ADALM2000 as a Multichannel Pulse Height (Peak) Analyzer

[danielbon]

I am currently using the ADALM2000 for nuclear instrumentation research and would like to suggest a feature that could significantly enhance its usability for pulse analysis applications.
Feature Request:
Implement on-device histogramming or pulse height analysis (PHA) capabilities.
Allow the device to detect pulses above a configurable threshold, extract their peak values, and increment histogram bins in real time.
Optionally, provide a way to stream only the histogram or peak values to the host PC, reducing USB bandwidth requirements.

Many users in physics and radiation detection need to process hundreds of thousands of short pulses (e.g., 300 ns, bi-exponential shape, up to 1 V).
Currently, capturing raw waveforms for offline processing is inefficient due to buffer and USB transfer limitations.
On-device processing would make the ADALM2000 a low-cost alternative to dedicated multichannel analyzers.

If possible, this could be implemented as:
A new mode in Scopy or libm2k API for histogramming.
Firmware support for real-time peak detection and binning.
Thank you for considering this enhancement. It would greatly expand the ADALM2000’s applications in education and research.
Daniel

[gastmaier]

Hi, you can continuosly read the iio buffer on device and then filter/match your samples based on your requirements, then pipe only the matches to your application.
Ideally using c instead of python
did you try this approach already?

[danielbon]

Hi, Thanks for the reply. I did not try your suggestion yet. Do you have any example that guide me on this approach?

[gastmaier]

You can use iio_readdev to read the buffer,

or use sysfs directly:

$  ssh root@192.168.2.1
Welcome to:

 __   __  ____
|  \ /  |(___ \
|   v   |  __) ) _  __
| |\_/| | / __/ | |/ /
| |   | || |___ |   <
|_|   |_||_____)|_|\_\
01001101 00110010 01101011
$ iio_attr -c 
IIO context has 14 devices:
        iio:device0, xadc: found 10 channels
        iio:device1, ad5625: found 4 channels
        iio:device10, m2k-fabric: found 7 channels
        iio:device11, m2k-adc-trigger: found 7 channels
        iio:device12, ad9963: found 9 channels
        iio:device13, m2k-adc: found 2 channels <==== ADC
        iio:device2, ad5627: found 2 channels
        iio:device3, pll: found 1 channels
        iio:device4, m2k-dds: found 4 channels
        iio:device5, m2k-dac-a: found 1 channels
        iio:device6, m2k-dac-b: found 1 channels
        iio:device7, m2k-logic-analyzer: found 16 channels
        iio:device8, m2k-logic-analyzer-tx: found 16 channels
        iio:device9, m2k-logic-analyzer-rx: found 18 channels

$ cd /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio\:device13

$ cat scan_elements/in_voltage0_type
le:s12/16>>0
$ echo 1 > scan_elements/in_voltage0_en
$ echo 256 > buffer/length
# sample:
$ echo 1 > buffer/enable
# Below you read the buffer, here I am piping to hexdump, you would pipe to you application instead.
$ dd if=/dev/iio:device13  bs=2 count=256 | hexdump -v -e '1/2 "%d\n"'
$ echo 0 > buffer/enable
# goto sample

Also, look into www,ez.analog.com for similar threads.

[danielbon]

Thanks, Gastmaier.
Is there a way to use the trigger to collect pulse above a certain threshold? I did not find any example like this.