Question

Answer

Many devices can be controlled by a simple serial interface. Examples of these devices are filter wheels, objective changers, shutters and various options on microscopes. SmartCapture 2 has knowledge of many specific devices but there are obviously others that we have no direct support for. The SFW lets you to use a serial device that otherwise has no direct support.

To the operator the SFW appears as any other filter wheel. When setting it up, you specify how many filters are to be used and to each filter you assign some text that will be sent to the device whenever that filter is selected. Since you can send any commands with the SFW, you can use the SFW to control devices other than filter wheels.

Creating a new Serial Filter Wheel

To create a serial filter wheel, select 'Serial Filter Wheel' from the 'New Filter Wheel' sub menu of the 'Device' menu.

This will create a standard 6 position serial filter wheel..

Configuring a Serial Filter Wheel

Select 'Editor...' from the deice menu, This will display the device editor picker dialog:

Select the 'Serial filter wheel' and click on 'Setup'. This will display the 'Serial Filter Wheel' editor. It is here that you enter the details that will configure this device.

First enter the number of filters that you require and set the appropriate settings for the serial connection i.e Port, Baud and Parity. For each filter selected, you can enter a command and a delay. The command is some text that will be sent to the device when that filter is selected. The delay is a period in seconds that will cause a pause after the command has been sent. You should set this to the period of time that the device requires to complete its task. For instance if you have a filter wheel that takes half a second to change from one filter to another then enter 0.5 for the delay. This delay will prevent SmartCapture 2 from attempting to take a picture before the filter has reached its final position.

Special characters can be inserted into the text by means of an escape code. The codes are:

Serial Filter Wheel Escape Codes

Code	Meaning
\\	\ i.e. backslash
\xhh	Hexadecimal digit hh e.g. /x80 inserts character with hex value 80. h can be 0..9a..fA..F
\ooo	Octal number ooo e.g. /020 inserts character with octal value 020. o can be 0..8
\r	Carriage return (hex code 0D)
\n	Line feed (hex code 0A)
\a	Vertical tab (hex code 07)
\t	Horizontal tab (hex code 09)
\f	Form feed (hex code 0C)
\<any other character>	<any other character>

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