zero (synthesized trigger bit)
CAEN 2event has CAEN digitized triggers data (synthesized trigger bit)
TUBII 2event contains a TUBII trigger word (synthesized trigger bit)
100LNHIT 100 low
100MNHIT 100 medium
100HNHIT 100 high
20NHIT 20
20LBNHIT 20 look back
ESUMLenergy sum low
ESUMHenergy sum high
OWLNoutward looking tubes NHIT

Special feature: The trigger name NCD can be used as a short form for the NCD triggers: NCDSHAP,NCDMUX.1
1 SNO version only
2 SNO+ version only

PMT/NCD

This field allows you to specify individual PMT's or NCD's for the events to be displayed. The PMT and/or NCD names entered are used to filter events in exactly the same way as the Trigger Mask. You can even use a plus sign (+), a minus sign (-) or a star (*) before the PMT or NCD name to indicate tubes that must exist, can't exist, or should always be displayed as with the Trigger Mask logic operations explained above.

PMT's may be specified either by barcode in the form PXXX, or by electronics channel number in the form P(####). NCD's may be specified by string name in the form X##, or string number in the form N(##). Note that low gain PMT's must be specified by electronics channel, since their barcode is used to specify the associated normal PMT channel for these tubes.

Example Displays events in which...
PADZPMT PADZ fired
P(4844)PMT electronics channel 4844 fired (this is PADZ in the current tube map)
K7NCD K7 fired
N(8)NCD string number 8 fired (this is K7 in the original NCD layout)
-P(9207)PMT channel 9207 didn't fire (ie. events without the FECD)
+J12 -PADZNCD J12 fired and PMT PADZ didn't fire
*M8NCD M8 has fired, regardless of NHIT settings
For convenience, when the PMT/NCD cuts are applied the names in this field are converted to a standard form where both the name and number are displayed. For instance, "PADZ" is converted to "PADZ(4844)", and "N(8)" becomes "K7(8)".

Goto GTID/Run/Time

This feature is used to search for a specific event in a file by GTID, run number or time. The popup menu beside the Goto button allows selection of GTID, Run or Time.

With GTID selected, the Goto button will go to the event with the specified GTID in a file. If an exact match isn't found the event with the next greater GTID will be displayed unless XSNOED detects that the events in the file are non-sequential, in which case an exact match is required. Click the Goto button or press return after typing the GTID to begin the search.

Special feature: The GTID can be entered in either decimal or hexadecimal, independent of the display setting for GTIDs. Hexadecimal numbers are distinguished by a leading '0x' (ie. 0x100 hex is 256 decimal).

With Run selected, XSNOED will search for the next available event in the specified run. There are two different search strategies depending on the type of file open:

  1. If a standard SNO run file is open and the format of the filename conforms to the SNO standard (SNO_##########_###.zdab), then Goto Run will open a new file for the specified run and load the first event.
  2. Otherwise, XSNOED will assume the file is a summary file containing events from many different runs and it will scan the file looking for the first event from the specified run.

With Time selected, XSNOED will search for the next event with the specified 10MHz timestamp (in the currently selected time zone). The time must be entered in the format "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss". The time is optional, and if not provided will default to 00:00:00. Seconds need not be specified.

In all cases, Goto will read across ZDAB sub-run files to find the specified event.

Saving Events

The Save buttons cause the currently displayed event to be appended to the specified ZDAB file. Currently, Monte Carlo and fit data are not saved with the event. All unique PMT hits (whether visible or not) are saved. The output ZDAB file remains open until an event is written to another file, or XSNOED is quit. Note: Because of the block-formatted nature of ZDAB files, saved events may not actually be written to file until it is closed. If necessary, a quick way to force an output file to be closed is to clear the filename and press the associated Save button.

The Event Control window can be extended downwards to reveal three more sets of Save buttons and filenames, thus allowing four output files to be open concurrently. The default file name for each output ZDAB file can be specified in the XSnoed resource file.