areaDetector Release Notes
Release 1-7 (09-August-2011)
- General
- Added support for Mac OS X (Darwin). Thanks to Eric Norum and Lewis Muir for this.
- Added support for 64-bit Windows, windows-x64.
- Replaced FTVL=UCHAR with FTVL=CHAR in all waveform records, so they can be written
to with dbpf from the IOC shell.
- Improved XML files for NDArray attributes and Nexus template files. Added a shell
script to validate XML files. Note: the attribute values for datatype
and dbrtype have been case-insensitive in the past. In the next release of areaDetector
this will be changed to require uppercase for these values. The
next release will also change the syntax of the
Attribute
element by
moving the content of the type
attribute to become the element name.
For example the line:
<Attribute name="AcquireTime" type="EPICS_PV" source="13SIM1:cam1:AcquireTime"
dbrtype="dbr_native" description="Camera acquire time"/>
must be changed to
<EPICS_PV name="AcquireTime" source="13SIM1:cam1:AcquireTime" dbrtype="DBR_NATIVE"
description="Camera acquire time"/>
and
<Attribute name="CameraManufacturer" type="PARAM" source="MANUFACTURER" datatype="string"
description="Camera manufacturer"/>
must be changed to
<PARAM name="CameraManufacturer" source="MANUFACTURER" datatype="STRING"
description="Camera manufacturer"/>
This change will make it much easier to validate the XML files. Thanks to Pete Jemian
for these changes.
- On Windows if NDFilePath has a trailing '\' then preserve it, else add a '/' character
if one is not present.
- Drivers
- New URL driver which reads images from any URL, including Web cameras and Axis
video servers. This driver uses GraphicsMagick to read the images, and can thus
handle a large number of image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, etc.).
- New driver for Bruker BIS (Bruker Instrument Service) detectors. There was a preliminary
version of this driver in the apex2Src directory in R1-6. It is now fully functional.
and should work with any BIS detector, not just the Apex2.
- New driver for Photonic Sciences Ltd. (PSL) detectors. This driver currently can
do everything except read the data back from the detector. That capability needs
to be added, which requires access to a PSL detector for development and testing.
- Simulation driver. Added additional simulation mode for Gaussian peaks. John Hammonds
added this feature.
- Changed the setShutter() function in ADDriver.h to be a virtual function, which
it should have been all along. The base-class implementation for an EPICS shutter
is now used by default. Changed the drivers to use the virtual function.
- Initialized ADAcquire to 0 in ADDriver::ADDriver. In R1-6 ADAcquire was not initialized,
and if it had a non-zero value at iocInit then the IOC could crash with some drivers,
e.g. simDetector.
- Pilatus driver.
- Added support for camserver saving data in the CBF file format, which is ~4X smaller
than TIFF, and for additional header information in the files for crystallography.
Thanks to Lewis Muir for these additions.
- Set FullFilename_RBV for each file in a multi-image sequence, which was not previously
being done.
- Several changes from Emma Shepherd at DLS to improve error handling.
- Added GapFill record to control what value camserver puts in the data files in
the gaps between modules in multi-element Pilatus detectors.
- Added ThresholdAutoApply and ThresholdApply records. These allow only sending
the gain and threshold energy once to camserver, rather than each time either is
changed. This can speed operations significantly on larger detectors. For example,
on the 6M it takes 78 seconds for camserver to execute the SetThreshold command.
- Prosilica driver.
- Added support for opening cameras by IP address or IP DNS name, in addition to
UniqueID. This allows communicating with cameras that are not on the local subnet.
The change is backwards compatible with existing iocsh startup scripts.
- Added new records PSByteRate and PSByteRate_RBV that control and read the StreamBytesPerSecond
parameter in the Prosilica PvAPI driver. This allows limiting the bandwidth that
a camera uses. It also allows operation of GigE cameras on non-Gigabit Ethernet
networks.
- Added new parameter, maxPvAPIFrames, to the prosilicaConfig command in the startup
script. This parameter controls how many frame buffers are allocated in the PvAPI
driver. This is the last parameter in the prosilicaConfig command, and if it is
absent the default value of 2 is used, which is sufficient in most circumstances.
However, with very high frame rates or busy IOCs increasing this value can reduce
dropped frames.
