areaDetector Release Notes

Release 2-0 and later

Starting with areaDetector R2-0 the release notes are no longer in this document, but are in the following locations.

• The top-level release notes for areaDetector are in github.com/areaDetector/areaDetector/RELEASE.md.
• The release notes for the base classes and plugins are in github.com/areaDetector/ADCore/RELEASE.md.
• The release notes for the each detector are in the repository for that detector. For example, for the Pilatus detector github.com/areaDetector/ADPilatus/RELEASE.md.

Release 1-9-1 (11-March-2013)

• R1-9 does not work with detectors that use TCP socket servers (Pilatus, marCCD, mar345, PSL, and Bruker) because drvAsynIPPort.dbd was not being included.
• marCCD: Fixed mutex bug introduced in R1-9.
• commonDriverPlugins.cmd: Added loading yySseq.db for string sequence record. This allows creation of simple acquisition sequences, for example:
  1. Close shutter, wait 0.1 seconds
  2. Take image (dark current), wait for acquisition to complete
  3. Open shutter, wait 0.1 seconds
  4. Take image
• Pilatus driver:
  • Added new HeaderString record which writes a string in the comments of a CBF file. Thanks to Richard Fearn from DLS for this.
  • Added documentation for the CbfTemplateFile record which was added in R1-8.

Release 1-9 (27-February-2013)

• NDArray
  • Changed some variables that were previously int to size_t. This allows areaDetector to handle arrays with more elements than an int can represent. This is not backwards compatible with some drivers and plugins, because for example, the dims[] argument to NDArrayPool->alloc() has been changed from int to size_t. All drivers and plugins in areaDetector have been modified to reflect this change, but user-written drivers and plugins may need some minor modifications.
• Drivers
  • New Andor3 driver for sCMOS (e.g. Neo and Zyla) cameras from Andor. This uses Version 3 of the Andor Software Development Kit (SDK). Orginal version was written by Phillip Sorensen from Cornell University. It runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows.
  • Bruker, Pilatus, marCCD, and mar345 drivers. The driver lock was not being taken in a few places when the parameter library was being accessed. This could lead to crashes.
  • Prosilica driver. Thanks to Jason Abernathy from University of Victoria for these enhancements.
    • Implemented connection management. Cameras no longer need to be accessible when the IOC starts up, and can be power-cycled or disconnected and reconnected from the Ethernet without restarting the IOC. If the camera is not accessible when the IOC boots, or is power-cycled then the EPICS output records may not match the actual camera settings and readbacks. They can be made to agree by processing the output record, e.g. by pressing Enter or Return in the medm output widget.
    • Added new record PSTimestampType which contains the type of time stamp in the NDArrays. Choices are "NativeTicks", "NativeSeconds","POSIX", and "EPICS". Previously the time stamp was always "NativeTicks".
    • Added new record PSResetTimer which resets the time offset for time stamps.
• Plugins
  • NDPluginDriver:
    • Fixed a bug that could result in plugins being registered for callbacks multiple times.
    • Fixed a bug that could result in plugins not running when they should if MinCallbackTime was 0 and the time between callbacks was less than one system clock tick.
    • Fixed a bug that could result in plugins not being registered for callbacks when setting EnableCallbacks=1. This problem was restricted to the case where the port and address were not being autoconnected, because no EPICS records were connected to that port and address. Removed incorrect code that was using exceptionDisconnect and exceptionConnect when connecting a plugin to a port and address.
    • Changed the names of the plugin threads from "NDPluginTask" to portName+"_Plugin" to make them more meaningful.
  • NDPluginStats: Changes to allow centroid and profile calculations for 1-D arrays.
  • NDPluginROI: Added new parameters AutoSize[X,Y,Z]. If these are true then the size of the ROI in that dimension is automatically set to be the size of the input array minus the Min[X,Y,Z] value. This allows the ROI plugin to be used for binning or reversing in that dimension without having to change the ROI Size[X,Y,Z] when the input array size changes.
  • NDFileNexus: Changed the version of the Nexus SDK being used from 4-2-1 to version 4-3-0. Modified the files in this distribution to eliminate all compiler warnings on Windows, Linux, and Darwin. Sent these changes back to the Nexus developers, so hopefully they will be in the next Nexus release as well.
  • NDFileNetCDF:
    • Fixed bug that caused invalid files to be written on big-endian machines, e.g. vxWorks.
    • Increased default stack size from epicsThreadStackMedium to epicsThreadStackBig because netCDF needs a relatively large stack and it was crashing on vxWorks.
  • NDFileDummy: Added NDFileHDF5Register and NDFileNullRegister, needed for running areaDetector on vxWorks.
• ImageJ Viewer
  • Upgraded CAJ from 1.1.5 to 1.1.10, and JCA from 2.3.2 to 2.3.6. This fixes a problem on some platforms (e.g. Windows 7 64-bit) where the display viewer would occasionally stop receiving CA monitor callbacks, and so the display would freeze until the PVs were disconnected and reconnected.
  • The previous version of CAJ did not require setting EPICS_CA_MAX_ARRAY_BYTES, because it would increase the receive buffer size to whatever was required. This is no longer true, so EPICS_CA_MAX_ARRAY_BYTES must be set to at least the size of the largest array to be displayed.
  • The previous version of CAJ required setting the EPICS Channel Access parameters in a JCALibrary.properties file. The parameters could not be set from the normal environment variables (e.g. EPICS_CA_MAX_ARRAY_BYTES, EPICS_CA_ADDR_LIST, etc.) used by the IOC and C language clients. The new versions of CAJ and JCA now support a Java system property called "jca.use_env". If this is set to "true" then it enables the use of the normal EPICS environment variables. This is very convenient, since there is now a single place to set the CA parameters for IOCs, C clients, and Java clients.
  • EPICS_AD_Display now sets "jca.use_env=true" before it initializes CAJ, enabling the use of the normal EPICS environment variables.
• Build system
  • Changed the build system so that the use of GraphicsMagick is optional. If the RELEASE file defines USE_GRAPHICSMAGICK=YES then the URL driver and the NDFileMagick plugin will be built. This makes it easy to build without GraphicsMagick, which can be necessary when using compiler versions which are incompatible with the GraphicsMagick libraries included with areaDetector.
  • On Windows the TIFF and JPEG support comes from GraphicsMagick DLLs if USE_GRAPHICSMAGICK=YES. To enable the use of TIFF and JPEG when GraphicsMagick is not being used the TIFF and JPEG libraries are now also built from source code in the ADApp/tiffSupport directory on Windows. Which version of the TIFF and JPEG library to link with is chosen in commonDriverMakefile based on the value of USE_GRAPHICSMAGICK.
  • Fixes to allow building on Darwin. Thanks to Lewis Muir for these.
  • Many minor changes to avoid compiler warnings on Linux, Windows, and Darwin. The only remaining compiler warnings come from imported packages, such as netCDF.

