Amsterdam Scientific Instruments (ASI)

Unknown issue with Timepix

Alex Mavian

Hardware · 5 months ago

Hello everyone,

I have been using the Timepix3 with a Photonis intensifier in my experiment for the past couple of months. Recently, all of a sudden, the system stopped working. Below is a description of the situation:

As I was aligning my setup, I plugged in the intensifier to check the alignment. It worked for a second and then the active module in SoPhy turned black other than the dark counts. Up until that point, everything was working as normal. I don’t believe I over exposed the intensifier as the lights were always off and the pump laser was filtered out. I initially assumed the USB cables had been damaged but that appears to not be the case. The intensifier also seems to be working fine; it is receiving power as confirmed by the fluorescence. That leaves the Timepix as the most likely culprit.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or ideas on how to troubleshoot this issue. Thank you!

5 Comments | 486 Views

Andrei Nomerotski · 5 months ago

hi Alex, are you sure that your readout works ok? do you see the device id in Sophy (in format like W0028_H11) and can you acquire some frames? normally you'd see a few noisy pixels in them even if the intensifier is off.

Alex Mavian · 5 months ago

Hi Andrei, I will confirm tomorrow but I believe the ID in SoPhy is 2000171. I see the noisy pixels regardless of whether the intensifier is on or off. I have not tested acquiring frames, but I can try that. Thank you.

Andrei Nomerotski · 5 months ago

it's good news you see the device. as a sanity check that your z scale in Sophy is not something crazy - make it 'log' or just from 0 to 1 so you are sure that you see all hits. sometimes you'd have an outlier that makes the autoscale unreasonable and could hide other hits. also for the debugging close the intensifier input with cap, just in case. you'd have ~100 kHz of dark counts anyway.

Alex Mavian · 5 months ago

Hi Andrei, the z scale is not the issue. We took the intensifier off the Timepix and quickly shined a flashlight on the sensor. When it is exposed to the light it was recording on the order of 10 MHz of counts. With the cap on, it was reading 0.00 MHz. Is the Timepix not responding appropriately? We think it could also be possible that there is an internal hardware issue with the intensifier.

Andrei Nomerotski · 5 months ago

it's normal that you don't have hits from optical Timepix with the cap on, without intensifier it's sensitive only to fast flashes of more than ~1000 photons/pixel. the only thing you see with the cap on is a handful of noisy pixels (if they are not masked). I am afraid you'd need to talk to ASI/Photonis if this is the intensifier.

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