- Removed support for writing TIFF files using the driver library. This was a problem
because their driver uses an incompatible version of libtiff that conflicts with
the new version used by GraphicsMagick. The driver TIFF writer had no advantage
over using the NDFileTIFF and NDFileMagick plugins, which have more features and
can run in their own threads.
- Fixed a bug that could cause a blue-screen crash on Windows 7. The new version
of their library requires clearing a structure to 0 before using it.
- Send command to stop acquistion when first connecting to a camera. This fixes
a problem when connecting to CMOS cameras that were left in the acquiring state
when the IOC exited.
- Upgraded to version 1.24 of the AVT SDK, and 1.20 of the Windows filter driver.
Users should install the latest Sample Viewer and filter driver 1.20 on Windows
machines so that the areaDetector application can use the filter driver. The filter
driver version in areaDetector must match the one installed on Windows in order
to use it.
- Plugins
- NDPluginFile: Added a new record called DeleteDriverFile. This record allows the
file writing plugins to delete the "original" file that the driver created for that
array. This can be useful for detectors that must write the data to disk in order
for the areaDetector driver to read it back. Once a file-writing plugin has rewritten
the data in another format it can be desireable to then delete the original file.
The file is only deleted if the following are all true:
- The DeleteDriverFile record is "Yes".
- The file plugin has successfully written a new file.
- The array contains an attribute called "DriverFileName" that contains the full
file name of the original file. The driver attributes XML file should contain a
line like the following:
<Attribute name="DriverFileName" type="PARAM" source="FULL_FILE_NAME" datatype="string"
description="Driver file name"/>
- NDPluginFile: Added support for getting the file name and file number from array
attributes rather than from the normal EPICS PVs. Having the file information come
from the array allows the driver to control which plugin saves a particular array.
For example, there may be two file writing plugins active; the first saves the flat
field files for a tomography experiment, and the second saves the normal projections,
each streaming data to a separate file. The driver knows which files are flat fields
and which are normal projections, and adds the appropriate attributes to control
which plugin saves each array. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen for this addition.
- NDPluginFile: Added XML Schema file (iocBoot/attributes.xsd) to allow
syntax validation of an NDArray driver attributes XML file.
- New file writing plugin, NDFileHDF5. This plugin writes HDF5 files with the native
HDF5 API, unlike the NeXus plugin which uses the NeXus API. It supports 3 types
of compression. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen at Diamond Light Source for providing this
plugin.
- New file writing plugin, NDFileMagick. This uses GraphicsMagick to write files,
and can write in dozens of file formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PDF, etc.
- Fixed problem with NDPluginTransform. It was holding the lock while it did computationally
intensive tasks. This slowed down the driver from which the plugin was getting its
data, because the driver was forced to wait to queue the next frame until the plugin
was done processing. The new version behaves correctly, dropping frames when the
plugin cannot keep up, rather than slowing down the driver.
- NDPluginColorConvert. Added support for false color when converting 8-bit mono
to RGB1, RGB2, or RGB3. Thanks to Tom Cobb for this addition.
- NDPluginStats. Removed duplicate record for MeanValue_RBV from NDStats.template.
- NDFileNetCDF. Upgraded from netCDF 3.6.2 to netCDF 4.1.3. Fixed bug which was
causing crashes when when writing files >2GB on win32-x86. netCDF files of any size
can now be written on all platforms.
- NDFileNexus. This is now built from the NeXus source code on all platforms, rather
than including prebuilt binaries in nexusSupport. Upgraded from Nexus 4.2.0 to 4.2.1,
which fixes a stack overflow problem with the default stack size on win32-x86. Removed
support for HDF4 and XML files, only HDF5 is now supported. Thanks to Jeff Gebhardt
for initially doing this.
- NDFileNexus: Added Schematron file (iocBoot/template.sch) to allow syntax
validation of a NeXus template XML file.
- NDFileNexus: Now recognizes all current NeXus base class names
(was missing some newer base classes such as NXcollection).
- Viewers
- ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer. Additional sanity check in code to see if EPICS PVs are
connected, prevent dereferencing a null pointer. Thanks to Lewis Muir for this.
- Internals
- Greatly simplified the Makefiles in each driver source directory by having them
each include a common Makefile.