Release 1-8 (6-October-2012)

• Base classes
  • ADDriver
    • Added new parameter ADTemperatureActual and new record TemperatureActual, so that the setpoint temperature and actual temperature are now separate parameters.
    • Added 3 new values to the ADStatus_t enum: ADStatusInitializing, ADStatusDisconnected, and ADStatusAborted.
  • NDArray
    • The documented behavior of the maxBuffers and maxMemory arguments to the constructor has been changed. Previously the value -1 was documented to indicate "unlimited".
    • However, these arguments have type size_t, so -1 is actually not a valid value, and in fact "unlimited" was being used if the value was < 1. The new documented behavior is that 0 should be used to indicate "unlimited".
    • Startup scripts should be modified to reflect this change, but old startup scripts using -1 will continue to work. Example startup scripts have all been corrected.
  • asynNDArrayDriver
    • Added new parameters: NDPoolMaxMemory, NDPoolUsedMemory, NDPoolMaxBuffers, NDPoolAllocBuffers, NDPoolFreeBuffers) to monitor memory and buffer usage. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen for this addition.
    • Always create an NDArrayPool. Previously it did not create an NDArrayPool if maxMemory and maxBuffers were both 0. 0 now means unlimited, so we need to create always.
• Drivers
  • New Andor driver. Orginal version by Matt Pearson from Diamond Light Source. This driver supports both USB and PCI cameras from Andor. It runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. This driver only supports the Andor CCD cameras, not the new Neo and Zyla sCMOS cameras. The sCMOS cameras use a new SDK library, and will be supported in the next release.
  • Perkin Elmer driver. Many new features:
    • Added support for detectors with Gigabit Ethernet interfaces (e.g. model 0822).
    • Added support for 64-bit Windows.
    • Added support for binning. The allowed binning modes (X,Y) are (1,1), (2,2), (4,4), (1,2), and (1,4).
    • Added shutter control for EPICS shutter. Shutter opens and closes automatically when collecting gain images or normal images, and always closes before collecting offset images.
    • Added new records (PECurrentOffsetFrame, PECurrentGainFrame) to provide operator feedback when acquiring offset and gain images. The PEAcquireOffset and PEAcquireGain records have been changed to "busy" records so that clients can use ca_put_callback to wait for the operation to complete.
    • Added an additional ImageMode="Average". In this mode NumImages frames are averaged in the Perkin Elmer driver. This is useful for long acquisition times, because the maximum acquisition time that the hardware supports in Internal trigger mode is 5 seconds. NOTE: There is a bug in the current Perkin Elmer SDK library which causes a memory leak if the number of frames to average is 2^N (2,4,8,16, etc.) on optical interface frame grabbers. This problem can be worked around by average a different number of frames (7 rather than 8 for example). It will be fixed in the next release of their SDK.
    • Removed the maxSizeX, maxSizeY, and dataType arguments from the PerkinElmerConfig() command. These values are now determined automatically. This means that startup scripts need to be modified.
    • Improved performance of driver, eliminated unneeded copying of data, reduced lines of code by 10%.
    • Demonstrated ability to stream data continuously to local disk at 15 frames/s at 2048x2048 (120 MB/s) and 30 frames/s at 1024x1024 (60 MB/s). These tests were done on a Windows 7 64-bit machine with 2 disk drives (SAS, 15K RPM, RAID 0).
  • PSL driver.
    • Added support for getting images from the camera for callbacks.
    • Changes to support new version of PSL socket server syntax.
    • Many improvements from testing with working detector.
  • Pilatus driver. Thanks to Matt Pearson from Diamond Light Source for most of these changes.
    • Allow NumExposures > 1 in all modes. It was previously limiting NumExposures to 1 in all modes except ExternalEnable. It is actually only very useful in ExternalEnable mode, but we now allow it in all modes.
    • Fixed bug with the driver timeout when NumExposures > 1. Previously the driver could time out before the exposure sequence was complete.
    • Improved documentation to emphasize the importance of setting AcquireTime and AcquirePeriod correctly in ExternalEnable mode.
    • New records for detector temperature and humidity, and a driver thread to poll these values.
    • Read back the actual value of the threshold.
    • Read the Tau value when setting the exposure time.
    • New record with TVX version number, read at startup.
    • Disabled unused records from ADBase.template.
