PROBLEM noticed earlier this week: It looked like one of the seismometer channels (VERT-1) wasn't working, no matter how I put which channel into which input of the PEM ADCU. Watching the channel on Dataviewer, it looked like the ADC was measuring VERT-1 to be zero (actually measuring zero, not digital noise-type zero). I had checked the ADC by putting in a sine wave with a function generator, and saw on Dataviewer the wave I expected, so I knew that I had the correct channel, and that the channel was good.
SOLUTION: This afternoon I took the box out of the rack and opened it up. As soon as I opened it, I saw that I had left something inside the box which was causing the problem. Back when we were measuring the noise of the box, to ensure that it is lower than the ADC's noise, Rana and I had shorted the test points on the input of the VERT-1 channel with a little piece of wire. It turns out that I had closed up the box without remembering to remove the wire.
CONCLUSION of the story: I took out the piece of wire, and now all three seismometer channels (VERT-1, N/S-1, E/W-1) all work, and all detect me jumping around near the BSC. Since the seismometer breakout box reads a differential measurement, and since the input test points were connected, it was indeed measuring zero. Zero equals zero is all well and good, but it's even better now that it's measuring actual seismic motion. |