- Greatly simplified the dbd files in each driver source directory by having them
each include a common dbd file.
- Renamed pluginSupport.dbd to NDPluginSupport.dbd, and made individual DBD files
for each plugin to make it easy for external software to use only a subset of the
plugins.
- Removed nexusSupport directory, which had previously contained prebuilt versions
of the NeXus library, as well as prebuilt versions of the HDF5 support library.
This was replaced with a NeXusSrc directory which builds the NeXus library from
source code on all platforms. This is currently version NeXus 4.2.1. A new support
directory, hdf5Support, was added which contains the header files and prebuilt libraries
for HDF5. This is currently version 1.8.7 of HDF5.
- Use CYCGWIN_RPC_LIB variable when building on Cygwin to allow either Cygwin 1.5.x
or 1.7.x.
- Minor changes to many drivers and plugins to allow building dynamically (DLLs)
on WIN32.
- Added methods to the NDArray class to provide access to maxBuffers, numBuffers,
etc.
- Removed JPEG and TIFF libraries on win32-x86, they are not needed because the
libraries are part of GraphicsMagick.
- Changed Makefiles so they will work correctly with the -debug variant on the target
archs.
- Install ADApp/Db/*.template files as part of build process.
- Changed NDArrayPool so that it will free the memory in NDArrays in the pool to
permit allocating one with sufficient memory to satisfy an alloc() request. Thanks
to Tim Madden for the initial version of this.
Release 1-6 (20-May-2010)
- General
- Converted to be compatible with asynPortDriver in asyn R4-13, which changes parameter
handling.
- Changes to support 64-bit architectures, including linux-x86_64. This also required
changes to the synApps modules on which areaDetector applications depend (autosave,
busy, etc.)
- Changes in Makefiles to support the win32-x86-debug architecture.
- Added status parameter to indicate if the specified file path (NDFilePath) exists.
Added a record to NDFile.template and a status indicator to all medm file saving
screens.
- Append a trailing '/' character to file path (NDFilePath) if one is not present.
- Drivers
- Fixed a bug in the Roper driver. There was a buffer overflow problem in the function
that converts C strings to Windows BSTR strings. This would cause the IOC to crash
when saving SPE files with Comment PVs longer than 40 characters.
- Many fixes to Windows Firewire driver:
- Added dropped frame counter.
- Fixed timeout problem with acquire times > 1 second.
- Fixed logic when acquisition was turned off
- Fixed problem with constructor when it encountered a minor error; was causing
capture thread not to be started for some cameras.
- Implemented AcquireTime parameter, previously the time could only be changed via
a Firewire feature.
- Fixed bug when setting a feature value in non-absolute mode after it was set in
absolute mode.
- Removed the ability to change video modes, formats or rates when acquiring because
it is too complex to stop and wait for it to be done.
- Report details for all supported Firewire "features" in report() function, called
by asynReport() and dbior().
- pvCam driver. Fixed problem with exposure time being rounded to integer. Add PVs
to provide version information for software and firmware where possible. Add PVs
to provide serial numbers where possible. Perform checks on parameters that are
not available for all cameras.
- ADSC driver. Fixed a bug where it would not correctly load the per-image parameters
for the first image in a dataset if they were changed after the acquisition was
started but before the first image was taken. Added ability to write simulated data
to disk in the simulation driver.
- Pilatus driver. Increased the timeout for the SetThreshold command to camserver
from 3 seconds to 90 seconds, because it takes almost this long to execute on the
Pilatus 6M.
- marCCD driver. Added support for baseline stabilization, which is done with the
"set stability" and "get stability" remote commands. Baseline stabilization is an
extra-cost option for marCCD, so this command only has any affect if that option
is present. But all versions of marCCD understand the command remote command syntax,
so there is no problem if the option is not installed.
Changed the TwoTheta record from a stringout to ao, and this value is now always
sent with the "header" remote command. This requires that the string "theta_display_name
TwoTheta" be present in one of the marCCD configuration files that gets loaded,
typically in goniostat_none.conf or goniostat_sw.conf.
