areaDetector Prosilica driver

September 20, 2008

Mark Rivers

University of Chicago

Contents

Prosilica Driver

This is a driver for Gigabit Ethernet and Firewire cameras from Prosilica. It inherits from ADDriver and implements nearly all of the parameters in ADStdDriverParams.h. It also implements a number of parameters that are specific to the Prosilica cameras. The driver is currently only supported under Windows (EPICS win32-x86 architecture) because the vendor library is provided as a Windows DLL. The vendor library provided by Prosilica does callbacks to a user-supplied function each time there is a new frame. Thus, the driver does not need to create a thread itself for callbacks.

The vendor library supports saving individual frames as TIFF files, and this is implemented in the driver. The NDPluginFile plugin can be used to capture or stream images much more rapidly in the netCDF file format.

The driver redefines the choices for 2 of the parameters defined in ADStdDriverParams.h. The ADTriggerMode choices for the Prosilica are:

The Prosilica supports additional hardware timing signals that may be supported in a future release.

The ADFileFormat choices for the Prosilica are:

The Prosilica driver implements the following parameters in addition to those in ADStdDriverParams.h:

Parameter Definitions in prosilica.cpp and EPICS Record Definitions in prosilica.template
Enum name asyn interface Access Description drvUser string EPICS record name EPICS record type
PSReadStatistics asynInt32 r/w Read the Gigabit Ethernet statistics when 1 PS_READ_STATISTICS $(P)$(R)PSReadStatistics longout
PSStatDriverType asynOctet r/o Driver type PS_DRIVER_TYPE $(P)$(R)PSDriverType_RBV stringin
PSStatFilterVersion asynOctet r/o Packet filter version PS_FILTER_VERSION $(P)$(R)PSFilterVersion_RBV stringin
PSStatFrameRate asynFloat64 r/o Frame rate (Hz) PS_FRAME_RATE $(P)$(R)PSFrameRate_RBV ai
PSStatFramesCompleted asynInt32 r/o Number of frames completed PS_FRAMES_COMPLETED $(P)$(R)PSFramesCompleted_RBV longin
PSStatFramesDropped asynInt32 r/o Number of frames dropped PS_FRAMES_DROPPED $(P)$(R)PSFramesDropped_RBV longin
PSStatPacketsErroneous asynInt32 r/o Number of erroneous packets PS_PACKETS_ERRONEOUS $(P)$(R)PSPacketsErroneous_RBV longin
PSStatPacketsMissed asynInt32 r/o Number of missed packets PS_PACKETS_MISSED $(P)$(R)PSPacketsMissed_RBV longin
PSStatPacketsReceived asynInt32 r/o Number of received packets PS_PACKETS_RECEIVED $(P)$(R)PSPacketsReceived_RBV longin
PSStatPacketsRequested asynInt32 r/o Number of packets requested PS_PACKETS_REQUESTED $(P)$(R)PSPacketsRequested_RBV longin
PSStatPacketsResent asynInt32 r/o Number of packets resent PS_PACKETS_RESENT $(P)$(R)PSPacketsResent_RBV longin
PSBadFrameCounter asynInt32 r/o Number of bad frames PS_BAD_FRAME_COUNTER $(P)$(R)PSBadFrameCounter_RBV longin

The following is the MEDM screen ADBase.adl connected to a Prosilica camera.

ADBase.adl

ADBase_prosilica.png

The following is the MEDM screen that provides access to the specific parameters for the Prosilica detector.

prosilica.adl

prosilica.png

The following is an IDL epics_ad_display screen displaying the Prosilica detector images.

epics_ad_display.pro

prosilica_tvscl.jpg

Future enhancements

The driver does not currently support color. This will be added in the near future.

Work is needed on connection management. If the camera is unplugged or powered off which the areaDetector driver is running it does not gracefully recover.