2013/01/27

0235	Fed Cricket 3 pellets.
0640	Fill N2 cold trap full.
0810	Fed Cricket 3 pellets.
0850	Close LabVIEW and unplug DCRCs to repair RF shielding. Run Windows Update and restart DAQ machine.
0920	Plugged DCRC33 back in and tested connection. Looks fine. Charge triggers at 40 ADC bins comfortably.
	Mixing chamber temperature is 49.1 mK and falling. Likely to rise once other DCRCs are connected.
0950	Connected DCRC32 to ebox and tested connection. Could not turn FET heater on. Tried soft reset to no avail. Opted for hard reset, disconnecting board: worked a charm.
	Mixing chamber temperature is 49.8 mK and rising. To be fair on DCRC32, it had started rising before she was plugged in.
1020	Attached DCRC31 to ebox and tested connection. Looked fine.
	DCRC32 turned itself off and on again. Perhaps this was some sort of reset? Anyway, could not turn on FET heater. Tried again, but to no avail. Third time proved lucky.
	Acquired PSDs for charge channels. Qi on DIB 1 is a little noisy, so may require a slightly higher trigger threshold.

	DIB 1	DIB 2
Qi
Qo

1025	Mixing chamber temperature 50.6 mK. Start zapping SQUIDs starting with DIB 1.
1110	DCRC32 is behaving weirdly. Zapping the SQUIDs did not result in a rise in temperature, indicating that it had disconnected. A quick check indicates that it must have turned itself off and on again. We waste far too much time on this board.
1215	Finished zapping SQUIDs. Start flashing detector for about an hour: LEDs 1 & 2 on DIBs 1 & 2 only; usual settings (-0.6 mA current, 100 μs flash on time, 5 ms flash off time).
1315	Stop flashing detector.
1720	DCRC33's 15 V power supply stopped after detector was flashed. I'm beginning to suspect that the switch is the cause of the problem.
1750	Brought out Ba-133 source. No significant improvement in data acquisition rate, which was rather surprising. This is further compounded when trying to take data: although trigger rate looks healthy under bias from DetectorReadout vi, trigger rate is poor when taking random triggers (approximately 5 Hz), and then starts triggering after taking 250 events, half-way to its usual 500.
	Unplug everything. Exit LabVIEW. Start again.
1835	Nothing seems to work. It's impossible to take data at the moment. I strongly suspect that the switch is at fault. We should check tomorrow by trying to locate another switch. Looks like there will be no yield plot tonight.
1930	Fed Cricket 4 pellets.
1935	Fill N2 cold trap full.