- Plugins
- NDPluginROI. Major rewrite. Previously the ROI plugin supported multiple ROIs,
performed statistics calculations, and highlighted the ROIs. The new version is
much simpler; it supports only a single ROI, and does not calculate statistics or
do highlighting. Those functions have been moved to new plugins. One new function
has been added, the ability to divide the array by a scale factor, which is useful
for avoiding overflow when binning. Fixed problem when a single color is extracted
from a color image; it now removes the unused dimension and changes the colorMode
to mono.
- NDPluginColorConvert. Added conversions from mono to RGB1, RGB2, and RGB3, and
from RGB1, RGB2, and RGB3 to mono. Previously this plugin only built on Linux and
WIN32. Now it builds and does all conversions except Bayer on all architectures.
Bayer conversion is restricted to Linux and WIN32.
- Added new NDPluginStats plugin. This plugin calculates statistics on an array.
It replaces the statistics calculations that were previously performed in the ROI
plugin. It adds new statistics, including the centroid position and width. It also
computes X and Y profiles, including average profiles, profiles at the centroid
position, and profiles at a user-defined cursor position. Thanks to Stephen Mudie
from the Australian Synchrotron, John Dobbins from Cornell, and Huijuan Xu from
Brookhaven National Lab for the initial versions of these calculations.
- Added new NDPluginProcess plugin. This plugin does arithmetic processing on arrays:
- Background subtraction.
- Flat field normalization.
- Offset and scale.
- Low and high clipping.
- Recursive filtering in the time domain.
- Conversion to a different output data type.
- Added new NDPluginOverlay plugin. This plugin adds graphic overlays to an image.
It replaces the "Highligh ROIs" function that was previously provided in the ROI
plugin. But it is much more general, and can be used to display not only ROIs, but
multiple cursors, user-defined boxes, etc.
- Example IOCs
- Greatly simplified the st.cmd and auto_settings.req files for each IOC. This was
done by creating two new files: iocBoot/commonPlugins.cmd and iocBoot/commonPlugin_settings.req.
These files define a common set of plugins that are loaded for all example IOCs.
They load all of the plugins except the NDPluginStdArrays plugin, because that plugin
needs to have its data type and waveform size matched to the specific detector.
- medm screens
- Created medm screen "components" which are used in actual screens via the "composite
file" mechanism wherever possible. This simplifies the maintenance of the medm screens
for detectors and plugins.
- Viewers
- Fixed a bug in the ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer.java that required restarting the plugin
if it was told to start displaying before any frames had been acquired by the IOC.
- Fixed bugs in the ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer.java that caused an exception when trying
to deference a null window pointer. Some of these bugs only became apparent when
running the latest version of ImageJ (1.43U) which will not work with previous releases
of EPICS_AD_Viewer.java.
- Internals
- Added new form of NDArrayPool::convert that only changed data type, does not take
dims argument.
- Added more fields to the NDArrayInfo_t structure and the NDArray::getInfo method
to simplify handling color images.
- Known problems. This release of areaDetector exposed two bugs in EPICS 3.14.11.
Links to the required patches can be found on the
EPICS 3.4.11 Known Problems page.
- The epicsThreadOnceOsd problem can cause crashes with an "assert" error on IOC
initialization on Win32 systems.
- The macLib problem can cause crashes or memory corruption when the commonPlugins.cmd
script expands lines with macros longer than 256 characters.
Release 1-5 (23-August-2009)
- General
- Added "attributes" to NDArray. Attributes are used to contain metadata about the
array. Each attribute has a name, description, datatype and value. Attributes can
be added by drivers or plugins, and travel with the array through the plugin chain,
and can ultimately be written with the array data to a file. Attributes can come
from driver or plugin parameters, or from EPICS PVs anywhere on the network.
- Separated parameters and functions which are general to NDArray data (asynNDArrayDriver
base class) from those which are specific to areaDetector data (ADDriver base class).
This makes it easy and clean to use asynNDArray driver for future applications beyond
areaDetector, such as drivers for the XIA xMAP digital spectroscopy system.
- Drivers
- New driver for mar345 online image plate detector. This driver communicates via
a TCP/IP socket with the mar345dtb program, which must be used to control the detector.
- New driver for Firewire IIDC/DCAM cameras under Windows. This driver uses the
Windows 1394 camera driver from Carnegie Mellon University.