    • Fixed a problem reporting a read timeout error from camserver each time an image was acquired.
    • Fixed a problem if the user aborted an acquisition twice in a row.
    • Fixed thread polling for Threshold, as it wasn't working for 2M or 6M detectors.
    • Added a 2s delay when aborting an acquisition, which seems to be needed to allow camserver time to clean up in some modes.
    • Improved error reporting for multi frame acqusitions, when callbacks are turned off.
    • Fixed a race condition to ensure we don't miss a stopEvent if we are doing a successful read from camserver.
    • Added an automatic stop when getting a timeout from camserver, if we got no response (this prevents camserver and the pilatus driver getting out of sync.)
    • Fixed race conditions that meant we occasionally read back the wrong ADStatus at the end of an exposure.
    • Fixed a race condition in pilatusTask, that can cause a problem reading ADStatus if we sent a start and a stop in quick succession (before the pilatusTask thread had time to run).
    • Added support for setting cbf_template_file.
    • Turned off auto reconnect on the Asyn port, to force a IOC reboot if camserver if has been restarted.
    • Fixed logic for setting the threshold, if we have auto apply turned off.
    • Modified the Pilatus driver to take advantage of the new aborted state, ie. replaced some of the ADErrors with ADStatusAborted.
  • Prosilica driver. Added support for the following:
    • FrameStartTriggerDelay: Delay between trigger signal and actual frame start.
    • FrameStartTriggerEvent: Edge or level of signal to use for trigger.
    • FrameStartTriggerOverlap: Trigger handling when the previous frame is incomplete.
    • FrameStartTriggerSoftware: Software trigger when TriggerMode=Software.
    • PacketSize: When connecting to the camera the driver has always automatically found the largest packet size that the camera and IOC computer support. This new read-only record provides the actual packet size.
    • Fixed bug which arose if MinX + SizeX was greater than MaxSizeX (same for Y). This is an invalid geometry, but their library does not return an error status, and silently reduces SizeX. However, it has a subtle bad side-effect; subsequent attempts to change the AcquireTime or AcquirePeriod do not return errors, but they do not take effect until the IOC is rebooted! Fixed the problem by reducing SizeX or SizeY if the requested region would be larger than the chip.
    • Updated the support libraries to PvAPI V1.26. This means that Windows users should install V1.26 of the Sample Viewer program so that they are running a compatible version (V1.22) of the packet filter driver.
    • Added the PvAPI library version to the report() function, to see what version of the library the driver was built with.
  • Firewire Windows driver. Added READOUT_TIME parameter. The sum of the AcquireTime plus the READOUT_TIME controls how long to wait before a frame timeout occurs. Previously a hardcoded value of 1.0 second was used, which was too short for some slow cameras.
  • URL driver. Bug fix to prevent infinite loop if there is an error reading the image. Thanks to Wang Xiaoqiang from PSI for finding this problem.
  • Simulation driver. Improvements in handling of ADStatus and ADStatusMessage, support new ADStatusAborted status.
• Plugins
  • General
    • Added new records (QueueSize, QueueFree, QueueFreeLow) to monitor queue usage by all plugins. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen for this addition.
    • Added new records (PoolMaxMem, PoolUsedMem, PoolMaxBuffers, PoolAllocBuffers, PoolFreeBuffers, PoolUsedBuffers) to monitor memory and buffer usage by plugins that produce NDArray outputs that other plugins attach to. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen for this addition.
  • NDPluginFile.
    • Added 2 new records, WriteStatus and WriteMessage to display status of file writing operations. Write status is a bi record with values "WriteOK" (0) and "WriteError" (1). WriteMessage is a waveform record containing a string with any error messages. The NDFilePlugin base class now updates these records for each file open or file write operation. All of the file plugin medm screens have been updated to display these new PVs.
    • Fixed bugs that caused crashes if memory allocation failed in Capture Mode.
  • NDFileTIFF.
    • Previously TIFF files were being written without the SampleFormat TIFF tag. This meant that the file did not distinguish between signed and unsigned integers, and floating point TIFF files were not supported. Some readers, notably the Python Imaging Library (PIL), do not recognize 32-bit TIFF files unless they contain the SampleFormat tag.
