DropGather README
last updated - Fall 2007

maintainer: Andrew Farris <ajfarris@gmail.com>
website: http://www.lordmorgul.net/dropgather

***
This file is part of DropGather.

DropGather is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

DropGather is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with DropGather.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
***

DropGather is a control and output program for the high-speed analog-to-digital sampling data acquisition system developed for research into electronics drop testing reliability.  The program controls the National Instruments (NI) ADC to collect data from the NI connector box housed analog inputs.  The NI connector boxes have an internally wired voltage divider circuit connected to the chips to be drop tested.  The software controls the sampling start time, total samples taken for each channel, and channel configuration.

While DropGather is open-source software it currently depends on non-open libraries to be useful.  These are the National Instruments DAQmx hardware driver library and also the DISLIN scientific data plotting library.

For Documentation on the design of DropGather see the thesis paper by Andrew Farris posted at the above mentioned DropGather website.  Additional documentation is not yet available but could be provided upon request.  If you would like to use or modify DropGather for your own research project please feel free to contact Andrew.

CHANGELOG:
Fall 2007: Andrew Farris
- remove operator comments per drop cycle for better workflow
- change to default yes response from operator to repeat drop
  cycle

Spring 2007: Andrew Farris
- changed voltage range for trigger plots to 10v (resistor
  chosen for trigger)
- changed voltage range for chip signal plots to 5.5v
  (clearly show high at 5v)
- combined voltage and trigger plots for faster visual
  inspection (not in pdf)
- separated chip signal plots for clarity (one per window)
  and faster testing

Winter 2007: Andrew Farris
- removed sampling of accelerometer input, added trigger
- added default configuration flags to bypass user input for
  underfill, solder, and coating
- changed channel input ranges for new connector box
  configured input channels are:
  box 1, trigger:    dev1/ai0
  box 1, chips 1-8:  dev1/ai1:8
  box 2, 5v rail:    dev1/ai16
  box 2, chips 9-15: dev1/ai17:23
  box 2, 5v rail:    dev1/ai24

- input ranges in use: dev1/ai0:8;dev1/ai17:24
- leaving the middle rail signal unused, easier to keep the
  chip signals together in the data block

Fall 2006: Keith Rothman
- original software design and implementation

FILES:
 taskhandler.h     - wrapper on DAQmx task control functions
 errorhandlers.h   - wrapper on DAQmx error function output
 DataCollection.h  - wrapper for sampled data from ADC
 imeProject.h      - functions for the running sampling task
 dropgather.cpp    - main and operator configuration options
 imeProject.cpp    - provides most of the worker functions
                     for the software, data handling/output
 DAQError.cpp      - wrapper definition for DAQmx exception