- New driver for the Perkin-Elmer amorphous silicon flat panel detectors. Thanks
to Brian Tieman and John Hammonds for this driver.
- New driver for the Roper Scientific detectors using the PVCAM library. Thanks
to Brian Tieman for this driver.
- Added support for color to the simulation detector driver. It now supports color
modes Mono, RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3.
- Fixed 2 serious bugs in the Roper driver. It was not selecting ROI mode correctly.
When NumAcquisitions was > 1 it was only collecting the first frame correctly,
subsequent frames were the same as a first one. This has been isolated to a bug
in the WinView COM interface, and a workaround for the problem has been implemented.
- Solved problem of Prosilica driver crashing on Linux. The problem was with the
SIGALARM signal handlers in EPICS base (R3.14.10 and earlier). There is a patch
for base to fix this problem, and this fix will be included in EPICS base 3.14.11.
- Added an additional state, "Initializing" to DetectorState_RBV record.
- Added support for ADTriggerMode=External in marCCD driver. In this mode the AcquireTime
is not used to stop acquisition; acquisition must be stopped by external software
settings Acquire=0. The AcquireTime PV is written to the marCCD TIFF file header
as usual. This allows an external timing control of the shutter but with the actual
exposure time written to the header. Fixed minor problem with marCCD driver. If
Acquire was set to Stop when it was not acquiring then the next time acquisition
was started it would stop immediately.
- Plugins
- Changed NDPluginFile from directly supporting netCDF to be a base class from which
actual file plugins derive.
- Changed netCDF file support to be derived class inheriting from NDPluginFile.
Added support for writing NDArray attributes to the netCDF file.
- New file plugin for TIFF files. The TIFF support includes 8, 16 and 32-bit integers.
It supports monochrome and color images, including all 3 color interleave modes
(RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3. areaDetector contains all required support files to build
and run the TIFF file plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86 and Linux. To build on other
operating systems it is necessary to install the libtiff and libtiffstatic packages.
Thanks to John Hammonds for the initial work on this plugin.
- New file plugin for JPEG files. The JPEG support is limited to 8-bit integers,
but it supports monochrome and color images, including all 3 color interleave modes
(RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3). Control is provided for the JPEG quality (compression) on
a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best). areaDetector contains all required support files
to build and run the JPEG file plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86, and Linux. To build
on other operating systems it is necessary to install the libjpeg and libjpegstatic
packages.
- New file plugin for NeXus HDF files written by John Hammonds. The NeXus support
has not been extensively tested, and is currently limited to writing a single array
per file. Support for multiple arrays per file will be added in a future release.
areaDetector contains all required support files to build and run the NeXus file
plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86 and Linux. To build on other operating systems it
is necessary to install the Nexus, HDF4, HDF5, and MXML packages.
- Fixed bug in NDPluginFile: was not closing file properly when stream mode was
stopped before the requested number of frames.
- Fixed logic problem with FileNumber record in NDFile.template database. The previous
logic that kept the ao record in sync with the ai record was causing the ao record
to process when it should not have been, causing an extra call to the driver.
- Added an additional record to NDPluginBase.template, PluginType_RBV. All plugins
set this to a unique string to identify the plugin type.
- medm displays
- Added new top-level detector-specific displays for Prosilica (prosilica.adl),
Firewire (firewire.adl), and simDetector (simDetector.adl). ADBase.adl should no
longer be used for these cameras.
- Viewers
- Added new ImageJ plugin viewer. This was begun by Tim Madden from APS, and now
includes support for all NDArray data types and color modes, i.e. Mono, RGB1 (pixel
interleave), RGB2 (row interleave) and RGB3 (plane interleave). The plugin directory
includes a plugin written elsewhere for reading and writing netCDF files, so ImageJ
can be used to display images and image sequences (movies) saved with the NDFileNetCDF
plugin. It also includes a dynamic profile plugin written elsewhere for line profiles
that update in real time as new images are displayed.
- Improved IDL epics_ad_display viewer. The last image is now stored in the program,
and it is now redisplayed if the view mode is changed (TVSCL to iimage, etc.) or
if the display parameters are changed (autoscale, flip Y, minimum, maximum, etc.).