    • Added the SampleFormat TIFF tag, and added support for 32-bit and 64-bit floating point arrays. The plugin can now write TIFF files with any NDArray type (Int8, UInt8, Int16, UInt16, Int32, UInt32, Float32, and Float64). IDL can read TIFF files with all of these data types. ImageJ can read all except Float64. PIL can read all except Int8, UInt32, and Float64.
    • Write the timestamp of the array to a special TIFF tag. TIFF has a standard timestamp field, but unfortunately it has to be 20 characters in a standard date/time format so it cannot store time to sub-second precision, so a custom tag was necessary. Thanks to Tom Cobb for this.
    • Added a NULL file name pointer check.
  • NDFileHDF5.
    • The first change below is from Michael Davidsaver, the rest are from Ulrik Pedersen.
    • Added a flag to allow building with HDF5 1.8.4 and above.
    • Fixed segfault that could occur when trying to write a single frame with an uninitialised plugin.
    • Added feature to do file flushing on every Nth frame.
    • Added feature to write the current hostname to the metadata in the output file.
    • Changed to not close and reopen datasets for each write as this causes a crash on windows-x64 platform when using caching in the hdf5 library -i.e. when chunking a 3D dataset in the first (frame) dimension,
    • Various fixes to reduce buildtime errors and warnings on the 64bit windows platform.
    • Added HDF5 library version number to the module name string.
    • Added ability to change the chunking size for columns and captured frames in addition to the number of rows.
    • Improved error handling when failing to open file, create dataset or write a frame.
    • Added boundary alignment, boundary threshold, and setting istore_k parameter.
    • Check for failure to create a new file.
  • NDFileNexus.
    • Fixed a bug which caused the plugin to crash with the example iocSimDetector/NexusTemplate.xml template file. It could use a null object pointer in some circumstances.
    • Fixed a bug which cause the plugin to use stale attributes when creating files in Stream or Capture modes. Thanks to Kevin Peterson for this fix.
    • Fixed a bug that caused it to ignore the NDArrayPort PV, so the array source could not be changed from that in the startup script (i.e. change to ROI1, etc.).
    • Increased the stack size for this plugin in iocBoot/commonPlugins.cmd, because it was crashing with a stack overflow on windows-x64.
  • NDFileNull.
    • New file plugin which does not write anything. It is designed only delete the original driver file after it has been read back in using the DeleteDriverFile support.
  • NDPluginProcess
    • Renamed the filter type "RecursiveSum" to "Average", which is a more accurate description.
    • Added new filter type "Sum" which is a true sum of NumFilter arrays.
    • Added new bo record, AutoResetFilter. If enabled then when NumFiltered=NumFilter the filter automatically resets. This can be very useful when using the Average or Sum filter modes. As soon as N sums or averages have been performed the filter resets so the next sum or average is computed.
    • Added new bo record, FilterCallbacks with choices "Every array" and "Array N only". "Every array" selects the previous behavior, where the plugin does callbacks for every incoming array it receives. "Array N only" causes the plugin to only do callbacks when NumFiltered=NumFilter. This can be very useful when using the Sum or Average filter modes. Callbacks are then done only when N sums or averages have been performed. If used with AutoResetFilter then as input arrays arrive the plugin will continually output one summed or averaged array after every N incoming arrays.
    • Improved the logic of the SaveBackground and SaveFlatField parameters. Previously they saved the next frame received after the Save request as the background or flat field. This behavior was not what was documented, expected or desired. The documented behaviour is to save the current frame when the SaveBackground or SaveFlatField is done, and the driver has been changed to do this.
    • Set default values for the recursive filter coefficients in the template file for recursive filter with scale factors of 1.0. The previous defaults were 0.0 for all coefficients, which produced all zero output arrays. Selecting a predefined filter did not fix this problem, because that does not set the values of OScale and FScale.
    • Fixed errors in the template file for the readback values of the filter coefficients. They had DTYP=asynInt32, corrected to asynFloat64.
