QCUALOR Device

Available on macOS

Description

Interface to a University of Washington Quad Channel Laser Modulator (QCUALOR) device.

This component allows an MWorks experiment to configure the modulator and, optionally, active/deactivate it. See meg_state for more information.

Signature

iodevice/qcualor

Optional Parameters

serial_port

Example:

/dev/cu.usbmodem11201

Filesystem path that represents the serial port to which the QCUALOR device is connected.

If omitted, MWorks looks for a single, connected serial device. If it finds one, it assumes it to be the desired QCUALOR device and attempts to connect.

mode_1

Options:

continuous

sinusoidal

inverse_sinusoidal

square

off

Default:

off

Mode (i.e. waveform) for channel 1

mode_2

Default:

off

Mode (i.e. waveform) for channel 2. Support the same options as mode_1.

mode_3

Default:

off

Mode (i.e. waveform) for channel 3. Support the same options as mode_1.

mode_4

Default:

off

Mode (i.e. waveform) for channel 4. Support the same options as mode_1.

modulation_frequency

Default:

0.5

Modulation frequency (in hertz). Must be between 0.5 and 500.

The modulator supports a fixed set of modulation frequencies, indexed by integers ranging from 0 to 255. MWorks converts the requested frequency to an index via the following equation, where log is the natural logarithm:

index = round(255.0 * log(frequency / 0.5) / log(500.0 / 0.5))

gain_1

Default:

0.0

Gain (i.e. amplitude) for channel 1. Must be between 0 and max_gain.

gain_2

Default:

0.0

Gain (i.e. amplitude) for channel 2. Must be between 0 and max_gain.

gain_3

Default:

0.0

Gain (i.e. amplitude) for channel 3. Must be between 0 and max_gain.

gain_4

Default:

0.0

Gain (i.e. amplitude) for channel 4. Must be between 0 and max_gain.

max_gain

Default:

0.8

Maximum allowed gain for each channel. Must be between 0 and 1.

meg_state

Variable which is set to true by Start IO Device and false by Stop IO Device.

If the same variable is used to set the state of a digital output line (e.g. via a DATAPixx Bit Output Channel), and said output line is connected to the QCUALOR device’s Modulation Enable Gate (MEG), then Start IO Device will configure and activate the modulator, and Stop IO Device will deactivate it.

If this parameter is omitted, or if the assigned variable does not control a digital output connected to the device’s MEG input, then Start IO Device will send the configuration commands to the modulator, but the experiment must explicitly set the MEG state to high to apply the configuration and activate the device. Similarly, Stop IO Device will send commmands to set all channel modes to “off” and gains to zero, but the experiment must explicitly set the MEG state to low to deactivate the modulator.

log_commands

Default:

NO

If YES, log all commands sent to and responses received from the device to the MWorks event stream and server console

autostart

Default:

NO

If YES, the device will start I/O automatically (as if by an implicit Start IO Device action) when the experiment starts running.

Note: Device I/O will always stop automatically when the experiment stops running, irrespective of this setting.

alt

Alternative device to use if this one fails to initialize (e.g. because the required hardware is not available). If #allowAltFailover is set to 0 or false, this parameter is ignored.

Placement

Allowed at top level:	Yes
Allowed parent:	Folder