- Documentation
- Documented the source code with comments that doxygen can process to produce HTML
documentation directly from the source. This provides documentation for each class,
as well as the class inheritance tree. Thanks to John Hammonds for starting this.
- Internals
- Moved the asynPortDriver base C++ class from the areaDetector module to the asyn
module. The asynPortDriver base class was modified slightly to make it more general.
In particular the constructor no longer hardcodes ASYN_CANBLOCK, ASYN_MULTIDEVICE,
epicsThreadPriorityMedium, and epicsThreadStackMedium. This requires that asyn R4-11
or later be used, and requires 2 additional arguments to the constructor (priority
and stackSize) for all areaDetector drivers and plugins.
- Removed mutexId from asynPortDriver base class, and added lock() and unlock()
methods. This hides the implementation of the locking, since we might want to implement
these with asynManager->lockPort in the future.
- Removed the file ADStdParams.h. Moved the definition of parameters that are general
to NDArray drivers into asynNDArrayDriver.h, and those that are specific to areaDetector
drivers into ADDriver.h.
- Added an XML parser which is used for attribute definition files.
- Fixed Makefiles to instantiate templates on vxWorks.
- Moved createFileName() from ADDriver and NDPluginDriver to their base class, asynNDArrayDriver.
- Changed colorMode and bayerPattern from being properties of NDArray to being attributes,
since they are not general to NDArray but are specific to areaDetector.
- Added new method asynPortDriver::drvUserCreateParam, which simplifies drvUserCreate
code in all drivers and plugins.
- Reduced number of files for all plugins and drivers. Previously there was an XXX.cpp,
drvXXX.h, and drvXXXEpics.c. The .h and .c files were used to keep the drivers and
plugins independent of EPICS IOC code. It was decided that that extra 2 files per
driver and plugin were not worth the added complexity. If it is desired to run drivers
and plugins outside of an IOC it could be done with conditional compilation of the
IOC dependent code, which is all at the end of the .cpp file. The iocsh commands
to create plugins have been changed from drvNDxxxConfigure to NDxxxConfigure, for
example drvNDStdArraysConfigure was changed to NDStdArraysConfigure. This requires
changes to all st.cmd files.
- Renamed a few parameters and the drvInfo strings to logically separate things
that are general to NDArrays and things that are specific to area detectors. For
example, the drvInfo fields IMAGE_SIZE_xxx were renamed to ARRAY_SIZE_xxx, and IMAGE_COUNTER
was renamed to ARRAY_COUNTER.
- Added call to epicsExit() to all driver IOC main programs. This is important for
allowing EPICS to exit cleanly. Without this on Linux it was often necessary to
kill the IOC with ^C, rather than just typing "exit".
- NDStdArrays.template had the DTYP field of the waveform record changed from asynInt$(SIZE)ArrayIn
to asyn$(TYPE)ArrayIn. This was needed to allow it to be used with asynFloat32 and
asynFloat64 data types. This requires a change to all iocBoot st.cmd files that
load this template file.
- Plugins can now add attributes to an NDArray, which means they can modify the
array and hence need to make a copy of it. This requires that NDArray->release()
must be called in the plugin itself, rather than in the NDPluginDriver base class
as was done previously.
Release 1-4 (30-January-2009)
- Added a driver for Roper Scientific (i.e. Princeton Instruments and Photometrics)
detectors. It uses the Microsoft COM interface to control the WinView or WinSpec
programs. The previous support in the "ccd" module used a Visual Basic socket server
and an SNL program to accomplish this. It was hard to maintain, because Visual Basic
changed incompatibly from one release of Visual Studio to the next, and because
it could not be built with the EPICS build system. The new driver is written in
C++, and is built entirely with the EPICS build system. It also supports more WinView
features than the ccd version, and makes the detector data available via callbacks.
This allows detector data to be displayed with EPICS clients, permits ROI or other
plugin calculations, and allows saving in other file formats if desired.
- Added support for color:
- Added NDColorMode_t and NDBayerPattern_t to NDArray.h. Added new fields colorMode
and bayerPattern to NDArray structure to indicate the color mode.
- Added new parameter ADColorMode to ADStdDriverParams.h and new record ColorMode
to ADBase.template.
- Added new parameter NDColorMode and NDBayerPattern to NDPluginBase.h and new records
ColorMode and BayerPattern to NDPluginBase.template. Added these records to all
plugin medm screens.
