Hi All,

The new nitrogen cylinders were delivered to the rack at the west entrance.  We only get one Airgas delivery per week during the stay-at-home order, but so far they've not let us down.

The four 4x25DSUB and single 8x25DSUB feedthrough flanges have arrived and will be picked up from the dock and brought to the 40M lab.

Ordered 11/16 from CDW, on PO# S492940, the high voltage Tripp Lite SMART5000XFMRXL  for TP-1.  Should be arriving in about a week.

Is that a fault code that you can decipher in the manual, or just a light telling you nothing but your UPS is dead?

I can't find anything in the manual that describes the nature of the FAULT message.  In fact, it's not mentioned at all.  If the unit detects a fault at its output, I would expect a bit more information.  This unit does a programmable level of input error protection, too, usually set at 100%.  Still, there is no indication in the manual whether an input issue would be described as a fault; that usually means a short or lifted ground at the output.

Yikes!  That's ONE filter.  I'll get another from storage.

When adjusting the blower speed, give the blower at least 30 seconds to speed up or slow down to the set speed.  The flywheel effect of the big motor armature and blower mass requires time to follow the control current.  Note the taller Flanders HEPA filters.  These and the new intake filters should keep the PSL air clean for a long time!

Assembled chassis from De Leone placed in the 40 Meter Lab, along the west wall and under the display pedestal table.  The leftover parts are in smaller Really Useful boxes, also on the parts pile along the west wall.

- High priority units: 2x 18AI / 1x 16AI / 3x 16AA

All six are reworked and on the electronics workbench. The rest should be ready by the end of the week.

Chub

All remaining chasses have been reworked and placed on the floor along the west wall in Room 104. 

This will be difficult to modify with the magnets and dumbells in place.  Even if someone CAN clamp this piece into an endmill machine with the magnets/dumbells in place, the vibration of the cutting operation may be enough to break them off.

The ITMX 10" flange with four DSUB-25 feedthroughs has been install with the cables connected at the in-vac side.  See photo; as requested, LO1-1 and LO1-2 are connected to the top row of feedthroughs from left to right respectively and the opposite ends of the cables placed left to right on the laser table.  PR2-1 and PR2-2 are connected to the lower row of feedthroughs from left to right respectively, with the opposite ends placed on the surface below the laser from left to right.  This seemed the easiest way to keep the cable orientation clear.

Received the new 1100VA APC UPS today and placed it at the bottom of the valve rack.  I'd connected the battery and plugged the unit into the AC outlet, but did not turn it on due to the power outage this weekend.

Bought dish soap and scrub sponges today and placed them under the sink with the other dish supplies.

[Deeksha, Cici]

We went to the end Xarm station and looked at the green laser setup and electronics. We fiddled with the SR-785 and experimented with low-pass filters, and will be exploring the Python script tomorrow.

[Deeksha, Cici]

We used a python script to collect data from the SR785 remotely. The SR785 is now connected to the wifi network via Ethernet port 7.

[Deeksha, Cici]

We learned about the auxillary laser control loop, and then went into the lab to identify the components and cables represented by our transfer functions. We connected to the SR785 inside the lab so that we can use it to insert noise next time, and measure the output in various parts of the control loop.

[Deeksha, Cici]

We first took data of a simple low pass filter, and attempted to perform a fit to both the magnitude and phase in order to find the Z of the components. Once we felt confident in our ability to measure tranfer functions, we took data and plotted the transfer function of the existing control loop of the AUX laser. What we found generally followed the trend of, but was lower than, 10^4/f, which is what we hoped to match, and also had a strange unexplained notch ~1.3 kHz. The magnitude and phase data both got worse after around 40-50 kHz, which we believe is because the laser came out of lock near the end of the run. 

Edit: 

[Attachment 2 and 3] are the frequency response of the low pass filter, curves fitted using least squares in python.

[Attachment 1 and 4] is the same measurement of OLTF of the actual AUX circuit, and the control diagram pointing out the location of excitation and test point.

