Dosimetric plugin was created for dosimetric measurement onboard International Space Station. It is an extension module that automatically controls acquisition of data from Timepix detector and performs online data analysis. Acquisition parameters such as detector shutter time are adjusted automatically according to a current radiation environment to reach best possible quality of measured data. The software also implements automatic error recovery feature that monitors hardware status and in the case of single event effects or other hardware error tries to recover and reinitialize the device. The graphical user interface (GUI) of the software was intentionally made very simple so that no special training of the ISS crew would be required. The crew can start or stop the measurement from the GUI and see the current equivalent dose rate, the total cumulated equivalent dose or history (plot) of equivalent dose rate at different time ranges (from last 90 min to last 24 hours). Nevertheless, the software is highly configurable through over 170 parameters that can be changed in configuration files. These files can be modified by specialized operator on Earth and then uploaded to the ISS. The software automatically checks for changes in the files and updates the configuration accordingly. The raw data from the detector together with log files are saved on a server on board the ISS and are sent back to Earth for further analysis. The granularity of log files can be adjusted for each software part individually. This allows to debug problems or find the best setting values for the data analysis algorithms by operators on Earth while running the software on the ISS.
The software tool is available on request. Please contact author.