- Added a new plugin NDPluginColorConvert to convert colors. It currently converts
Bayer to RGB1, RGB2 or RGB3, RGB1 to RGB2 or RGB3 and RGB3 to RGB1 or RGB2.
- The Prosilica driver now supports color. It supports RGB1 and Bayer directly,
and RGB2 and RGB3 through the NDPluginColorConvert plugin.
- The NDPluginFile driver now saves the ColorMode and BayerPattern to the netCDF
files.
- Added a Viewers directory. This contains an IDL viewer for displaying images.
The viewer supports color and several different viewing modes. It can be run for
free under the IDL Virtual Machine, and should work on any platform with a version
of ezcaIDL.so or ezcaIDL.dll built with EPICS 3.14. This directory also contains
IDL class libraries for accessing areaDetector. These classes are used by the viewers,
but can also be used for other IDL applications.
- Added new parameters in ADStdDriverParams.h
- ADTemperature
- ADReadStatus
- ADImageSizeZ
- ADNumExposuresCounter
- ADColorMode
- ADPortNameSelf
- Pilatus driver
- Send the imgpath command to camserver when the ADFilePath parameter is changed.
camserver will then create directories if they do not exist, whereas specifying
a path with non-existant directories in the "exposure" or acquire commands will
not create directories.
- Prosilica driver
- Added support for color.
- Added support for the external sync in, sync out and strobe signals. The sync
signals can also be used for general-purpose digital I/O.
- Made minor changes to the code and to the build system to add support for running
the driver under Linux. There are some issues with this drivers use of SIGARLM via
Posix Timer library and EPICS signal handlers. I have made some minor modifications
to EPICS base 3.14.10 to allow the IOC to run. Prosilica is working on a new version
of their driver that should fix these issues, but it is not yet working. The prebuilt
binary version of this release of areaDetector includes the fixes to EPICS base
and does work satisfactorily.
- NDPluginROI
- Fixed bug with missing roi argument to setIntegerParam call, some parameters not
updating correctly.
- Added maxBuffers argument to constructor and to iocsh configuration command. This
was a serious oversight in the previous versions. maxROIs was being used where the
missing maxBuffers parameter should have been used. Unfortunately it requires a
new argument to the iocsh drvNDROIConfigure command, which is not backwards compatible
with previous startup scripts.
- NDArray
- Changed the NDArray::copy() methods to NDArrayPool::copy(). Previously the copy
was being allocated from the NDArrayPool of the copy source, rather than from the
caller's array pool.
- Added colorMode and bayerPattern fields to NDArray class.
- Fixed a bug in the NDArray::convertDim function that could cause an array bounds
error if a dimension was reversed.
- asynPortDriver
- Renamed the pasynUser member to pasynUserSelf. This avoids a name conflict with
the local variable pasynUser used in many derived classes. Unfortunately this requires
changes to derived class code where this->pasynUser was used.
- Added simulation code to ADSC driver. This allows it to be built and tested on
systems that do not have the ADSC hardware or software installed.
- Added $(P)$(R)AutoSave to the save/restore settings in NDFile_settings.req so
it will be restored on reboot. This requires care when using drivers such as the
Prosilica which can rapidly save very large data files, since file saving may be
resumed on reboot.
- Removed abusy record, replaced with new version of busy record from new busy module.
- Renamed ADPlugin library to NDPlugin, because it is really N-dimensional.
- Renamed marCCD library to marCCD_AD, because marCCD is already used in the ccd
module, and it conflicts. Changed marCCDSupport.dbd to marCCD_ADSupport.dbd, name
of register command, etc.
- Added PortName_RBV record to ADBase.template and NDPluginBase.template and to
all driver and plugin medm screens. This allows the user to see the asyn port name
of the driver or plugin, which is useful when switching the NDArray callback source.
- Modified the detector medm screens to contain links to the plugins that are normally
loaded for that driver, e.g. a single instance each of NDStdArrays, NDROI, NDFile
and NDColorConvert (for detectors that support color).
