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AlexShkarin / pyLabLib-v0

Variety of Python code for using in lab environment (data acquisition, device communication, data analysis)
MIT License
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Hamamatsu DCAM support #1

Open artelse opened 4 years ago

artelse commented 4 years ago

Not really an issue, more of a question. I have a Hamamatsu flat panel x-ray camera that operates over USB for the image capture. I want to use the camera on my Linux system and wrote some python to control the machine over the serial port. Capturing the image data on the Windows side uses a DLL library which I cannot use on Linux. I haven't looked at the code, but can PLL be used to get the cam data? Or do you know of a DCAM USB library perhaps?

AlexShkarin commented 4 years ago

PLL also uses DCAM API, that is, it relies on the DLL supplied there (dcamapi.dll). Hence, as you noted, it can't readily work on Linux.

DCAM website is a bit confusing regarding Linux support. The overview page states that it is supported on Windows or Linux, but the downloads page only has Windows and MacOS versions. I'm not sure if the overview page contains a typo, outdated information, or if DCAM API for Linux can be found somewhere else (standard Linux repositories?) I'd suggest contacting them to clarify this contradiction.

Their website also supports list of compatible software. Perhaps, there's something there that could help? For example, it looks like MicroManager is open-source, can run on Linux, and has Python and C++ support (though, I never used it personally, so I don't know if it actually works).

artelse commented 4 years ago

Thanks for the suggestions. The Hamamatsu Linux support is indeed confusing and contacted them about it. But they said they don't support Linux. I also looked at Micromanager, they had direct DCAM support, but removed it.