Re: Andor - Area Detector

[Zenon Szalata <zms@slac.stanford.edu>]

Hi Mark,
Can't acquire images means that after pressing the Start button the 
Image Counter does not increment,  there is no data in the waveform 
record, Array Callbacks are enabled, trigger is present.  Tomorrow I 
will look at the statistics plug-in.
Michael Dunning, primary user of these cameras, emailed me the following 
a short while ago:
-----------

I just restored a very old version of R3.14.12.2/modules/areaD/R1.8
and andor works with it.  So I guess what broke it was rebuilding
areaDetector.  Although we rebuilt it with the same versions of
modules, so it doesn't make much sense.

So maybe building with a newer kernel breaks it?  Or maybe a new
version of gcc?  I'm not sure how to tell.
----------

We run the Andor IOCs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6) 64 bit 
architecture.  Current version of the kernel is 2.6.32-431.29.2.el6.x86_64.
We will need to somehow figure this out so we can build these IOCs for 
our Andor cameras with the latest versions of the software.  By the way, 
IOCs build against the latest version of the support modules for the 
Prosilica cameras work fine.
Thanks Mark,
Zen

On 11/17/14 16:56, Mark Rivers wrote:
> Hi Zen,
>
> When you say "we can't acquire images" what do you mean?
>
> - Does the frame counter in the main display increment?
>
> - Have you enabled ArrayCallbacks in the main display?
>
> - If so, then if you enable a statistics plugin is it getting callbacks?
>
> - If so, are the statistics non-zero?
>
> - If your problem is just not seeing images in a client like ImageJ, have you set EPICS_CA_MAX_ARRAY_BYTES correctly?
>
> The obvious question is what might have changed a week or so ago?  Has the areaDetector software been rebuilt?  Have there been OS upgrades?
>
> Mark
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Zenon Szalata [mailto:zms@slac.stanford.edu]
> Sent: Monday, November 17, 2014 5:30 PM
> To: Mark Rivers; tech-talk@aps.anl.gov
> Subject: Andor - Area Detector
>
> Hi Mark,
> Something inexplicable is going on with our two Andor DO420A-BN-995
> cameras.  All was working well until a week ago or so.  Since change
> took place,  The Area Detector based IOC starts up without errors,
> connects to the camera, the EDM screen shows correct values obtained
> from the camera, and we can't acquire images.  I have setup one of these
> cameras in my office, I give it an external trigger, no image, changing
> the trigger mode to internal results in the same, no image data.  We are
> using Andor SDK V2.94, Epics R3.14.12.2, asyn R4.20, ...
> I have attached a console output file, which includes trace data.
> I have build a few of the examples in the SDK package.  One of these is
> image test program.  It generates a reasonable image file.
> We also built a copy of this IOC with Epics R3.14.12.4, asyn 4.23, CALC
> 3.0, busy 1.6, sscan 2.9, mca 7.4, and area detector 1.9.1. This build
> behaves identically as the older version.
> Can you suggest how to proceed understanding and fixing this problem?
> Thank you in advance,
> Zen