Hardware Details
================

Blackchirp supports a variety of hardware devices. The only items
strictly required to run an experiment are a
:doc:`clock </user_guide/hw/clock>` and an
:doc:`FTMW digitizer </user_guide/hw/ftmwdigitizer>`; all other devices
are optional. The set of devices in use on a given instrument is
selected through a hardware loadout (see :ref:`hardware-menu-loadouts`).

Two settings are common to every hardware object and worth highlighting here:

* ``critical`` (true/false): When true, an error reported by this device aborts the running experiment, and new experiments cannot be started until the connection is retested from the :ref:`hardware-menu-communication` dialog. Set this to false for auxiliary devices whose failure should not stop acquisition.
* ``rollingDataIntervalSec`` (int): Polling interval, in seconds, for :doc:`rolling auxiliary data </user_guide/rolling-aux-data>`. Setting the value to 0 disables rolling data for that device. Not every hardware object produces rolling data; see the per-device pages for details.

Other settings are surfaced inline by the hardware settings registry:
each setting carries a label and tooltip that appear directly in the
device dialog. See the :doc:`hardware dialog </user_guide/hwdialog>`
page for the conventions used in that UI. The per-device pages below
document only the behavior the inline tooltips do not convey, along
with driver-specific caveats.

.. toctree::
   :caption: Detailed Documentation
   :glob:

   hw/*