Andor camera

[Former user]

The IDE don't find the andor sdk even if its in the path .

some more documentation for the noobs like me could help

[M. Gronle]

Hello,

can you describe a little bit more in detail what you did and possibly indicate the following things:

• which version of itom? Is it the an official Windows setup or did you compile it by yourself?
• What version of Andor SDK are you using? Which Andor camera?
• If you start itom, do you find the Andor plugin in the grabber section of the plugin toolbox?
• If not, can you open the File >> Loaded Plugins… dialog and search for the Andor plugin. Please
  open the subtree of the plugin (possibly indicated with an error icon) and select the subitem.
  Can you post the error message below the selected entry of make a screenshot of it?

‌

Unfortunately, we can only compile the Andor plugin with a possibly rather old version of the Andor SDK (3.8),
since this is the only SDK that we have available. Some DLLs of this SDK are contained in the lib-folder of
the itom setup installation (atcore.dll, atcl_bitflow.dll, atdevregcam.dll). If you have a younger Andor SDK including
the necessary driver, that we cannot assure, if it is compatible to the compiled version. However, you could also
try to remove the three mentioned DLLs from the lib folder of the itom installation (at least temporarily) and
see, if the plugin starts then properly. The idea is then, that itom does not load the Andor DLLs from the
lib folder of itom, but from the (sub-)directory of your Andor SDK, which must have been added to the
PATH environment variables before.

Best regards,

Marc

‌

[Shaji Rebeirro, Joseph]

my apologies of the incomplete information. I should know better.

itom 4.1.0 installed from release package

Andor SDK 3.15

Zyla 5.5
tried builiding the plugin myself runs into

“include could not find requested file:

ItomBuildMacros”

itomSDK path has been set

and andor sdk files were copied to src directory

However, you could also
try to remove the three mentioned DLLs from the lib folder of the itom installation (at least temporarily) and
see, if the plugin starts then properly. The idea is then, that itom does not load the Andor DLLs from the
lib folder of itom, but from the (sub-)directory of your Andor SDK, which must have been added to the
PATH environment variables before.

This worked !!!! Thank you

---

However i have run into a new error.
Itom-Application caught an unknown exception from: (AndorSDK3) from event type 43 (MetaCall)
Cant grab an image for some reason.
any idea Why

‌

[Shaji Rebeirro, Joseph]

I Rebuild the ANDOR plugin from scratch using my SDK version and still the timeout error is still present .

How may i fix this?

Sorry for the trouble

[M. Gronle]

Is it correct, that you have the same timer / metacall error for the following two situations:

1. pre-compiled setup of itom 4.1, where you deleted the relevant Andor SDK DLLs from the lib folder, such that the DLLs from your own driver can be loaded.
2. Self-compiled itom including plugins and designer plugins, where the Andor plugin was compiled with your Andor SDK

‌

It would be great, if you could try to start the camera step-by-step via the command line and post here everything
that you entered in the command line including the error message:

‌

cam = dataIO("AndorSDK3", 0)
cam.startDevice()
cam.acquire()
d = dataObject()
cam.getVal(d)
cam.stopDevice()
del cam
plot(d)

Please check in which line the error occurs.

The error is very likely an exceptions, that occurs in one of the methods of the class AndorSDK3, probably init, startDevice, stopDevice, acquire, retrieveData, getVal or copyVal.

Since these methods are called in its own thread, uncaught exceptions, thrown in this thread, will lead to a MetaCall error in the main thread. This is how exceptions work in the underlying Qt framework. If you can, you could try to start itom in Debug in Visual Studio and load the AndorSDK3.cpp within the itom solution. Set a breakpoint in the relevant methods and check, where the exception occurs. Please also check the output window of Visual Studio and see if there are any meaningful information.

If you start debugging any method of the plugin, you should know, that “stopping” at a breakpoint for a while might cause the main thread of itom to show a timeout error, since every call to plugin methods are limited by a certain timeout value. These timeouts can be changed in the itom property dialog (see https://itom.bitbucket.io/latest/docs/04_itom_gui/propertyDialog.html?highlight=property#application), therefore it might be good to increase these timeouts before starting to debug.

If you would like to learn more details about the call process of plugins, see the scheme under https://itom.bitbucket.io/latest/docs/07_plugins/development/pluginClass.html#common-components-for-actuator-and-dataio-plugins.

I am curious about your test results.

Cheers

Marc

[Krystof Dockal]

I went through the acquisition step by step (VS2019 and Andor SDK v 3.15) as you proposed and the error - write access violation emerge in the slot acquire, on the line 912 where AT_WaitBuffer is called in thread 25. Here is the output of the program:

QWindowsWindowsetGeometry Unable to set geometry 148x30+1080+655 (frame 166x77+1071+617) on QWidgetWindowQInputDialogClassWindow on .DISPLAY1. Resulting geometry 401x108+1080+655 (frame 419x155+1071+617) margins 9, 38, 9, 9 minimum size 401x108 maximum size 524287x108 MINMAXINFO maxSize=0,0 maxpos=0,0 mintrack=419,155 maxtrack=524305,155)
Itom-Application has caught an unknown exception
Itom-Application caught an unknown exception from (AndorSDK3) from event type 43 ( MetaCall )
Exiting due to exception caught
Debug Error!

Program CITOM3rdPartyQt5.15.25.15.2msvc2019_64binQt5Cored.dll
Module 5.12.11
File CITOMsourcesitomQitommain.h
Line 86

Exiting due to exception caught

Another error is in slot init, where emerge error in file bfconfigsnd.c. I couldn’t find the file, but i think the error is most likely caused by old version bitflow sdk.

Hopefully this will help somehow.

[Bernd Bertschinger]

Does this issue still persist or can it be closed? I don’t have the resourced available to check for this SDK.
I’ll try to contact ANDOR to get some support from their side, to see if they have interest in an integration of their SDK into our environment.
I hope that we can get than the latest SDK and maybee even a camera to test thei SDK for future releases,

If not we have to handle this plugin as unsupported.

[Shaji Rebeirro, Joseph]

Thank you for the support and initiative .
The issue still persists.

I unfortunately I had moved on to using julia and other hardware

my software debugging skills and time to develop them were a bit lacking to contribute any more
than my last post.

Thanks again for taking the time!!

Cheers,
Joseph

[Bernd Bertschinger]

Dear Shaji,

thank you very much for your feedback. I am reliefed to hear, that you found a solution and many thanks for your efforts.
Unfortunately ITOM is quite large and comprises many dependencies and we currently don’t have the resources
to offer the same level of support, as people are used to from commercial products.

Thanks for your passion and input.

Best wishes

Bernd