ARL-TN-0665● MAR 2015

US Army Research Laboratory

Instructions for Installing digiBASE

Plug-in on a Terra Harvest Controller

by Timothy C Gregory

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.
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ARL-TN-0665● MAR 2015

US Army Research Laboratory

Instructions for Installing digiBASE Plug-in on a 

Terra Harvest Controller

by Timothy C Gregory

Computational and Information Sciences Directorate

Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (delete if not FOUO)
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03/2014–05/2014

4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE

Instructions for Installing digiBASE Plug-in on a Terra Harvest Controller

5a. CONTRACT NUMBER

5b. GRANT NUMBER

5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER

6. AUTHOR(S)

Timothy C Gregory

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US Army Research Laboratory

ATTN: RDRL-CII-B

2800 Powder Mill Road

Adelphi, MD 20783-1138

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ARL-TN-0665

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Approved for public release; distribution unlimited.

13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

14. ABSTRACT

The Battlefield Information Processing Branch of the US Army Research Laboratory developed a Terra Harvest/Open Standards 

for Unattended Sensors (OSUS) plug-in to control an ORTEC NaI(TI) Scintillation Detector with a digiBASE Universal Serial 

Bus (USB) Interface. This report describes the installation and configuration of the plug-in on a Terra Harvest controller.

15. SUBJECT TERMS

Terra Harvest controller, open standards for unattended sensors, OSUS, radiation detector, digiBase 

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19a. NAME OF RESPONSIBLE PERSON

Timothy C Gregory

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Unclassified

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301-394-5604

Standard Form 298 (Rev. 8/98)

Prescribed by ANSI Std. Z39.18
iii

Contents

List of Figures iv

List of Tables iv

1. Introduction 1

2. Objective 1

3. Installing the Asset Plug-In 1

3.1 Installing Through the Web GUI 1

3.2 Place JAR File in Bundle Directory 2

4. Create a digiBase Asset 2

5. Configuration Parameters 4

6. Operation 5

6.1 Automatic Capture 5

6.2 Manual Capture 6

7. References 7

Appendix. Sample Terra Harvest Observations 9

List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Acronyms 13

Distribution List 14
iv

List of Figures

Fig. 1 System configurations page ......................................................................2

Fig. 2 Add an asset ..............................................................................................3

Fig. 3 digiBase asset............................................................................................3

Fig. 4 Sample spectrum.......................................................................................6

List of Tables

Table 1 Configuration parameters..........................................................................4
1

1. Introduction

The Battlefield Information Processing Branch of the US Army Research 

Laboratory developed a Terra Harvest/Open Standards for Unattended Sensors 

(OSUS) plug-in to control an ORTEC NaI(TI) Scintillation Detector with a 

digiBASE Universal Serial Bus (USB) Interface. This report describes the 

installation and configuration of the plug-in on a Terra Harvest controller.

A scintillation detector is an instrument for detecting gamma radiation. It consists

of a scintillator and a photomultiplier tube (PMT). The scintillator generates 

photons of light in response to incident radiation. The PMT converts the light into 

electrical signals.

The ORTEC digiBASE provides the necessary power and signal processing 

requirements for a PMT. The ORTEC digiBASE interfaces with the computer 

through the USB.

The digiBASE plug-in is an asset for the Terra Harvest controller that provides the 

ability to detect gamma rays. It is required to operate within the Terra 

Harvest/OSUS software environment on a Linux operating system. 

2. Objective

This report describes how to install the digiBASE asset plug-in on a Terra Harvest 

controller.

3. Installing the Asset Plug-In

The software for the digiBase asset is contained in a Java Archive (JAR) file. The 

asset plug-in can be installed through the Terra Harvest/OSUS Web graphical user 

interface (GUI) or by placing the JAR file directly into the bundle directory for the 

controller.

3.1 Installing Through the Web GUI

The asset plug-in may be installed using the Terra Harvest Web GUI. The JAR file 

is installed through the System Configurations page of the Web GUI. Press the 

Install/Update Bundle button on the Web GUI. Then browse to the desired JAR file 

and press the Install/Update button on the pop-up window as shown in Fig. 1. The 

installation is now complete. For details about the Web GUI refer to the Terra 

Harvest Operator Instructions.1
2

Fig. 1 System configurations page

3.2 Place JAR File in Bundle Directory

The JAR file can also be placed directly into the bundle directory. The path to the 

bundle directory is typically ~/controller/bundle.

If the JAR file is manually placed in the bundle directory, it will be necessary to 

restart the Terra Harvest controller. The digiBase asset must then be created on the 

Asset page of the Web GUI as described in the next section.

4. Create a digiBase Asset

A Terra Harvest asset is created on the Asset page of the Web GUI. The steps for 

adding an asset are shown below. Figure 2 shows the pop-up window for adding an 

asset.