    • Added new record AutoOffsetScale. Processing this record will enable Offset and Scale calculations, and set the Offset=-min(input) and Scale=MaxScale/(max(input)-min(input)), where MaxScale is the maximum value of the output data type. The input image will thus be scaled to completely fill the range of the output data type. Thanks to Tom Cobb for this addition.
  • NDPluginStats
    • New statistics added which give the X and Y pixel locations of the minimum and maximum values, MinX_RBV, MinY_RBV, MaxX_RBV, MaY_RBV. Note that these are only valid for 2-D monochromatic images. Thanks to Tom Cobb for these additions.
    • Time-series arrays
      • Changed code so that time series are collected internally in the plugin, rather than using callbacks to the fastSweep device support for the mca record. This is more efficient, and eliminates the dependence of the areaDetector module on the mca module.
      • NOTE: This change is not backwards compatible. Clients that are collecting time-series data with the mca record will need to be modified to use the new PVs that are now provided in this plugin.
      • Time series data is now available for all basic statistics and centroid statistics. Previously it was only available for Total, Net, and Max.
      • New PVs to control time series collection and provide status on it.
      • New medm screen, NDTimeSeries.adl, to display time series data.
    • Fixed a bug that degraded driver performance in some circumstances. The plugin was not releasing the lock during come computationally expensive operations, which would cause the driver to wait when queueing the next array during a callback.
  • NDPluginROI
    • Added new demonstration database, NDROI_sync.template, that synchronizes an ROI to be the size of the entire detector. This is useful when the detector binning or readout region is changed.
• Support libraries. The static Linux support libraries provided in R1-7 were built on a Fedora Core 9 system (gcc 4.3.0) for 32-bit linux-x86, and on a Fedora Core 14 system (gcc 4.5.1) for 64-bit linux-x86_64. Problems arose when trying to build with these libraries or to run the pre-built binaries on older Linux systems, e.g. those with gcc 4.1.2. These were fixed as follows:
  • The Prosilica libPvAPI.a file had been taken from the AVT gcc 4.3 directory. This was replaced with the one from the gcc 4.1 directory because the 4.3 version requires a newer version of GLIBCXX.
  • The HDF5 library had been built with the default -std=c99. This caused the function isoc99_sscanf() to be called instead of sscanf(), and the former function does not exist on older Linux systems. The HDF library was rebuilt with -std=gnu89 on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux.
  • libGraphicsMagic++.a on 64-bit was invoking std::_List_mode_base functions that do not exist in earlier versions of GLIBCXX. GraphicsMagick was rebuilt on an older Linux system (gcc 4.2.1) for 64-bit Linux.
• New host architectures, linux-x86-gcc43 and linxux-86_64-gcc42. Most libraries and binaries for the linux-86 and linux-x86_64 architectures are now built with gcc 4.6.3 on a 2.6.43 Linux kernel. These binaries will not run on older Linux systems because of incompatibilities in the GCC and C run-time libraries. Binaries built on older Linux architectures are now also provided. For 32-bits the architecture is called linux-x86-gcc43 and is built with gcc 4.3.0 on a 2.6.27 Linux kernel. For 64-bits the architecture is called linux-x86_64-gcc42 and is built with gcc 4.2.1 on a 2.6.27 Linux kernel. Users with older Linux systems should be able to run one of these architectures.
• OPI files
  • New medm screen, commonPlugins.adl. This screen provides an overview of the status of all the common plugins, and allows one to enable/disable and change the asyn source port. ADPlugins.adl which is included on all the detector medm screens now contains an "All" button to load commonPlugins.adl.
  • New directory, ADApp/op/opi, which contains CSS-BOY screens. Thanks to Erik Hanson for providing these.
  • New directory, ADApp/op/edl, which contains EDM screens. Thanks to the folks from Diamond for providing these.
• Miscellaneous
  • Fixes to commonDriverMakefile to build on Darwin (OS X).
  • Removed dependence of areaDetector on the synApps mca module. The mca module was being used only to collect time-series data of the statistics in the NDPluginStats plugin. NDPluginStats has been changed to collect this time-series itself, using only standard waveform records with asyn device support.
  • Fixes to build on Darwin.
  • Increased stack size for HDF5 plugin in commonPlugins.cmd to avoid stack overflow on Windows.
  • Fixed memory leak in constructor for paramAttribute. Thanks to Jason Abernathy from the University of Victoria for finding this.
  • Renamed netCDFSrc/include to netCDFSrc/inc to work around a bug in make 3.82 on Cygwin.

