Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Folks,

 

I have now implemented TriggerMode=Alignment for the Eiger.  When acquisition is started in alignment mode it caches the value of NumImages and sets it to 1.  It then collects images one at a time in a loop until acquisition is stopped.  When acquisition is stopped it restores the cached value of NumImages.

 

This allows what Nino was asking for, continuous acquisition without needing to change NumImages or NumTriggers.  This is the output of camonitor on the ArrayCounter_RBV record.  It shows that the overhead is about 0.8 seconds, so the fastest update rate is just over 1 Hz.  This may be fine for many applications.

 

corvette:~/devel/areaDetector/ADEiger>camonitor -tci 13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV   (2022-05-12 14:59:00.363489) 0

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +2.273435) 1

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.844454) 2

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.827992) 3

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.784932) 4

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.815482) 5

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.825144) 6

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.812477) 7

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.792468) 8

13EIG2:cam1:ArrayCounter_RBV                 (   +0.775525) 9

 

The new code on the “alignment_mode” branch on Github: https://github.com/areaDetector/ADEiger/tree/alignment_mode

 

It seems to work fine in my limited testing.  Please try it and if it works I will make a new release.

 

I also added a dbpf command at the end of the st.cmd files to force the AcquireTime record to process.  This fixes the problem with AcquireTime and autosave in this issue:

 

https://github.com/areaDetector/ADEiger/issues/58

 

Mark

 

 

 

Hi Nino,

 

In principle that mode could be implemented in ADEiger.  It would effectively be the same as setting TriggerMode=InternalSeries, NumImages=1, NumTriggers=1, and setting Acquire=1 as soon as the previous image is complete. 

 

The only issue is the performance.  This is the output of camonitor on the Acquire PV when I do that manually on an Eiger2S 1M with AcquireTime=0.01 seconds.

 

corvette:~>camonitor -tci 13EIG2:cam1:Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +7.574912) Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.775277) Done

 

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +1.491137) Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.789318) Done

 

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +1.194118) Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.807242) Done

 

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.530099) Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.798572) Done

 

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.623805) Acquire

13EIG2:cam1:Acquire                          (   +0.780007) Done

 

So it takes about 0.8 seconds to acquire a single frame even with a very short acquire time.  If this is done instead with a large value of NumImages and setting Acquire=1 only once then the update rate is basically limited by the AcquireTime.

 

Mark