Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Mark Rivers via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Mon, 27 Sep 2021 16:30:29 +0000

I agree with what Mark E. said except this:

> and install all the standard support and plugins for each one, and just flip the PV’s to whatever hardware that you are interested in. No?

You don't need to install plugins for each camera, you just need one instance of each plugin.  Then you just switch the plugins to get their data from ARV1 to ARV2 or ARV3, etc.  You could build an seq record that does the following:

- Stops acquisition on the existing camera (e.g. ARV1)

- Switches the plugins to use the new camera (e.g. ARV2)

- Starts acquisition on the new camera. (e.g. ARV2)

You should not need to modify ADAravis at all.

Mark

________________________________
From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov> on behalf of Liu, Wanming via Tech-talk <tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 10:20 AM
To: Engbretson, Mark S.
Cc: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: RE: Is it possible to switch to different camera for ADAravis without launching multiple IOC or restart the same IOC with different script?

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the comments.

Now I see what was missing, a call to asynSetTraceIOMask after switch the camera.

Thanks,

Wanming

From: Engbretson, Mark S. <engbretson at anl.gov>
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 10:10 AM
To: Liu, Wanming <wmliu at anl.gov>
Cc: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov
Subject: RE: Is it possible to switch to different camera for ADAravis without launching multiple IOC or restart the same IOC with different script?

I would think that what one would do is something similar to this.

# The port name for the detector

epicsEnvSet("PORT1",   "ARV1")

# aravisConfig(const char *portName, const char *cameraName, int enableCaching, size_t maxMemory, int priority, int stackSize)

aravisConfig("$(PORT1)", "$(CAMERA_NAME1)", $(ENABLE_CACHING), 0, 0, 0)

asynSetTraceIOMask($(PORT1), 0, 2)

# The port name for the detector

epicsEnvSet("PORT2",   "ARV2")

# aravisConfig(const char *portName, const char *cameraName, int enableCaching, size_t maxMemory, int priority, int stackSize)

aravisConfig("$(PORT2)", "$(CAMERA_NAME2)", $(ENABLE_CACHING), 0, 0, 0)

asynSetTraceIOMask($(PORT2), 0, 2)

# The port name for the detector

epicsEnvSet("PORT3",   "ARV3")

# aravisConfig(const char *portName, const char *cameraName, int enableCaching, size_t maxMemory, int priority, int stackSize)

aravisConfig("$(PORT3)", "$(CAMERA_NAME3)", $(ENABLE_CACHING), 0, 0, 0)

asynSetTraceIOMask($(PORT3), 0, 2)

and install all the standard support and plugins for each one, and just flip the PV’s to whatever hardware that you are interested in. No?

That is how Mark Rivers does multiple ADSimDetectors.

From: Tech-talk <tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov<mailto:tech-talk-bounces at aps.anl.gov>> On Behalf Of Liu, Wanming via Tech-talk
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2021 9:55 AM
To: tech-talk at aps.anl.gov<mailto:tech-talk at aps.anl.gov>
Subject: Is it possible to switch to different camera for ADAravis without launching multiple IOC or restart the same IOC with different script?

Hi,

We have multiple PointGrey BlkFly cameras of the same model on our beamline.  We only take image data from one camera at any time.

We could launch multiple ADAravis IOCs with one for each camera and switching PV names in GUI/OPI.  But is it possible to launch just one IOC and switch to different cameras as needed?

I added stringout device support to ADAravis and created a record to change the camera name.  So far, It seems like I can get the IOC connect to a different camera with pvput.  But a lots of errors message will popup when I try to use the camera.

Here is what I did when the camera name stringout record is being processed.

I added a member function ChangeCamera to ADAravis as

void ADAravis::ChangeCamera(const char *cameraName)

{

    delete this->cameraName;

    this->cameraName = epicsStrDup(cameraName);

//    printf("%s\n",this->cameraName);

    connectToCamera();

}

When the CameraName record is processed, it will call this CahngeCamera function.

From the printout of IOC shell as response to the ChangeCamera call,

CameraName 192.168.2.98

ADAravis: Looking for camera '192.168.2.98'...

2021/09/27 09:13:01.493 13ARV1:cam1:ARConnectCamera devAsynInt32::processCallbackOutput process write error

ADAravis: Your tick frequency is 125000000

So your timestamp resolution is 8.000000 ns

It looks like that the camera was successfully switched in  aravis, but asyn driver seems to have some troubles.

When I tried to use the camera, lots of error or warning like the following pops up which seems that the other part of the IOC is still using the old camera instance which is no longer exist.

(process:2490): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 09:20:01.768: invalid uninstantiatable type '<invalid>' in cast to 'ArvGcFeatureNode'

** (process:2490): CRITICAL **: 09:20:01.769: arv_gc_feature_node_is_available: assertion 'ARV_IS_GC_FEATURE_NODE (gc_feature_node)' failed

(process:2490): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 09:20:01.769: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'ArvGcFeatureNode'

** (process:2490): CRITICAL **: 09:20:01.769: arv_gc_feature_node_is_available: assertion 'ARV_IS_GC_FEATURE_NODE (gc_feature_node)' failed

(process:2490): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 09:20:01.769: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'ArvGcFeatureNode'

** (process:2490): CRITICAL **: 09:20:01.769: arv_gc_feature_node_is_available: assertion 'ARV_IS_GC_FEATURE_NODE (gc_feature_node)' failed

(process:2490): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 09:20:01.769: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'ArvGcFeatureNode'

So it will take more than just ADAravis::ConnectToCamera() to make the switching work.  But I don’t know what to add to ChangeCamera yet.

Any comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Wanming Liu

L120B, Bldg 360

HEP,ANL

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System