Release 1-7 (09-August-2011)

• General
  • Added support for Mac OS X (Darwin). Thanks to Eric Norum and Lewis Muir for this.
  • Added support for 64-bit Windows, windows-x64.
  • Replaced FTVL=UCHAR with FTVL=CHAR in all waveform records, so they can be written to with dbpf from the IOC shell.
  • Improved XML files for NDArray attributes and Nexus template files. Added a shell script to validate XML files. Note: the attribute values for datatype and dbrtype have been case-insensitive in the past. In the next release of areaDetector this will be changed to require uppercase for these values. The next release will also change the syntax of the Attribute element by moving the content of the type attribute to become the element name. For example the line:
    <Attribute name="AcquireTime" type="EPICS_PV" source="13SIM1:cam1:AcquireTime" dbrtype="dbr_native" description="Camera acquire time"/>
    must be changed to
    <EPICS_PV name="AcquireTime" source="13SIM1:cam1:AcquireTime" dbrtype="DBR_NATIVE" description="Camera acquire time"/>
    and
    <Attribute name="CameraManufacturer" type="PARAM" source="MANUFACTURER" datatype="string" description="Camera manufacturer"/>
    must be changed to
    <PARAM name="CameraManufacturer" source="MANUFACTURER" datatype="STRING" description="Camera manufacturer"/>
    This change will make it much easier to validate the XML files. Thanks to Pete Jemian for these changes.
  • On Windows if NDFilePath has a trailing '\' then preserve it, else add a '/' character if one is not present.
• Drivers
  • New URL driver which reads images from any URL, including Web cameras and Axis video servers. This driver uses GraphicsMagick to read the images, and can thus handle a large number of image formats (JPEG, TIFF, PNG, etc.).
  • New driver for Bruker BIS (Bruker Instrument Service) detectors. There was a preliminary version of this driver in the apex2Src directory in R1-6. It is now fully functional. and should work with any BIS detector, not just the Apex2.
  • New driver for Photonic Sciences Ltd. (PSL) detectors. This driver currently can do everything except read the data back from the detector. That capability needs to be added, which requires access to a PSL detector for development and testing.
  • Simulation driver. Added additional simulation mode for Gaussian peaks. John Hammonds added this feature.
  • Changed the setShutter() function in ADDriver.h to be a virtual function, which it should have been all along. The base-class implementation for an EPICS shutter is now used by default. Changed the drivers to use the virtual function.
  • Initialized ADAcquire to 0 in ADDriver::ADDriver. In R1-6 ADAcquire was not initialized, and if it had a non-zero value at iocInit then the IOC could crash with some drivers, e.g. simDetector.
  • Pilatus driver.
    • Added support for camserver saving data in the CBF file format, which is ~4X smaller than TIFF, and for additional header information in the files for crystallography. Thanks to Lewis Muir for these additions.
    • Set FullFilename_RBV for each file in a multi-image sequence, which was not previously being done.
    • Several changes from Emma Shepherd at DLS to improve error handling.
    • Added GapFill record to control what value camserver puts in the data files in the gaps between modules in multi-element Pilatus detectors.
    • Added ThresholdAutoApply and ThresholdApply records. These allow only sending the gain and threshold energy once to camserver, rather than each time either is changed. This can speed operations significantly on larger detectors. For example, on the 6M it takes 78 seconds for camserver to execute the SetThreshold command.
  • Prosilica driver.
    • Added support for opening cameras by IP address or IP DNS name, in addition to UniqueID. This allows communicating with cameras that are not on the local subnet. The change is backwards compatible with existing iocsh startup scripts.
    • Added new records PSByteRate and PSByteRate_RBV that control and read the StreamBytesPerSecond parameter in the Prosilica PvAPI driver. This allows limiting the bandwidth that a camera uses. It also allows operation of GigE cameras on non-Gigabit Ethernet networks.
    • Added new parameter, maxPvAPIFrames, to the prosilicaConfig command in the startup script. This parameter controls how many frame buffers are allocated in the PvAPI driver. This is the last parameter in the prosilicaConfig command, and if it is absent the default value of 2 is used, which is sufficient in most circumstances. However, with very high frame rates or busy IOCs increasing this value can reduce dropped frames.
    • Removed support for writing TIFF files using the driver library. This was a problem because their driver uses an incompatible version of libtiff that conflicts with the new version used by GraphicsMagick. The driver TIFF writer had no advantage over using the NDFileTIFF and NDFileMagick plugins, which have more features and can run in their own threads.
    • Fixed a bug that could cause a blue-screen crash on Windows 7. The new version of their library requires clearing a structure to 0 before using it.
    • Send command to stop acquistion when first connecting to a camera. This fixes a problem when connecting to CMOS cameras that were left in the acquiring state when the IOC exited.
    • Upgraded to version 1.24 of the AVT SDK, and 1.20 of the Windows filter driver. Users should install the latest Sample Viewer and filter driver 1.20 on Windows machines so that the areaDetector application can use the filter driver. The filter driver version in areaDetector must match the one installed on Windows in order to use it.
• Plugins
  • NDPluginFile: Added a new record called DeleteDriverFile. This record allows the file writing plugins to delete the "original" file that the driver created for that array. This can be useful for detectors that must write the data to disk in order for the areaDetector driver to read it back. Once a file-writing plugin has rewritten the data in another format it can be desireable to then delete the original file. The file is only deleted if the following are all true:
    1. The DeleteDriverFile record is "Yes".
    2. The file plugin has successfully written a new file.
    3. The array contains an attribute called "DriverFileName" that contains the full file name of the original file. The driver attributes XML file should contain a line like the following:
       <Attribute name="DriverFileName" type="PARAM" source="FULL_FILE_NAME" datatype="string" description="Driver file name"/>
       