1) Press the “Assets” button in the Options pane. 

2) Press the “+ Add Asset” button.

3) Press the “Refresh” button to update the assets list. 

4) Select the digiBaseAsset. 

5) Enter an asset name in the asset name text box (i.e., digiBaseEast). 
3

6) Press the Ok button.

Fig. 2 Add an asset

The asset must now be activated by pressing the Activate button. Figure 3 shows 

the digiBase asset before it is activated.

Fig. 3 digiBase asset
4

5. Configuration Parameters

There are several parameters that control asset operation. These are configured 

through the Terra Harvest GUI. Table 1 shows the various configuration parameters 

for the digiBase asset plug-in. Most of the configuration parameters can be left at 

the defaults. The operator may want to set the Activate on Startup parameter to True

in order to automatically activate the digiBase asset on controller startup.

Table 1 Configuration parameters

Parameter Type Default

Value Description

Activate on 

Startup

Boolean False When True, the asset will be activated when Terra Harvest 

starts.

Use Plug-in 

Position

Boolean False This item is not implemented by the digiBase asset plugin.

Alert 

Threshold

Float 3.0 If the sampled value is outside the “n” sigma, a detection 

is recorded.

Fine Gain Float 1.19 The amplifier gain. Range is between 0.4 and 1.19

inclusive.

High 

Voltage

Float 850 The voltage applied to the PMTa. The range is between 0 

and 1,200 volts.

Send Image 

of Graph

Boolean True If true, the plug-in will create and post an observation 

containing a graph of the spectrum

Send 

Binary 

Spectrum

Boolean True If true, the plug-in will create and post an observation 

containing the raw data for the spectrum

Live-Time 

Preset

Float 3.0 Sets the live time for the counter.

Real-Time 

Preset

Float 0.0 Sets the real time for the counter.

Clear 

Spectrum 

Between 

Samples

Boolean True When true, the spectrum in the digiBase will be cleared 

before each sample is started.

Sample 

Background 

at Interval 

(minutes)

Integer 60 Number of minutes between taking background samples.

How Many 

Samples to 

Take

Integer 20 The number of samples that will be averaged during a 

background measurement. These will be used to determine 

the average and standard deviation of the counts.

aPhotomultiplier tube.
5

Table 1 Configuration parameters (continued)

Parameter Type Default 

Value Description

Ignore First

N Samples

Integer 2 The number of samples to ignore. This allows the PMTato 

stabilize.

Latitude Float 0.0 The latitude of the sensor’s position.

Longitude Float 0.0 The longitude of the sensor’s position.

Altitude Float 0.0 The altitude of the sensor’s position.

Update 

Interval

Float 10 Number of minutes between status reports for the sensor.

aPhotomultiplier tube.

6. Operation

6.1 Automatic Capture

Once the digiBase asset is activated, it will take a measurement of the background 

radiation spectrum to be used for comparison. The asset will take 20 spectrum 

measurement samples. For each sample, the total counts will be computed. Then 

the average and standard deviation will be computed for the 20 samples. These 

statistics will then be used to determine whether or not a future observation will be 

recorded as a detection. The asset will periodically update the background sample

used for comparison since background radiation varies over time. The time between 

samples is specified by a configuration parameter namely “sample background at 

interval”.

The asset will remain in a waiting mode, except for taking periodic background 

measurements, until the onStartRecording() method is called. Then it will start 

taking samples and comparing them to the most recent background measurement 

sample. If the total counts for a given sample are not within the n-sigma range, a

detection/observation will be created and persisted.

If the “send image of graph” configuration parameter is set to true, the asset will 

create an image representing the spectrum. This image will be posted in an 

observation. Figure 4 shows a graph of the background radiation. The appendix 

contains a sample Extensible Markup Language (XML) representation of the 

observation containing the graph.

If the “send binary spectrum” parameter is set to True, the asset will encode the raw 

counts into a 1,024-byte array. The array of data is then posted in an observation.

