trace-reader

Introduction

This program reads picscope .trace files, a binary file developed by E.M Schooneveld.

Command Line Interface

For command line instructions run

trace-reader --help

Options

The number-of-trace-events parameter is the number of traces events that are extracted from the file (either randomly or in sequence). The file defines how many channels the digitizer has, each trace event contains one trace for each channel. The number of messages dispatched is equal to the number of trace events times the number of channels.

If random-sample is set then trace-events are read from the file randomly. Selection is made with replacement so duplication is possible. If this flag is not set then trace-events are read in order. If number-of-trace-events is greater than the number available then trace-events are the reader wraps around to the beginning of the file as often as necessary.

Example

The following reads 18 trace events (sampled randomly with replacement) from Traces/MuSR_A41_B42_C43_D44_Apr2021_Ag_ZF_IntDeg_Slit60_short.trace and dispatches them to the topic Traces on the Kafka broker located at localhost:19092:

trace-reader --broker localhost:19092 --consumer-group trace-producer --trace-topic Traces --file-name Traces/MuSR_A41_B42_C43_D44_Apr2021_Ag_ZF_IntDeg_Slit60_short.traces --number-of-trace-events 18 --random-sample

Terminology

• Trace: This is continous block of voltage readings from a digitizer channel.
• Trace Event: This is a collection of traces, one for each channel on the digitizer.

Note that "Event" here is meant in a different sense than the trace-to-event tool. The overlap is a result of terminology used in the .trace file. To avoid confusion, the term "Trace Event" is used here.