[Deeksha, Cici]

We attempted to use vectfit to fit our earlier transfer function data, and were generally unsuccessful (see vectfit_firstattempt.png), but are much closer to understanding vectfit than before. Couple of problems to address - finding the right set of initial poles to start with has been very hard, and also however vectfit is plotting the phase data is unwrapping it, which makes it generally unreadable. Still working on how to mess with the vectfit automatically-generated plots. In general, our data is very messy (this is old data of the transfer function from last week), so we took more data today to see if our coherence was the problem (see TFSR785_28-06-2022_161937.pdf). As is visible from the graph, our coherence is terrible, and above 1kHz is almost entirely below 0.5 (or 0.2) on both channels. Figuring out why this is and fixing it is our first priority.

In the process of taking new data, we also found out that the optical table enclosure at the end of the X-arm does a decent job of sound isolation (see enclosure_open.mp4 and enclosure_closed.mp4). The clicking from the shutter is visible on a spectrogram at high frequencies when the enclosure is open, but not when it is closed. We also discovered that the script to toggle the shutter can run indefinitely, which can break the shutter, so we need to fix that problem!

Have successfully plotted data from the Red Pitaya on Jupyter Notebook! Have lost years of my life fighting with PyQt. Thanks to Deeksha for heavy contribution. Next task is to get actually good data (seeing mostly noise right now and haven't figured out how to change my input settings) and then to go to set up the RPi in the lab.

TL;DR: I am now able to inject a swept sine and measure a transfer function with python on my Red Pitaya! Attached is a Bode plot for a swept sine from 1 - 30 MHz, going through a band pass filter of 9.5 - 11.5 MHz.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Spent too long trying to get pyRPL to work, do not recommend. The code on their website has a lot of problems (like syntax-error level problems), and is ultimately designed to open up and start a GUI, which is not what I want even if it did work.
• Found some code on the git repository of someone at Delft University of Technology, worked better but still not great (oscilloscope/spectrum analyzer functions were alright, but couldn't successfully run a VNA with it, and overcomplicated). Helped me figure out appropriate decimation factors. Realized it was not using the FPGA to get TF data but instead just collecting a lot of time trace data and then taking an FFT in the code to get the TF, which wasn't ideal.
• Eventually switched to using the Red Pitaya SCPI server to talk to the Red Pitaya myself, successful! I inject a swept sine with a for loop that just cycles through frequencies and takes the transfer function at each one.
  • Was originally getting the transfer function by using scipy.signal.csd() and scipy.signal.welch() to get Pxy and Pxx and dividing, and then just finding the closest point in the frequency spectrum to the frequency I was inserting.
  • Switched to doing IQ demodulation myself: where x(t) is the measurement before the band pass filter and y(t) is the measurement after, taking the mean of (x(t) * cos(2pi*freq)) = a1, mean(x*sin()) = a2, mean(y*cos()) = b1, mean(y*sin()) = b2, and then TF(freq) = (b1 + i b2)/(a1 + i a2).
  • Unfortunately still taking time trace data and then calculating the TF instead of using the FPGA, but I have not found anything online indicating that people are able to get VNA capabilities on the Red Pitaya without collecting and sending all the time trace data... I'm still not sure if that's actually a Red Pitaya capability yet.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To do:

• Will go take measurements of the AUX laser loop with the RPi! Have a good diagram of when I did it with the SR785 so it shouldn't be too hard hopefully.
• Figure out how to get coherence data!!
• Figure out how to get the RPi on the wifi. Right now I'm just plugging the RPi into my computer. Paco and I were working on this before and had trouble finding old passwords... Hopefully will not be too much of a roadblock.

TL;DR: Have successfully measured the UGF of the AUX laser on my Red Pitaya! Attached is one of my data runs (pdf + txt file). 

