Alvium 1800 U-158m with ImSwitch

openUC2 ImSwitch
1

Hi there,

I’m trying to use the Alvium 1800 U-158m with ImSwitch on an Apple M1 with the following “detectors” config but I’m not able to get a video feed.

 "detectors": {
    "WidefieldCamera": {
      "analogChannel": null,
      "digitalLine": null,
      "managerName": "AVManager",
      "managerProperties": {
        "cameraListIndex": 1,
        "avcam": {
          "exposure": 0,
          "gain": 0,
          "blacklevel": 100,
          "image_width": 1000,
          "image_height": 1000,
          "pixel_format": "Mono8"
        }
      },
      "forAcquisition": true,
      "forFocusLock": false
    }
  }

I’ve put this “detectors” config in my own setup file under imcontrol_setups/my_setup.json and updated the imcontrol_options.json file as follows

    "setupFileName": "my_setup.json"

A few issues that I’m encountering:

  • The image is just noise as if the camera isn’t connected
    Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 11.52.45 AM
    )
  • The pixel format remains at Mono12 even though the 1800 U-158m can use Mono8. Trying to change this in the GUI causes it to immediately change back to Mono12. Even using Mono12 in the “detectors” config doesn’t work.
    Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 11.54.56 AM
    Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 11.54.56 AM832×994 57.5 KB

Any advice for these issues would be greatly appreciated. Please let me know if you need any more info.

Cheers,
Scott

2

Update:

After some debugging, I found the pymba import is failing.

Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 12.27.18 PM
Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 12.27.18 PM910×308 26.8 KB

Which is strange as running pip freeze shows that pymba is installed.
Screenshot 2024-09-18 at 12.30.09 PM

Any ideas? Cheers

3

Hey @scotthitch thanks for reporting this error. May I kindly ask you which vimba version you’ve installed? They recently introduced VimbaX which is not compatible with the pymba wrapper anymore. Vimba 6.0 works as reported by @HaiyueLi in openUC2 ImSwitch if remember correctly. Can you try downgrading this by any chance?

4

Hi @benedictdied thanks for replying.

I’m using macOS so unfortunately I cannot downlaod Vimba 6.0 (here). Do you have any other recommendations?

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,
Scott

5

Interesting, the vimba works on mac nowadays? Can you check their standard python SDK ?

6

Hi @benedictdied,

Unfortunately only Vimba X works on Mac but Vimba 6.0 doesn’t (see here)

Cheers,
Scott

7

I see. Then we would need to write a camera adapter for their new API. I think chatGPT could help us here.