Release 1-3 (24-November-2008)
- Added a driver for MarCCD detectors. Compared to the previous support in the "ccd"
module, this driver uses the faster Version 1 protocol for the Mar server. It also
makes the detector data available via callbacks (by reading the TIFF files as soon
as they are written). This allows detector data to be displayed with EPICS clients,
and for ROI calculations.
- Added support for shutter control. Supports shutters that are driven directly
from the detector hardware, as well as shutters controlled by EPICS records. Shutter
support is implemented for the MarCCD, Pilatus, and simulation detectors.
- Added new methods for shutter support to the detector base class ADDriver.cpp
- ADDriver::setShutter()
- ADDriver::writeInt32
- Reorganized the file I/O parameters, template files and medm screens
- Moved the file capture parameters from NDPluginFile.h and NDPluginFile.cpp to
ADStdDriverParams.h. This allows a detector driver to use these capture parameters
if desired.
- Removed all of the file I/O records from ADBase.template and ADBase_settings.req.
These previously duplicated the records in NDFile.template and NDFile_settings.req,
which was hard to maintain. IOCs for detector drivers that can do file I/O now need
to load NDFile.template, while those that cannot no longer need to load these records.
They also need to have NDFile_settings.req added to auto_settings.req. This does
not effect the file plugin support, only drivers that directly do file I/O.
- Removed the file I/O PVs from ADBase.adl. Added a related display link to NDFile.adl.
- NDFile.adl now contains only the file related PVs, not the plugin related PVs.
The new file NDPluginFile.adl replaces the previous version of NDFile.adl, and contains
both the file PVs and the plugin PVs.
- Added new enums in ADStdDriverParams.h
- ADFrameType_t
- ADShutterMode_t
- ADFileMode_t
- Added new parameters in ADStdDriverParams.h
- ADShutterControl (replaces ADShutter)
- ADShutterControlEPICS
- ADShutterStatus
- ADShutterMode
- ADShutterOpenDelay
- ADShutterCloseDelay
- ADTimeRemaining
- ADNumImagesCounter
- ADFrameType
- ADArrayCallbacks
- ADFileWriteMode
- ADFileNumCapture
- ADFileNumCaptured
- ADFileCapture
ADArrayCallbacks can be set to 0 to disable callbacks with detector data. For the
MarCCD and Pilatus detectors setting this to 0 will disable reading the disk files
after collection. This can be used to reduce overhead when EPICS is being used just
for control, rather than to access the data.
- Added variant of NDPluginDriver::createFileName that returns the filePath and
fileName separately, rather than a complete file name including the path.
Release 1-2 (24-October-2008)
- Major update to documentation
- Significant enhancement to ROI plugin. Added net counts, ROI highlighting.
- Added driver for Pilatus detectors. This has undergone limited testing.
- Added driver for ADSC detectors (done by Lewis Muir, IMCA-CAT)
- Removed separate readback parameters in drivers and template files
- Changed from mbbi/mbbo records to bi/bo records where possible now that the asynInt32
interface supports bi/bo records.
- Internals
- Renamed asynParamBase to asynPortDriver.
- Renamed NDArrayBase to NDArrayDriver
- Renamed NDPluginBase to NDPluginDriver
- Renamed NDArrayBuff to NDArrayPool, now in NDArray.cpp.
- Renamed ADDriverBase to ADDriver
- Removed ADUtils
- The asynHandle interface in asyn was renamed to asynGenericPointer, many changes
to incorporate this.
- Base class constructor no longer initializes all asyn interfaces, only the selected
ones.
- NDArray pool is no longer global, each server creates its own pool if needed.
- Implemented real routines for writeInt32, writeFloat64, and writeOctet in asynPortDriver.cpp,
removed them from ADDriver.cpp where they were not needed.
Release 1-1 (10-May-2008)
- Major rewrite. Converted device drivers and plugins from C to C++ with C++ base
classes that handle many of the details of asyn and of callbacks and threading for
plugins.
- Everything except device drivers and top-level EPICS databases and channel access
clients are now fully N-dimensional, not restricted to 2-D.
- NDPluginFile now uses netCDF format, which is a portable self-describing binary
file format.
- Added NDPluginROI which implements region-of-interest.
Release 1-0 (11-Apr-2008)
- Initial release, still many things remaining to be done.
Suggestions and Comments to:
Mark Rivers : (rivers@cars.uchicago.edu)