---------------------------------------------------------------

• Figured out how to get a rudimentary coherence (use scipy.signal.coherence to get Cxy = abs(Pxy)**2/(Pxx*Pyy), then find what point is the closest to the frequency I'm inserting on that iteration of the swept sine and get the coherence closest to that). Not precisely the coherence at the frequency I'm inserting though, so not perfect... more of a lower bound of coherence.
• Figured out how to get the UGF from the data automatically (no error propagation yet... necessary next step)
• Put my red pitaya in the X-arm AUX laser control electronics (thank you to Anchal for help figuring out where to put it and locking the x-arm.) Counts dropped from 4500 to 1900 with the x-arm locked, so 58% mode matching. I lose lock at an amplitude >0.05 or so.
• Wrote a little script to take data and return a time-stamped text file with all the parameters saved and a time-stamped pdf of the TF magnitude, UGF, phase, and coherence, so should be easy to take more data next time!

----------------------------------------------------------------

• need to take more accurate coherence data
• need to propagate uncertainty on UGF (probably high...)
• take more data with higher coherence (the file attached doesn't have great coherence and even that was one of my better runs, will probably increase averaging since increasing amplitude was a problem)

TL;DR: Got the x-arm aux laser locked again and took more data - my fit on my transfer functions need improvement and my new method for finding coherence doesn't work so I went back to the first way! See attached file for an example of data runs with poor fits. First one has the questionable coherence data, second one has more logical coherence. (ignore the dashed lines.)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• The aux laser on the x-arm was still off after the power shutdown, so Paco and I turned it back on, and realigned the oplev of the ETMX - initial position was P = -0.0420, Y = -5.5391.
• Locked the x-arm and took another few runs - was calculating coherence by I/Q demodulation of the buffers and then recombining the I/Q factors and then taking scipy.signal.coherence(), but for some reason this was giving me coherence values exclusively above 0.99, which seemed suspicious. When I calculated it the way I had before, by just taking s.s.coherence() of the buffers, I got a coherence around 1 except for in noisy areas of the data where it dropped more significantly, and seemed to be more correlated to the data. So I'll go back to using that way.
• I also think my fits are not great - my standard error of the fits (calculated using the coherence as weight, see Table 9.6 of Random Data by Piersol and Bendat for the formula I'm using) are enormous. Now that I have a good idea that the UGF is between 1 - 15 kHz, I'm going to restrict my frequency band and try to fit just around where the UGF would be. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To do:

• Reduce frequency band and take more data
• Get fit with better standard error, use that error to calculate the uncertainty in the UGF!

TL;DR: When the laser has good lock, the OLTF moves up and the UGF moves over!

-----------------------------------------------------------

Figured out with Paco yesterday that when the laser is locked but kind of weakly (mirrors on the optical table sliiightly out of alignment, for example), we would get a UGF around 5 kHz, but when we had a very strong lock (adjusting the mirrors until the spot was brightest) we would get a UGF around 13-17 kHz. Attached are some plots of us going back and forth (you can kind of tell from the coherence/error that the one with the lower UGF is more weakly locked, too). Error on the plots is propagated using the coherence data (see Bendat and Piersol, Random Data, Table 9.6 for the formula). 

-------------------------------------------------------------

Want to take data next week to quantitatively compare optical gain to UGF!

We measured the TF of the X-arm laser PZT using the Moku so we can begin fitting to that data and hopefully creating a digital filter to cancel out PZT resonances. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

We calculated the DFD calibration (V/Hz) using:

Vrf = 0.158 mV (-6 dBm), Km = 1 (K_phi = Km*Vrf), cable length = 45m,  Tau = cable length/(0.67*3*10^8 m/s) ~ 220 ns. 

We've taken some preliminary data and can see the resonances around 200-300 kHz.

---------------------------------------------------------

Next steps are taking more data around the resonances specifically, calibrating the data using the DFD calibration we calculated, and adjusting parameters in our model so we can model the TF.

Some more measurements of the PZT resonances (now zoomed in!) I'm adjusting parameters on our model to try and fit to it by hand a bit, definitely still needs improvements but not bad for a 2-pole 2-zero fit for now. I don't have a way to get coherence data from the moku yet but I've got a variety of measurements and will hopefully use the standard deviation to try and find a good error prediction...