  • NDPluginFile: Added support for getting the file name and file number from array attributes rather than from the normal EPICS PVs. Having the file information come from the array allows the driver to control which plugin saves a particular array. For example, there may be two file writing plugins active; the first saves the flat field files for a tomography experiment, and the second saves the normal projections, each streaming data to a separate file. The driver knows which files are flat fields and which are normal projections, and adds the appropriate attributes to control which plugin saves each array. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen for this addition.
  • NDPluginFile: Added XML Schema file (iocBoot/attributes.xsd) to allow syntax validation of an NDArray driver attributes XML file.
  • New file writing plugin, NDFileHDF5. This plugin writes HDF5 files with the native HDF5 API, unlike the NeXus plugin which uses the NeXus API. It supports 3 types of compression. Thanks to Ulrik Pedersen at Diamond Light Source for providing this plugin.
  • New file writing plugin, NDFileMagick. This uses GraphicsMagick to write files, and can write in dozens of file formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PDF, etc.
  • Fixed problem with NDPluginTransform. It was holding the lock while it did computationally intensive tasks. This slowed down the driver from which the plugin was getting its data, because the driver was forced to wait to queue the next frame until the plugin was done processing. The new version behaves correctly, dropping frames when the plugin cannot keep up, rather than slowing down the driver.
  • NDPluginColorConvert. Added support for false color when converting 8-bit mono to RGB1, RGB2, or RGB3. Thanks to Tom Cobb for this addition.
  • NDPluginStats. Removed duplicate record for MeanValue_RBV from NDStats.template.
  • NDFileNetCDF. Upgraded from netCDF 3.6.2 to netCDF 4.1.3. Fixed bug which was causing crashes when when writing files >2GB on win32-x86. netCDF files of any size can now be written on all platforms.
  • NDFileNexus. This is now built from the NeXus source code on all platforms, rather than including prebuilt binaries in nexusSupport. Upgraded from Nexus 4.2.0 to 4.2.1, which fixes a stack overflow problem with the default stack size on win32-x86. Removed support for HDF4 and XML files, only HDF5 is now supported. Thanks to Jeff Gebhardt for initially doing this.
  • NDFileNexus: Added Schematron file (iocBoot/template.sch) to allow syntax validation of a NeXus template XML file.
  • NDFileNexus: Now recognizes all current NeXus base class names (was missing some newer base classes such as NXcollection).
• Viewers
  • ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer. Additional sanity check in code to see if EPICS PVs are connected, prevent dereferencing a null pointer. Thanks to Lewis Muir for this.
• Internals
  • Greatly simplified the Makefiles in each driver source directory by having them each include a common Makefile.
  • Greatly simplified the dbd files in each driver source directory by having them each include a common dbd file.
  • Renamed pluginSupport.dbd to NDPluginSupport.dbd, and made individual DBD files for each plugin to make it easy for external software to use only a subset of the plugins.
  • Removed nexusSupport directory, which had previously contained prebuilt versions of the NeXus library, as well as prebuilt versions of the HDF5 support library. This was replaced with a NeXusSrc directory which builds the NeXus library from source code on all platforms. This is currently version NeXus 4.2.1. A new support directory, hdf5Support, was added which contains the header files and prebuilt libraries for HDF5. This is currently version 1.8.7 of HDF5.
  • Use CYCGWIN_RPC_LIB variable when building on Cygwin to allow either Cygwin 1.5.x or 1.7.x.
  • Minor changes to many drivers and plugins to allow building dynamically (DLLs) on WIN32.
  • Added methods to the NDArray class to provide access to maxBuffers, numBuffers, etc.
  • Removed JPEG and TIFF libraries on win32-x86, they are not needed because the libraries are part of GraphicsMagick.
  • Changed Makefiles so they will work correctly with the -debug variant on the target archs.
  • Install ADApp/Db/*.template files as part of build process.
  • Changed NDArrayPool so that it will free the memory in NDArrays in the pool to permit allocating one with sufficient memory to satisfy an alloc() request. Thanks to Tim Madden for the initial version of this.

