Day 10

This morning I went up and down a lot of staircases, trying to fix a few issues with the monitor in our lab. I downloaded the software for the new power meter which arrived yesterday, and the setup wizard asked me to restart the computer to finalize the installation, so I (luckily) saved everything and rebooted the computer. Unfortunately, when it turned back on, the screen just cycled between "VGA No Signal" and "DVI No Signal." We have been using an HDMI cable to connect it, but the monitor was acting as if the HDMI port did not exist. So after many trips between the 2nd and 3rd floors and the lab in the basement. I got a new monitor and DVI cable, then managed to get the computer up and running again (after Brett got rid of a rogue VGA cable that was hijacking the video signal). I was then able to install the rest of the drivers and software.

At the lunch hour, I went with Ashley and Ryan to the tech talk across from the reading room. It ended up being an hour and a half long, as the speaker just had so much to share and the audience had some really great questions. I loved the talk, it was on quantum mechanics and the possibilities for quantum computers. I found that the background information Dmitry had given us about bits and data was incredibly helpful in understanding more of what the speaker was saying, and let me be more mentally engaged with the topic.

I managed to make some headway on the issue of connecting both the power meter and the ALIO stages to MATLAB. Code for the PM100D (our power meter) was very difficult to find online, and I found quite a few codes that only partially fit our needs, or were for a different model. But I could find none for our model, so I called ThorLabs and spoke to an engineer who was eventually able to find some documents to email me. I've been working through them, locating and downloading compilers and creating a load library for our power meter.