I have now added code/data to my github repository. (it's the little victories)

Here is an update of how fitting the resonances is going - I've been modifying parameters by hand and seeing the effect on the fit. Still a work in progress. Magnitude is fitting pretty well, phase is very confusing. Attempted vectfit again but I can't constrain the number of poles and zeros with the code I have and I still get a nonsensical output with 20 poles and 20 zeros. Here is a plot with my fit so far, and a zip file with my moku data of the resonances and the code I'm using to plot.

Took finer measurements of the x-arm aux laser actuator tranfer function (10 kHz - 1 MHz, 1024 pts/decade) using the Moku.

--------------------------------------

I took finer measurements using the moku by splitting the measurement into 4 sections (10 - 32 (~10^4.5) kHz, 32 - 100 kHz, 100 - 320 kHz, 320 - 1000 kHz) and then grouping them together. I took 25 measurements of each ( + a bonus in case my counting was off), plotted them in the attached notebook, and calculated/plotted the standard deviation of the magnitude (normalized for DC offset). Could not upload to the ELOG as .pdf, but the pdf's are in the .zip file.

--------------------------------------

Next steps are to do the same stdev calculation for phase, which shouldn't take long, and to use the vectfit of this better data to create a PZT inversion filter.

Am still working on using vectfit to find my zeros/poles of a transfer function - now have a more specific project in mind, which is to have a Red Pitaya use the zero/pole data of the transfer function to find the UGF, so we can check what the UGF is at any given time and plot it as a function of time to see if it drifts (hopefully it doesn't). Wrestled with vectfit more on matlab, found out I was converting from dB's incorrectly (should be 10^(dB/20)....) Intend to read a bit of a book by Bendat and Piersol to learn a bit more about how I should be weighting my vectfit. May also check out an algorithm called AAA for fitting instead.

I have temporarily abandoned vectfit and aaa since I've been pretty unsuccessful with them and I don't need poles/zeroes to find the unity gain frequency. Instead I'm just fitting the transfer function linearly (on a log-log scale). I've found the UGF at about 5.5 kHz right now, using old data - next step is to get the Red Pitaya working so I can take data with that. Also need to move this code from matlab to python. Uncertainty's propagated using the 95% confidence bounds given by the fit, using curvefit - so just from the standard error, and all points are weighted equally. Ideally would like to propagate uncertainty accounting for the coherence data too, but haven't figured out how to do that correctly yet.

[UPDATE 7/22/2022: added raw data files]

Both accelerometers have been moved in an attempt to optimize their positions. The MC1 accelerometer was moved from one green bar to the other (I don't know what to call them) at the base of the MC1 and MC3 chambers. That area is pretty tight, as there is an optical table right there, and I did my best to be careful, but if you suspect something has been knocked loose, you might check in that area. The MC2 accelerometer was moved from the horizontal bar down to the metal table on which the MC2 chamber rests.

When I said "MC1/MC2 accelerometers," I meant the entire three-axis accelerometer set at each point.

I spent the week reading up on filter algorithm theory, particularly Wiener filtering. I have also learned how to get data from specific channels at specific times, and I've been getting myself acquainted with Matlab (which I have not previously used). Finally, I started messing around with the positioning of the accelerometers and seismometers in order to try to find the setup that yields the best filtration.

I moved the MC1 set of accelerators. Might have bumped things. If things aren't working, look around the MC1 chamber.

Also, I constructed two new XLR cables, but have not tested them yet.

We now have two 80-foot, female-to-female XLR cables for our pretty new microphones, one yellow and one purple. They have been tested and appropriately labeled.

Also, here is a very helpful pdf for how to properly attach the XLR connectors to a raw quad cable, as well as one for how to put the actual connectors together (ignore the cable instructions on the connector page... the cable depicted is not a quad cable).

