This Active-X Module is used to acquire single channel and PMT detector data via Sciencetech AD Boards. This module does not display the data, but only fetches the value from the detector to the software interface. The user must write his own display function to plot these values onto a graph or screen. Read-CB includes setup functions for the user to select voltage scale on the AD Board. Two other variations of Read-CB are available. Read-Detector is a separated thread version that allows data analysis to be done in real time without disrupting or slowing down the data acquisition process. Read-Event is another version that allows data to be captured on an event signal. Read-CB, Read-Event, and Read-Detector are fully Windows XP compatible.
Sci-Spec
Sci-Spec is a full featured Windows software application that synchronizes the activity of Sciencetech monochromators with single channel and PMT detector data acquisition during the spectral scanning process. Sci-Spec uses this Read-CB Active-X module to actually acquire data from the single channel detector and then display it on its GUI Real-time display. Read-CB on its own does not display the data, but just provides the data value back to the software interface. By calling Read-CB, you as the programmer will have to fetch and display the detector data value on the screen. However, Read-CB has many setup functions that allows you to set the input voltage scale (i.e. 2V, 5V, 10V) of the AD board as well as set other detector features like acquisition time.
Real Time Data Collection and Analysis
Since Read-CB must be called in a loop in order to get continuous readings, it may not be possible to perform real time data analysis on it without slowing down the data acquisition process. Therefore, a modified version of Read-CB is available as Read-Detector, allowing the data acquisition to be performed in a separate thread. This way, the detector is sampled uninterrupted for a set duration (i.e. 100ms) while the main thread can perform data analysis on buffered data from this separate sampling thread.
Event Counter
Another modified version of Read-CB is called Read-Event, which allows the detector to be read upon a separate trigger. In Read-Event, the detector data acquisition is on standby until a trigger is received. This is ideal for photon counting situations using a PMT detector.