Week 11: Complications

This past week we attempted to run the system in full to test the link speed of a USB 3.0 connection. However, we ran into some complications. The first being that the oscilloscope we wanted to troubleshoot data speeds with was no longer in the lab. We suspect that the other capstone team that shares the room with us moved it to conduct their own research.

Additionally, some new components were placed on the bench that we were unsure of how to use. These components were found after the circulator and after the EDFA stages in the system. While we verified proper connections for the stages we were familiar with, when finally running the code on PyCharm, we did not see the expected waveforms of the signal and interference as we had hoped.

We ensured that the scope was detected by the PC however the code did not behave as anticipated. While the program took control of the oscilloscope, the code controlled parameters did not seem to properly adjust the scope’s settings and no data was being streamed to the computer. We decided to run the code as the code-set parameters would bring the scope into the ballpark of the needed settings and we could adjust from there. There are multiple versions of the code saved on the computer, and it is possible we used a now non-stable version. We are seeking the help of the graduate student in order to better understand the system's state.