I have been working on finding the best spots to put the accelerometer sets in order to best subtract out noise (seismometers next!). Here is a plot of what I've done so far:

All of these were 80-minute samples. The dashed line is unfiltered, solid line filtered. So, Setup #1 looks the best so far, but I didn't leave it there very long, so perhaps it was just a really awesome 80 minutes. I've put the accelerometers back in the Setup #1 position to make sure that it is really better.

And, in case you can't intuitively figure out what configuration the accelerometers are in by such descriptive names, here are some helpful pictures. I didn't know about the digital cameras at first, so these are actually sketches from my notebook, which I helpfully labeled with the setup numbers, color-coded to match the graph above! Also, there are some real-life photographs of the current arrangement (Setup #1' if you forgot).

Doesn't this one look kind of Quentin Blake-esque? (He illustrated for Roald Dahl.)

This is the MC1 set.

Guess which one this is!

So, I'm double-posting, but I figured the last post was long enough as it was, and this is about something different. After double and triple checking the XLR cables, I hooked up the microphone setup (mic---preamp---output) to the oscilloscope to figure out what kind of voltage would register with loud noises. So, I clapped and shouted and forgot to warn the other people in the lab what I was doing (sorry guys) and discovered that, even on the lowest gain setting, my loud noises were generation 2-3 times as much voltage as the ADC can handle (2V). And, since our XLR cables are so freaking long, we probably want to go for a higher gain, which puts us at something like 20 times too much voltage. I doubt this is really necessary, but it's late (early) and I got camera-happy, so I'm going to share anyway:

So, to deal with this issue, I made some nifty voltage dividers. Hopefully they are small enough to fit side-by-side in the ports without needing extra cableage. Anyway, they should prevent the voltage from getting larger than 2V at the output even if the mic setup is producing 50V. Seeing as my screaming as loud as I could about 2mm away from the mic at full gain could only produce 45V, I think this should be pretty safe. I put the ADC in parallel with a 25.5 kOhm resistor, which should have a noise like 10^-8 V/rHz. This is a lot smaller than 1 uV/rHz (the noise in the ADC, if I understood Rana's explanation correctly), so the voltage dividers should pose a noise issue. Now for pictures.

I opened one so you can see its innards.

In case the diagram on the box was too small to decipher...

And finally, I came up with a name scheme for the mics and pre-amps. We now have two Bluebird (bacteriophage) mics named Bonnie and Butch Cassidy. Their preamps are, naturally, Clyde and The Sundance Kid. Sadly, no photos. I know it's disappointing. Also, before anyone gives me crap for putting the labels on the mics upside-down, they are meant to be hung or mounted from high things, and the location (and stiffness) of the cable prevents us from simply standing them up. So they will more than likely be in some kind of upsidedownish position.

I tested the voltage dividers and was getting up to about 3V. I retested the mic w/o the voltage divider in place, and, lo and behold, I was able to generate about 70-75V (previously, I maxed out at 45V). I'm not 100% sure why this was, but it occurs to me that, before, the sounds I was generating were short in duration (loud claps, short yelps). This time, I tried yelling continuously into the microphone. So, probably, I simply wasn't seeing the real peak before on the scope because it was too short to pick up. I have corrected the voltage dividers (by replacing the 25.5 kOhm resistors, which were in parallel with the ADC, with 10 kOhm resistors, taking the voltage ratio to ~60:1) and tested them. I haven't been able to generate more than 1500 mV, so I think they are safe. (It's possible we would have been fine with the old setup, since I think it would be hard to get any noises as loud as I was making, but better safe than sorry, right?)

I'm attaching a diagram of the new-and-improved voltage dividers.

I clamped Bonnie (microphone) to the top of a chamber near the vertex of the arms and placed Clyde (pre-amp) on the table right below (see picture). The cable was laid and Bonnie and Clyde are plugged into port #13 on the ADC. The second cable was plugged into port #14, but it is not connected to anything. I placed the looped up cable on top of the cabinet holding the ADC.

Note: the angle in the photograph is such that we are looking along the y-arm.

