Recorder Setup

This page describes the complete recording workflow in Deepsona: selecting a frontend, configuring the channel table, setting the recording trigger, verifying the signal with Preview, and writing the measurement to disk. It is the starting point for the Hardware Acquisition section — the other pages go into detail on individual steps.

Recording Workflow at a Glance

1. Switch the bottom dock to the Recorder tab. The Recorder dock bar appears at the bottom of the window.
2. Click the first dock-bar icon — Select Frontend (DAQ device / offline) — and choose your acquisition hardware.
3. The Recorder Configuration tab opens automatically. Enable the channels you need and fill in sensor type, sensitivity, unit, range, sampling rate and high-pass.
4. Set the recording trigger in the Trigger Settings panel below the channel table.
5. Open the Online Monitor tab and click ▶ Start Preview to stream without writing to disk. Check the levels.
6. Click the round record button on the dock bar. It turns green and the elapsed-time counter starts.
7. Click the round button again to stop. The recording is written to disk and added to the Source Pool.

Step 1: Select a Frontend

Click the frontend icon on the Recorder dock bar to open the Frontend Selection dialog. It offers three tabs: Connected Frontends (live hardware), Offline Frontends (a synthetic device for working without hardware) and File Frontend.

Select a row and click OK, or double-click the row. After a live device is accepted, Deepsona navigates to the Recorder Configuration tab automatically.

Offline (virtual) frontends

The Offline Frontends tab creates a synthetic device that behaves like real hardware: it produces a continuous data stream so you can lay out channels, rehearse the workflow and produce test recordings with no device at all. The presets are named after their channel layout and do not correspond to any particular product:

When a preset is selected, the Channels row also spells out the layout it stands for. With Modular, pick a controller first and add modules one at a time with + Add module; the × next to a module row removes it, and the button greys out once the controller's module slots are full.

Offline frontend sample rates

All presets share one set of sample rates, with the highest preselected:

Step 2: Configure Channels

The Channel Settings table in the Recorder Configuration tab lists every channel the connected frontend exposes — analog inputs first, then pulse (tacho), CAN, FlexRay and GPS rows where the device provides them.

Setting the Sensitivity

Three small buttons sit inside the Sensitivity cell of every analog row:

• TEDS probe — Probe IEEE 1451.4 TEDS (auto-read sensor sensitivity if sensor is TEDS-equipped). See Sensor Library and TEDS.
• Calibration — opens the pistonphone calibration dialog for that channel. See Calibration.
• Assign sensor — Assign a sensor from the Sensor Library (fills sensitivity / unit / type — you can still edit manually).

You can also type the value directly. The sensitivity unit follows the channel unit automatically: Pa → mV/Pa, g → mV/g, N → mV/N, m/s² → mV/(m/s²). Channels set to V, rpm or — have no sensitivity.

Input Ranges (portable recorders)

Editing Many Rows at Once

The channel table supports spreadsheet-style batch editing. Select a block of cells, then use the right-click menu:

• Set selected "<Column>" → — apply one value from that column's option list to every selected row. A blank option is shown as (empty).
• Fill Down (Ctrl+D), Copy (Ctrl+C), Paste (Ctrl+V).
• Undo (Ctrl+Z), Redo (Ctrl+Y).

Batch editing is available for On, Sensor Type, Supply, DOF, Sensitivity, Unit, Range, Sampling Rate and Highpass.

Step 3: Set the Trigger

The trigger decides when recording actually begins after you press Record, and when it stops. It has its own Trigger tab: the page is a live scope (for placing the threshold against the real signal), and the parameters sit in the properties panel on the right, in three groups — Start Trigger / Stop Trigger / After Stop.

With no trigger set nothing changes: Record starts, Stop ends. For the full story — what hysteresis actually does, when the pre-trigger buffer starts filling, the dead time between takes, how accurate an RPM trigger is, and several worked setups — see Trigger.

Step 4: Verify with Preview

Preview streams live data to the Online Monitor without writing anything to disk. Open the Online Monitor tab and use the button in its status bar:

Use Preview to confirm that every enabled channel shows a plausible level, that no channel is clipping, and that sensitivities and units produce sensible engineering values. Pistonphone calibration also requires a running Preview.

Full details of the display modes are on the Online Monitor page.

Step 5: Record and Save

The Recorder dock bar carries the recording controls:

Pressing the round button while recording stops the take, writes the file and returns the recorder to Preview — the stream stays open, so you can immediately start the next take without reconnecting the device.

Output Files and Naming

Recordings are written in the native .dpsa format.

• Default output directory: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Deepsona\Recordings.
• Default file name stem: Recording.
• If the name is taken, Deepsona appends a counter: Recording_01.dpsa, Recording_02.dpsa and so on.
• After each save the file-name box advances to the next free number automatically — but only if you left the automatic name in place. A name you typed yourself is never overwritten.
• The saved file is added to the Source Pool immediately, ready for analysis.

The output directory and the file-name prefix are set in the Recorder Configuration dialog (title Recorder Configuration — Deepsona):

Saving and Reusing Channel Settings

A fully configured channel table can be saved and reloaded for the next measurement. Two buttons in the Channel Settings header bar do this:

1. Save channel settings to a .vlcs file — writes names, sensor types, supply, DOF, sensitivities, units, ranges, sampling rates, high-pass settings and pulses per revolution.
2. Import channel settings from a .vlcs file — applies a stored table to the currently connected frontend.

The Acquisition Log

The dark Acq Log panel at the bottom of the Recorder Configuration tab records every acquisition event with an HH:mm:ss timestamp. It is the first place to look when something behaves unexpectedly. Typical entries:

• [Trigger] Level mode: src=… level=… slope=… pre=… samples
• [Trigger] FIRED at sample …
• [TEDS] Read All: 3/4 channel(s) decoded TEDS sensor.
• [Pistonphone] Ch 1: sens = 51.203 mV/Pa, unit = Pa.
• [CAN/DBC] engine.dbc: 214 signal(s) parsed, 6 added to channel list.
• Written: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Deepsona\Recordings\Recording_03.dpsa

Troubleshooting

Related Topics

• Sensor Library and TEDS — sensor definitions and automatic identification.
• Calibration — pistonphone calibration of microphone channels.
• RPM and Bus Channels — tacho, CAN/DBC and GPS.
• Driver Installation — installing and reverting the acquisition driver.
• Online Monitor — live level, spectrum and waveform display.

© 2026 Deepsona. All Rights Reserved.