Connecting and Configuring

Connecting

For the camera to work you will have to set up the IP address on your machine, that the camera then communicates with. For Timepix3 with 10 Gb/s that is 192.168.100.1. Look up the official documentation for your camera to find out more.

Before using Pymepix, make sure your camera works properly with the SoPhy software.

The IP address of your TPX camera is the one seen on the OLED screen. Connecting to SPIDR can be done with:

>>> timepix = Pymepix(('192.168.100.10',50000))

The number of devices can be found using:

>>> len(timepix)
1

Meaning we have one device. To access this device directly, use:

tpx0 = timepix[0]

And to check the device name:

>>> tpx0.deviceName
W0026_K08

Configuring

To set the biasVoltage to 50 Volts in spidr you can do:

>>> timepix.biasVoltage = 50

Setting the we can manage its settings directly. To easily setup the device we can use a SoPhy config file (.spx):

tpx0.loadConfig('myFile.spx')

This sets up all the DAC setting and pixel configurations. Individual parameters can also be set for example. To set the fine threshold to 100 mV do:

>>> tpx0.Vthreshold_fine = 100

pixel threshold configurations can be set by passing a 256x256 numpy array:

import numpy as np
tpx0.pixelThreshold[...] = 0

The same for pixel masks, to set a checkboard mask do:

tpx0.pixelMask[::2] = 1

These need to be uploaded to timepix before they take effect:

>>> tpx0.uploadPixels()

The full list of parameters that can be set can be found in timepixdevice().