I hooked up Bonnie and Clyde last night and tested it today. First I tried some loud noises to make sure I could identify them on the readout. Then, Steve suggested I try to look for some periodic stuff. I set up Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on the cabinets by the MC2 optic. Now for graphs!

I tapped on the microphone a few times. I also yelled a bit, but this is sampling by seconds, so perhaps they got overwhelmed by the tapping.

This time I tried some more isolated yells. I started with a tap so I'd be sure to be able to recognize what happened. Apparently, not so necessary.

Here, it looks like a pretty strong periodic pattern on the second mic (Butch Cassidy). I replaced the lines with dashed ones where the pattern was a little less clear. Possibility interference from something. Mic1 (Bonnie) seems to show a pretty regular beat pattern, which seems reasonable, as it isn't particularly close to any one instrument fan.

So, anyway. I thought those were neat. And that I wanted to share.

I am attempting to use the DTT program to look at the coherence of the individual accelerometer signals with the MC_L signal. Rana suggested that I might break up the XYZ configuration, so i wanted to see how the coherence changed when I moved things around over the past couple of weeks, but I keep getting a synchronization error every time I try to set the start time to more than about 3 days ago. I tried restarting the program and checking the "reconnect" option in the "Input" tab, neither of which made any kind of difference. I can access this data with no problem from the Data Viewer and the Matlab scripts, so I'm not really sure what is happening. Help?

EDIT: Problem solved - Full data was not stored for the time I needed to access it for DTT.

After setting up the microphones last week, I modified the Wiener filtering programs so as to include the microphone signals. They didn't seem to do much of anything to reduce the MC_L signal, so I looked at coherences. The microphones don't seem to have much coherence with the MC_L signal at all. I tried moving Bonnie to near the optical table next to the PSL (which isn't in a vacuum, and thus would, presumably, be more affected by acoustic noise), but that didn't seem to make much of a difference. Eventually, I'd like to put a mic in the PSL itself, but I need to work out how to mount it first.

Bonnie's new location.

You can see in bonnie_butch.pdf that none of the mic signals are giving very good coherence, although they all seem to have a peak at 24 Hz. (In fact, everything seems to have a peak there. Must be a resonant frequency of something in the mode cleaner.)

I've also attached plots of the coherences for all six accelerometers and the three Guralp seismometer axes. I plotted the most coherent traces together in the last pdf: the y-axes of the MC2 accelerometer and the two seismometers (the Ranger measures ONLY y) and, interestingly, the z-axis of the MC2 accelerometer. Unsurprisingly, the seismometers are most coherent at the low frequencies, and the MC2-Y accelerometer seems to be coherent at very similar frequencies. The MC2-Z accelerometer, on the other hand, seems to be coherent at the higher frequencies, and is highly complementary to the others. I am not really sure why this would be...

Finally, I was curious about how the noise varies throughout the day, because I didn't want to mistakenly decide that some particular configuration of accelerometers/seismometers/whatever was better than another b/c I picked the wrong time of day to collect the data. So, here is a plot of Wiener filters (using only accelerometer data) taken over 2-hour intervals throughout the entirety of July 6, 2009 (midnight-midnight local).

It's a little bit confusing, and I should probably try to select some representative curves and eliminate the rest to simplify things, but I don't have time to do that before the meeting, so this will have to suffice for now.

In her position overlooking whichever table it is that is next to the PSL, Bonnie drummed up some decent coherence with the PSL-PMC_ERR channel, but not so much with the MC_L. I moved her into the PSL itself, and now there is rather good coherence with the PMC_ERR channel, but still not so great for MC_L.

Bonnie's new home in the PSL.

Bonnie has been strung up on bungees in the PSL so that her position/orientation can be adjusted however we like. She is now hanging pretty low over the table, rather than being attached to the hanging equipment shelf thing. Butch Cassidy has been hung over the AS table.

Moving Bonnie increased the coherence for the PMC_ERR_F signal, but not the MC_L. Butch Cassidy doesn't have much coherence with either.

