Seosamh and I (Chris) returned to Dunsink Observatory for this week in order to improve the configuration of the SuperSID receiver that is currently running there.

We began the week by checking the hardware, as we have recently had issues with noisy data. We ensured that all cable connections were secure and tested other cables to make sure there was no damage that was causing issues. Unfortunately, we were unable to identify the source of the issue, but we were able to rule out several possibilities.

We then began working on the software improvements that we had planned, increasing the sampling rate of the machine from 48kHz to 96kHz. After determining that our sound card was capable of this sampling rate, we had to modify the configuration of the sound system to allow it. With a bit of research, we were able to find the settings we needed to change and successfully upgraded the sampling rate.

Additionally, we were able to get a live power spectrum running on the PC. This allows us to see which frequencies are the strongest and precisely tune the machine, giving us higher quality data. This tool was also good confirmation of the increased sampling rate, as we could see peaks in the signal at higher frequencies than before.

We also finished preparing our posters for INAM 2023, as we will be presenting our work there next week. As part of our presentations, we will be giving one minute lightning talks about our projects. Seosamh’s updates to https://www.dunsink.dias.ie/supersid/ will be made live before the event.