Re: [micro-manager-general] Questions on Hamamatsu Flash4

[julou <tho...@no...>]

Hi Chris,

> For clarity's sake, let me recap some basics. If the exposure time is greater than the delay, then µManager will perform a "sequence acquisition", in which the camera is responsible for all timing. If the exposure time is less than the delay, then µManager will perform "snap acquisitions", where µManager itself is responsible for timings. In order to take advantage of µManager's hardware triggering logic, you must be using a sequence acquisition. If you are using snap acquisitions, then no attempt is made to arrange hardware triggering of devices, e.g. telling a triggerable stage what positions to move to on receipt of each trigger. Instead, µManager snaps an image, then moves the stage, then snaps another image, etc. — all done in software.

Got it. This clarification is indeed useful… (sorry I’m getting a bit confused by the different source of information on hardware triggering).
For future readers stumbling on this post, I want to clarify Chris’ statement that “If the exposure time is less than the delay, then µManager will perform “snap acquisitions”…” In a MDA with a sequence able device, several channels/z-positions will be acquired in streaming mode even when the delay/interval is longer than the exposure; this is of course the expected behaviour but Chris’ paragraph made me wonder at some point whether it was really happening.

> It’s not an impossible task (I believe), but it would be significant work, as compared to µManager's built-in hardware sequencing which just works, as long as you have supported hardware.

Yes, we’re doing our best to stay in this situation :)
In fact, we realize that using MDA with hardware trigger, we can use the flash4 “global exposure” output to trigger the illumination and the “programmable” output (on Vsync) to trigger stage motion (while the global exposure is not yet active). We’ve done tests with sequenceable channels using an arduino: the “global exposure” trigger works great (we are still waiting for the stage). However, we realised that there is no property to set the “reference signal” (to Vsync or to ReadEnd) when the trigger mode is set to “programmable”. It might be due again to our old camera firmware (2.03A), or is it not available in micromanager? Do you know which signal is the default one? (we’ll check it using an oscilloscope anyway and keep our finger crossed in the meantime).

By the way, this new approach circumvents our issue described earlier in this thread with “slow” acquisition in snap mode…
Best,

Thomas



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