I noticed that the coherence would drop off very sharply just after 10 kHz - there would be no further spikes or anything of the sort. I used my computer to play a swept sine wave (sweeping from 20Hz to 10kHz) next to Butch Cassidy to see if the same drop-off occurred in the microphone signal itself. Sure enough, the power spectrum showed a sharp drop around 10kHz. Thinking that the issue was that the voltage dividers had too high impedance, I remade one of them with two 280 Ohm and one 10 Ohm resistor, but that didn't make any difference. So, I'm not sure what's happening exactly. I didn't redo the other voltage divider, so Bonnie is currently not operating.

So, I actually took these measurements last week, but I didn't get around to making nice plots and things until now. I figured the time while I wait for the spectrum analyzer to do its thing was a good time.

Having been unable to locate the SR785 and also unsure how to connect it to a computer speaker (and also unable to find a free one), I downloaded a demo of a function generator onto my computer and just used that. (Same thing I used to do the swept sine that created the frequency power response plots I posted last week.) I set the program to a number of different frequencies and had the other end of the cable hooked into the oscilloscope to see a) if I could pick out the frequency and b) see how the magnitude of the microphone output varied with the frequency.

The first set of measurements I took, I didn't realize that I could increase the output power of the function generator. Because the generated sound at the default setting was relatively quiet, the oscilloscope traces were pretty chaotic, so I usually froze the trace so that I could look at it better. I ended up with a lot of weird jumps in the magnitude, but I later realized that there was a lot of beating going on at some frequencies, and the amplitude changes were probably much more drastic for the -20 dB sounds than the 6 dB sounds, since it was closer in amplitude to the surrounding noises. So, I've included that data set in my plots for the sake of completeness, but I'm pretty sure that it is useless.

Once I realized I could increase the power output for the signal generator, I took a set of data with and without the voltage divider at 6 dB. There was a cluster of frequencies that showed significant beating around 1700-3000 Hz in the data WITH the voltage divider, but I did not see any clear beating in the data WITHOUT. In the plots, I simply plotted up the highest and lowest amplitudes I measured for the frequencies with significant beating, since it was obviously hard to tell what the amplitude would have been without any background noise. In the w/o volt. div. set, although I didn't see any obvious beat patterns, the measured amplitudes did jump slightly at the frequencies that showed beats with the voltage divider. So, perhaps I was just not seeing them, but they influenced my amplitude measurements? I'm not sure if it would be possible for the voltage divider itself to cause beat frequencies.

 (Note: the amplitudes measured were from zero to peak, as the oscilloscope I was using wouldn't show a big enough vertical range to easily measure the peak-to-peak voltage difference.)

I've attached two plots of my measurements. One has a regular x-scale and includes all the measurements. The second has a logarithmic x-scale and omits the 20 Hz points. I had some troubles being able to pick out the 20 Hz signal on the oscilloscope... I don't know if my computer speakers just don't work well at that frequency or what, but either way, those points seemed highly suspect, and omitting them from the log plot allowed me to spread things out more.

One thing I'm not sure about is the 3000 Hz point. It was one of the ones with a beat frequency (~130 Hz), and the amplitudes were pretty low. The corresponding point from the non-voltage-divider data set is also low. So, I'm not sure what's happening there.

The one thing that I do think is quite clear is that the 1000 Hz drop-off in power when the microphone is connected to the ADC has nothing to do with the voltage divider. Beat issues aside, the shapes are very similar (pay no attention to the absolute scale... obviously, the voltage responses with and without the voltage divider were very different, and I just scaled them to fit in the same plot).

Update: Jenne pointed out that I was not absolutely clear about the voltage scale in my plots. The GREEN and BLUE points are on a mV scale, and the RED points are on a 10mV scale. I should probably redo the plots in Matlab in eventuality, since Excel is hard to use if you want to do anything that is not extremely basic with your plots, but this was my solution for the time being. So, the fact that the RED points, which are the data taken WITHOUT the voltage divider, are lower than the GREEN ones does not in any way indicate that I measured lower voltages when the voltage divider was not used.

