NEES at the San Diego Supercomputer Center

These pages are misc documentation for NEES and NEESgrid, mostly moved over from the archive at Argonne. A reorganization is pending, so expect some broken links.

UMN trip Jan 05

3-day site visit to Minnesota, decent pictures of their hardware.

UMN site visit

Shaketable manual for SDSC 12/04

Local manual for the Anco R02 shaketable. Lots of pictures of our toy.

Shaketable page

Garner Valley EBD report 8/25/04

I've changed this URL from a tutorial to a report on the EBD - pictures, movies, links to the news stories, as well as a link to the original tutorial.

http://www.sdsc.edu/~hubbard/neesgrid/gv/

Updated docs for 3.0 release 8/23/04

I'm working hard to get my docs updated for the release; I'll post them as they're completed.

NEES TR-2004-35, "DAQ protocol and file format specification." Many changes related to NSDS becoming the RBNB, data format changed from fractional to exponential, new system diagram, etc. Feedback welcome.: Formatted as HTML

MS Word format

PDF format
NTCP tutorial. I've updated this for the for the new release. Small changes, really. Mostly changes in URLs from OGSA 3.0.2 to 3.2, and similar small changes for NEEGrid 3.0.: Updated NTCP documentation
Turbine application documentation. As per request, I've started a new page documenting how to run the turbine programs in 3.0. This covers all of the NEESGrid code that uses the turbine - DAQ sources, video in and out, etc, etc.: Turbine apps page
NEES TR 2004-29, "How to connect your DAQ to the NEESGrid." This one focusses on the different ways (direct, indirect, DaqToRbnb, etc) get wired in.: Formatted as HTML

MS Word format

PDF format
NEES TR 2004 31, "How to connect cameras to the data turbine". Also covers viewers, and debugging. Video, still image, frame grabbers, it's all here.: Formatted as HTML

MS Word format

PDF format

13WCEE media 8/9/04

Added a page of pictures and movies from the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Aug 1-6 2004 in Vancouver.

orb2nsds 7/20/04

Added a page for the Antelope-to-NSDS code.

UCLA EBD trip July 2004

Experiment-based-deployment trip out to UCLA, for their Four Seasons office building work. Lots of pictures of a quake-damaged building.

UCLA EBD page

Fuzzy Logic and Labview 6/25/04

Our shake table here is fairly crude, possessing only a force input and position output. While we've written PID control software for it that works, we have now implemented a controller based on fuzzy logic that provides better results. This writeup covers a bit about fuzzy logic, a bit about the LabVIEW version therof, and a bit about our new control software. Links to the code are included.

Fuzzy logic writeup

Equipment evaluation 5/15/04

I evaluate the Sony PEGA VR100K solid-state video recording unit for possible equipment site use.

Sony review

Jcamera and jclient April 19 2004

I've written a surprisingly long introduction to the camera demo in the user workshop. Briefly, it's NTCP control of a consumer-grade digital camera. Lots of pieces, but perhaps useful.

Jcamera, jclient and everything related

New pages for user training workshop, April 15, 2004

I've not had time to add links to parent pages and so forth, so these are only linked from here for now.

Second example DAQ code (ANCO DAQ)

Third example, the Mini-MOST DAQ code

ANCO DAQ subroutine

Mini-MOST DAQ subroutine

Mini-MOST load cell filter subroutine

PDFs of the slides:

DAQ design

DAQ example (Mini-MOST, Anco)

nclient demo

jcamera demo

Data turbine

Data Turbine

I've added a page about our work on the Creare data turbine; it also includes how to get the code, mailing list, and a bit of explanation. Posted 3/23/04.

NEESGrid data turbine efforts

Second page - the design patterns we propose for using the turbine in NEESGrid. Standards, naming conventions, channel usage and more. Still in flux.

Turbine design patterns

NTCP tutorial and documentation

As part of the EBD effort, I have written a simple NTCP client and documentation to go with it. This is intended to be "hello, world" type of example, with plenty of explanations. I also included the information required to setup your development environment, work with control plugins, and a bit about writing your own control plugins.

Feedback is welcome, I expect to require significant editing. First posted March 19, 2004. The latest version also adds notes from the C gateway plugin, for those of you requiring a C interface instead of Java.

Updated Aug 23, 2004, to match the 3.0 release and OGSA 3.2.

NTCP writeup

The Code

The CVS page has instructions for getting the current code out of the NEESgrid CVS archive.

