Operation Examples -
We will now present an example of using one Master board to control one Slave board.
» Plug the power supply to both boards. The best way to do this is to split the supplies so that each board is getting
the same voltage as pictured below:
» Connect the necessary SMA cables to the Master and Slave boards. Note that you must connect the SYNCOUT on the Master
Board to SYNCIN in the slave board. The input clock should be split and input to both DDSCK inputs on the Master and Slave board.
If there is a trigger signal, connect it to the TRIG connector on the Master board.
» Now connect both boards to the computer using two USB A-to-B cables.
» Power up the DSM board by turning on the power supplies. Remember that you should turn them on in the right order as
specified in the Hardware Setup page.
» You will need to open two instances of the DSM application. When you open the first DSM application the following dialog
box will appear:
The board series numbers in the dialog box will be different for your boards since each board is identified by a special number. We have the #1 and #6 boards. We will make the #1 our Master board and #6 our Slave board. The Master board is the one which uses the SYNCOUT and the slave board is the one which uses the SYNCIN.
» The DSM application will now open. If you look at the title bar, you will notice that it has the board number so that
you can identify the boards easily.
» Now open up a second DSM program. Again the dialog box will appear:
Choose the second board and then click on OK.
» Once again you will notice that the title bar will have the board's number.
» Go to the Master board application. Adjust the Clock Frequency so that it matches the input clock
frequency. Our clock is at 2 Ghz so we will set it to "2000" and the units to "Mhz". Repeat the same procedure with the Slave board
application.
» Go back to the Master application and click on the "Configuration and Status" tab. Change the configuration so that
only Master is checked.
» Now go to the Slave application and click on the "Configuration and Status" tab. Change the configuration so that
only Slave is checked.
» For this example, we will have the two boards output the exact same waveform. To have the Master and Slave boards output
different waveforms, just change the following settings to the ones that you want.
In both Master and Slave applications, click on the "Waveform" tab. Click on the drop-down box and click on the "Full Bandwidth" waveform.
» The "Full Bandwidth" waveform parameters will load.
» Now click on Download Waveform.
» In the Master application, if you go to the "Configuration and Status" tab and click on Update Status
you will see that "Armed" and "Auto-Armed" should be checked. This means that the board will start output of the waveform once it
senses the trigger signal.
» In the Slave application, if you go to the "Configuration and Status" tab and click on Update Status
you will see that "Armed", "Slave Wait", "Auto-Armed", and "Slave" are checked. This means that the board will start output of the
waveform once it senses the SYNCOUT signal from the Master board.
» At this point you will either need to provide a trigger signal or you can press the TRIG button on the Master board.
The trigger signal we used in our lab was a 1 kHz 1 V peak-to-peak square wave with a DC offset of 0.5 V. You should use a similar
signal for your trigger. The frequency of the trigger of course is up to you.
» Once the board receives the trigger signal, both boards will output waveforms.
» In the Master board, if you go to the "Configuration & Status" window and click on Update Status
repeatedly, you will notice the board in various states of operation.
» Similarly in the Slave board, if you go to the "Configuration & Status" window and click on Update Status
repeatedly, you will notice the board in various states of operation.