The appendix contains a sample XML representation of the observation containing 

the raw counts.
6

Fig. 4 Sample spectrum

6.2 Manual Capture

The operator can initiate a spectrum capture by pressing the “Capture Data” button 

for the asset. This will cause the digiBase asset to capture 1 spectrum and post an 

observation containing a graph of the spectrum. The configuration parameter “live 

time preset” is used to denote the length of time to record counts. Fig. shows a 

sample of a captured spectrum.
7

7. References

1. Operator Instructions for the Terra Harvest Open Source Environment 

(THOSE); University of Dayton; March 2014.
8

INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
9

Appendix. Sample Terra Harvest Observations
10

A-1 Sample Observation Containing Spectrum Graph

A sample of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) document containing the 

graph of a spectrum is shown below. The image of the graph is base 64 encoded.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<Observation xmlns="http://th.dod.mil/core/observation/types" 

xmlns:ns2="http://th.dod.mil/core/types/spatial" 

xmlns:ns3="http://th.dod.mil/core/types" uuid="56800fd8-1e87-4d91-aacf1b757240c712" timestamp="2014-05-03T10:56:16.898Z" assetId="d1683304-

340a-45a9-8130-04d2d2a64c81" assetName="Dock-Ortec" 

assetType="mil.arl.assets.digiBase.digiBaseAsset" systemInTestMode="true" 

systemId="5104">

 <version>

 <majorNumber>2</majorNumber>

 <minorNumber>0</minorNumber>

 </version>

 <coordinates>

 <ns2:longitude>-76.64007</ns2:longitude>

 <ns2:latitude>37.27757</ns2:latitude>

 <ns2:altitude>10.0</ns2:altitude>

 </coordinates>

 <digitalMedia encoding="image/png">

iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAACgAAAAgACAIAAABlqf2mAACAAElE

QVR42uzdb6jdBR3H8d3rnoEZmZmZmZmNvjvTh2Az

...

czMzMzMzFbk+1OPwMzMzMzMzAb/3akDsJmZmZmZmdmKfH/qEZiZmZmZ

mdngvzt1ADYzMzMzMzNbke9PPQIzMzMzMzMb/HenKebX0czMzMzMzAb/

LbZHYGZmZmZmZmZmZmZmZmaWY/8HSLV1hQwGGj4AAAAASUVORK

5CYII=

</digitalMedia>

 <imageMetadata captureTime="2014-05-03T10:56:05.606Z" 

pictureType="FullFieldOfView" focus="1.0" zoom="1.0" color="true" 

changedPixels="0.0" whiteBalance="Auto">

 <resolution width="2560" height="2048"/>

 <samplesOfInterest>

 <topLeft x="1" y="1"/>

 <bottomRight x="10" y="10"/>

 <directionOfTravel directionType="LR" description=""/>

 </samplesOfInterest>

 <imager imagerType="Other" description="digiBase"/>

 <imageCaptureReason imageCaptureReasonType="TargetDetection" 

description="exceeded background"/>

 </imageMetadata>

</Observation>
11

A-2 Sample Observation Containing Raw Counts for Spectrum

A sample observation containing the raw counts for the spectrum is shown below. 

The image type is “image/spectrum”. The array is base 64 encoded. Note that the 

digitalMedia encoding attribute is set to “image/spectrum”.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>

<Observation xmlns="http://th.dod.mil/core/observation/types" 

xmlns:ns2="http://th.dod.mil/core/types/spatial" 

xmlns:ns3="http://th.dod.mil/core/types" uuid="83053f10-1c35-4253-96b4-

d640f617ab06" timestamp="2014-05-03T10:56:17.646Z" assetId="d1683304-

340a-45a9-8130-04d2d2a64c81" assetName="Dock-Ortec" 

assetType="mil.arl.assets.digiBase.digiBaseAsset" systemInTestMode="true" 

systemId="5104">

 <version>

 <majorNumber>2</majorNumber>

 <minorNumber>0</minorNumber>

 </version>

 <relatedObservations uuid="56800fd8-1e87-4d91-aacf-1b757240c712">

 <relationship>

 <relationshipType>parent</relationshipType>

 </relationship>

 </relatedObservations>

 <coordinates>

 <ns2:longitude>-76.64007</ns2:longitude>

 <ns2:latitude>37.27757</ns2:latitude>

 <ns2:altitude>10.0</ns2:altitude>

 </coordinates>

 <digitalMedia encoding="image/spectrum">

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==</digitalMedia>
12

 <imageMetadata captureTime="2014-05-03T10:56:05.606Z" 

pictureType="FullFieldOfView" focus="1.0" zoom="1.0" color="true" 

changedPixels="0.0" whiteBalance="Auto">

 <resolution width="2560" height="2048"/>

 <samplesOfInterest>

 <topLeft x="1" y="1"/>

 <bottomRight x="10" y="10"/>

 <directionOfTravel directionType="LR" description=""/>

 </samplesOfInterest>

 <imager imagerType="Other" description="digiBase"/>

 <imageCaptureReason imageCaptureReasonType="TargetDetection" 

description="exceeded background"/>

 </imageMetadata>

</Observation>
13

List of Symbols, Abbreviations, and Acronyms

GUI graphical user interface

JAR Java Archive

OSUS Open Standards for Unattended Sensors

PMT photomultiplier tube

USB Universal Serial Bus

XML Extensible Markup Language
14

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