Updated: 9/11/03 - fake_daq changes

Running the Mini-MOST

A howto on running the LabVIEW code controlling the Mini-MOST demo/experiment. Also has some background on the design of code and components.

First posted 11/6/03

Mini-MOST

Protocol documentation: NTCP Labview plugin

Despite the name, this is a generalized ASCII plugin for NTCP that can be used to connect NTCP to a wide variety of hardware. If you can host a single TCP connection and parse strings, you're in the game.

First posted 11/11/03

Plugin protocol

The DAQ FAQ

Frequently asked questions about the data acquisition code, now available for your edification. Please send feedback to the DAQ list.

Updated 8/19/03, minor edits - formatting, ADXL information, etc.
Updated 9/11/03, noted move of fake_daq into its own package
Update 2/5/04, Added DNDTester info under validation

Documentation

Slide set one, Design of the DAQ code, from the developer training at NCSA on April 23 2003. Covers a lot of ground - design background, goals, tradeoffs, architecture, more. PDF format.

Slide set two, Customizing the DAQ code for your site, also from the April 23rd meeting. Does a walkthrough of the Example DAQ program, subroutine by subroutine, covering usage and notes. PDF format.

Related to slide set two, this is the source code to Example DAQ, saved as HTML from LabVIEW. Useful for perusing slides. HTML with graphics.

fake_daq and driver source code docs (HTML), snapshot as of 12/10/02. Most current version is in CVS with the code.
This is for sites wishing to customize or replace the driver or DAQ code with their own versions.
Driver installation instructions (PDF)
All sites need a driver to mediate between the DAQ and the NSDS. The supplied one is threaded C code, using the POSIX API, and requires Unix machine to build and run. These instructions cover downloading, compiling and running the code.
LabVIEW DAQ code installation instructions (PDF)
While not all sites will run LabVIEW, our supplied DAQ code uses it as a platform. This covers downloading, installation, testing and customization for your site.
NSDS <-> driver <-> DAQ protocol document (PDF)
If you wish to modify, emulate or replace the driver or DAQ, you should read this. We use a simple ASCII protocol for command and data between the NSDS, driver and DAQ; this documents it for those who are interested. Also goes into some detail about the architecture of the system, data flows, data file format, etc.
Revised Aug 17, 2003, with error responses, the optional open-ports, and DNDTester information.
Revised Aug 28, 2003, with a corrected error response. Irony is alive and well.

Firewire Video Capture

I've set up a page detailing some initial results using National Instruments' NI-IMAQ 1394 toolkit for simple video & frame capture using LabVIEW. Simple video capture page

Updated 9/11/03, more information on camera compatibility.

MUD instructions

We have set up a room in the MCS MUD for real-time interaction. This page explains how to get an account and join in.

Gigabit ethernet adapters

U of N Iowa has an excellent review of gigabit ethernet cards. There are large differences in performance between adapters! We picked the 3com 3C996s, as they are second-fastest and cheap. If you've got the money, the SysKonnects are even better.

Data Acquisition with Dataq Instruments DI-194s

I moved this to its own page as of 5/1/03. Code to read from the Dataq DI-194 boards with most Unixes. There's also code to stream data out to the NEESgrid as well.

Data Acquisition with the Crossbow 2-axis accelerometer

Neat new board to play with - 2-axis accelerometer, with RS-232 (serial) interface, good up to about 250Hz. It now has its own page as of 5/3/03.

A simple client-side NSDS Simulator for Linux

I compiled the NSDS simulator from the code distribution into a standalone Linux binary. This allows sites with Linux, but not LabVIEW, to code and test DAQ and driver issues. If you've got LabVIEW (for any platform) already, this is already in your code distribution from CVS.
NSDS simulator page

DAQ Code and Protocol Tester

Released 7/28/03, this is Java code that will test the heck out of your DAQ system. It's designed to validate any DAQ that speaks the reference NSDS-driver protocol, and has already found several lurking bugs in our code. This should be very useful to anyone wanting to validate their code or installation.
DAQ Tester page

Whitepaper: Audio capture with LabVIEW

Posted 9/15/03, this short whitepaper (HTML) discusses some of the issues of audio capture for NEESgrid using LabVIEW.
Audio capture page

Navigation links

Back to home page

Support

This work was supported primarily by the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Program of the National Science Foundation under Award Number CMS-0117853.