areaDetector: EPICS software for area detectors

Module Owner: Mark Rivers: University of Chicago

This page is the home of areaDetector, an application for controlling area (2-D) detectors, including CCDs, pixel array detectors, and online imaging plates.

NOTE: This module replaces the ccd and pilatusROI modules. These older modules will no longer be supported, and users are encouraged to convert to this new areaDetector software.

Devices supported in areaDetector include:

From ADSC

• Large CCD detectors for x-ray diffraction. This support is from Lewis Muir of IMCA-CAT at the APS.

From Allied Vision Technologies (formerly Prosilica)

• High-speed, high-resolution CCD and CMOS cameras. These use GigE and Firewire interfaces.

From Andor Technology

• Cooled CCD cameras with USB and PCI interfaces.
• Scientific CMOS (sCMOS) cameras with CameraLink interfaces.

From Axis Communications and many other manufacturers.

• The areaDetector URL driver can read images from any URL, including Web cameras, video servers, disk files, etc.

From Bruker

• Detectors that run under the Bruker Instrument Server (BIS) server.
• The old SMART CCD camera line with Photometrics cameras. This requires the PCI interface card, replacing the old ISA bus card, and requires controlling the detector with WinView, not the SMART software.

From Dectris

• The Pilatus pixel-array detector.

From Marresearch GmbH

• mar345 online image plate reader

From Perkin Elmer

• Amorphous silicon flat panel detectors. This support was originally written by Brian Tieman and John Hammonds from the APS.
• Dexela CMOS flat panel detectors.

From Pixirad

• CdTe pixel-array detectors

From Photonic Science

• CCD and CMOS cameras.

From Point Grey Research and many other manufacturers

• All Firewire (IEEE 1394) cameras that follow the IIDC/DCAM specification. There is support for Firewire cameras under Windows in the ADFireWireWin module, and support for Firewire cameras under Linux in the firewireDCAM module.

From Point Grey Research

• All Point Grey cameras (Firewire, USB 2.0 and 3.0, GigE) using their FlyCapture2 SDK.

From Rayonix (formely Mar-USA)

• Cooled x-ray CCD detectors

From Roper

• All CCD detectors supported by the WinView and WinSpec programs. This includes all Princeton Instruments detectors, as well as most Photometrics detectors.
• All CCD detectors supported by the PVCam library. This includes all Photometrics detectors, as well as many Princeton Instruments detectors.
• All CCD detectors supported by the LightField program. This includes many of the newer Princeton Instruments detectors.

Please email any comments and bug reports to Mark Rivers who is responsible for coordinating development and releases.

areaDetector camera drivers supplied by 3rd parties

Some areaDetector support have been developed by others. These are not distributed with the areaDetector releases (source or binary) and are not directly supported by the areaDetector working group, but may be useful for users:

From ImXPAD

• XPAD photon counting detectors.
• areaDetector driver source, info and documentation on github

Where to find it

Beginning with release R2-0 (March 2014) the areaDetector module is in the areaDetector project on Github. This project is organized as a top level module and a set of submodules, e.g. ADCore, ADProsilica, ADPilatus, etc.

The following table provides links to the github repository, the documentation, and pre-built binaries.

Prior to release R2-0 the areaDetector module is in the synApps Subversion repository at the APS. The "trunk" directory contains the most recent unreleased code, while the "tags" directory contains the released versions.

For releases prior to R2-0 the software can be downloaded from the links in the table below. The software is available both in source code form, and in pre-built form so that it can be used without an EPICS build system. There are separate pre-built binary packages for linux-x86, linux-x86_64, win32-x86, windows-x64, and cygwin-x86.

Required Modules

Installation and Building

For R2-0 and later this is described in the INSTALL_GUIDE.md on Github.

For releases prior to R2-0 this is described in detail in the installation section of the areaDetector documentation for that particular release.

Please email  Mark Rivers  so that a record can be kept of which sites are using this software.

In Use

This software was originally developed by Mark Rivers.

• In use at APS, NSLS, DLS, SLS, BESSY, NSRRC and others.