Also, a to do list:

- Many of the beat frequencies I picked out were veeeeery slow, indicating that something is going at a frequency that is very close to the arbitrary frequencies I chose to sample, which is a little strange. That, combined with the fact that I saw clear beats with the voltage divider but not without leads me to believe that it may be worth investigating the frequency response of the voltage divider itself.

- Redo the measurements near the anomalous 3000 Hz point with a higher density of sampled frequencies to try to see what the heck is going on there.

I made and tested a female-to-female TRS(audio)-RNC cable. It only has a single channel, so it won't work for stereo speakers or anything, but I should only need one speaker for testing the microphones. The tip of the plug is the signal, the sleeve is ground, and the ring is null.

I've been trying for most of the week to get noise measurements on the output of the Guralp box as well as scross the AD640 chip. The measurements haven't really been making sense, and, being at a loss as to what else I should try, I decided to redo the resistors on the N/S 2 and E/W 2 channels. (I had been comparing the VERT1 and VERT2 channels, as VERT1 has been restuffed and VERT2 has not.) I don't need all three of the second set of channels to do more measurements, so it seemed like a good use of time.

The first thing I noticed was that the VERT2 channel was missing two resistors (R24 and R25). I probably should have noticed this sooner, as they are right by the output points I had been measuring across, but it didn't occur to me that anyone did anything to the VERT2 channel at all. So, probably the measurements on VERT2 are no good.

Note the existence of 100 kOhm resistors on the top channel, and none on the bottom channel (VERT2).

Then, while I was soldering in some 100 Ohm resistors, I happened to notice that the resistors I was using had a different number (1001) on them than the corresponding ones on the already redone channels (1003). I checked the resistance, and the ones on the already redone channels turned out to be 100 kOhm resistors, rather than 100 Ohms. So, I double checked the circuit diagram to make sure that I had read it correctly, and there were a number of resistors that had been relabeled as 100 Ohms and several relabeled as 100 kOhms. On the board, however, they were ALL 100 kOhms. Clearly, one of them is wrong, and I suspect that it is the circuitboard, but I don't know for sure.

The diagram clearly shows that R6 should be a 100k resistor, while R5 and R8 should be 100 Ohm resistors, but they are all the same (100k) on the board. I suspect this may have something to do with larger-than-expected noise measurements. But, it's possible the diagram is wrong, not the board. In any case, I didn't really know what to do, since I wasn't sure which was right, so I just replaced all the resistors I was sure about and removed the 100k and 100 Ohm resistors without replacing them with anything. Incidentally, the box of 100kOhm resistors seems to be missing, so I wouldn't have been able to finish those anyway.

There managed to be just enough 100 kOhm resistors to stuff all the "2" channels (VERT2, N/S2, E/W2) with the fancy low-noise resistors. The first six channels (VERT 1/2, NS 1/2, EW 1/2) are now completely done with the thin-film resistors, taking into account the changes that were made on the circuit diagram. I also replaced the C8 capacitor with the fancy Garrett ones and added capacitors on top of R4 and R13 (after painstakingly making sure that the capacitances are exactly the same for each pair) for the "2" channels. It looks like the capacitors on the "1" channels are the cheaper ones. I will compare the noise measurements later to see if there is any difference - if so, I can replace those as well (although, we're out of the 1 uF capacitors needed for C8).

Speaking of, we are now out of or very low on several types of the Garrett resistors/capacitors: 1 uF, 1kOhm, 100 Ohm, 14.0 Ohm, and 100 kOhm. I left the specifics on Steve's desk so that more can be ordered for the eventual time when the third set of channels needs to be restuffed.

I mapped out the corresponding pins on both ends of the Guralp seismometer cable. Here is the diagram:

The circular 26-pin end of the cable (that plugs into the seismometer) is labeled as above. The other end (the 39-pin end) is not physically numbered, so I just came up with a numbering system. They are both pictured on the non-cable end of the connector. The colored circles indicate the pin pairs.

FROM JENNE, 30JULY2009:  the Dsub end is 37 pin, not 39.