Release 1-6 (20-May-2010)

• General
  • Converted to be compatible with asynPortDriver in asyn R4-13, which changes parameter handling.
  • Changes to support 64-bit architectures, including linux-x86_64. This also required changes to the synApps modules on which areaDetector applications depend (autosave, busy, etc.)
  • Changes in Makefiles to support the win32-x86-debug architecture.
  • Added status parameter to indicate if the specified file path (NDFilePath) exists. Added a record to NDFile.template and a status indicator to all medm file saving screens.
  • Append a trailing '/' character to file path (NDFilePath) if one is not present.
• Drivers
  • Fixed a bug in the Roper driver. There was a buffer overflow problem in the function that converts C strings to Windows BSTR strings. This would cause the IOC to crash when saving SPE files with Comment PVs longer than 40 characters.
  • Many fixes to Windows Firewire driver:
    • Added dropped frame counter.
    • Fixed timeout problem with acquire times > 1 second.
    • Fixed logic when acquisition was turned off
    • Fixed problem with constructor when it encountered a minor error; was causing capture thread not to be started for some cameras.
    • Implemented AcquireTime parameter, previously the time could only be changed via a Firewire feature.
    • Fixed bug when setting a feature value in non-absolute mode after it was set in absolute mode.
    • Removed the ability to change video modes, formats or rates when acquiring because it is too complex to stop and wait for it to be done.
    • Report details for all supported Firewire "features" in report() function, called by asynReport() and dbior().
  • pvCam driver. Fixed problem with exposure time being rounded to integer. Add PVs to provide version information for software and firmware where possible. Add PVs to provide serial numbers where possible. Perform checks on parameters that are not available for all cameras.
  • ADSC driver. Fixed a bug where it would not correctly load the per-image parameters for the first image in a dataset if they were changed after the acquisition was started but before the first image was taken. Added ability to write simulated data to disk in the simulation driver.
  • Pilatus driver. Increased the timeout for the SetThreshold command to camserver from 3 seconds to 90 seconds, because it takes almost this long to execute on the Pilatus 6M.
  • marCCD driver. Added support for baseline stabilization, which is done with the "set stability" and "get stability" remote commands. Baseline stabilization is an extra-cost option for marCCD, so this command only has any affect if that option is present. But all versions of marCCD understand the command remote command syntax, so there is no problem if the option is not installed.
    Changed the TwoTheta record from a stringout to ao, and this value is now always sent with the "header" remote command. This requires that the string "theta_display_name TwoTheta" be present in one of the marCCD configuration files that gets loaded, typically in goniostat_none.conf or goniostat_sw.conf.
• Plugins
  • NDPluginROI. Major rewrite. Previously the ROI plugin supported multiple ROIs, performed statistics calculations, and highlighted the ROIs. The new version is much simpler; it supports only a single ROI, and does not calculate statistics or do highlighting. Those functions have been moved to new plugins. One new function has been added, the ability to divide the array by a scale factor, which is useful for avoiding overflow when binning. Fixed problem when a single color is extracted from a color image; it now removes the unused dimension and changes the colorMode to mono.
  • NDPluginColorConvert. Added conversions from mono to RGB1, RGB2, and RGB3, and from RGB1, RGB2, and RGB3 to mono. Previously this plugin only built on Linux and WIN32. Now it builds and does all conversions except Bayer on all architectures. Bayer conversion is restricted to Linux and WIN32.
  • Added new NDPluginStats plugin. This plugin calculates statistics on an array. It replaces the statistics calculations that were previously performed in the ROI plugin. It adds new statistics, including the centroid position and width. It also computes X and Y profiles, including average profiles, profiles at the centroid position, and profiles at a user-defined cursor position. Thanks to Stephen Mudie from the Australian Synchrotron, John Dobbins from Cornell, and Huijuan Xu from Brookhaven National Lab for the initial versions of these calculations.
  • Added new NDPluginProcess plugin. This plugin does arithmetic processing on arrays:
    • Background subtraction.
    • Flat field normalization.
    • Offset and scale.
    • Low and high clipping.
    • Recursive filtering in the time domain.
    • Conversion to a different output data type.
  • Added new NDPluginOverlay plugin. This plugin adds graphic overlays to an image. It replaces the "Highligh ROIs" function that was previously provided in the ROI plugin. But it is much more general, and can be used to display not only ROIs, but multiple cursors, user-defined boxes, etc.
• Example IOCs
  • Greatly simplified the st.cmd and auto_settings.req files for each IOC. This was done by creating two new files: iocBoot/commonPlugins.cmd and iocBoot/commonPlugin_settings.req. These files define a common set of plugins that are loaded for all example IOCs. They load all of the plugins except the NDPluginStdArrays plugin, because that plugin needs to have its data type and waveform size matched to the specific detector.
• medm screens
  • Created medm screen "components" which are used in actual screens via the "composite file" mechanism wherever possible. This simplifies the maintenance of the medm screens for detectors and plugins.
• Viewers
  • Fixed a bug in the ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer.java that required restarting the plugin if it was told to start displaying before any frames had been acquired by the IOC.
  • Fixed bugs in the ImageJ EPICS_AD_Viewer.java that caused an exception when trying to deference a null window pointer. Some of these bugs only became apparent when running the latest version of ImageJ (1.43U) which will not work with previous releases of EPICS_AD_Viewer.java.
• Internals
  • Added new form of NDArrayPool::convert that only changed data type, does not take dims argument.
  • Added more fields to the NDArrayInfo_t structure and the NDArray::getInfo method to simplify handling color images.
• Known problems. This release of areaDetector exposed two bugs in EPICS 3.14.11. Links to the required patches can be found on the EPICS 3.4.11 Known Problems page.
  • The epicsThreadOnceOsd problem can cause crashes with an "assert" error on IOC initialization on Win32 systems.
  • The macLib problem can cause crashes or memory corruption when the commonPlugins.cmd script expands lines with macros longer than 256 characters.

Release 1-5 (23-August-2009)

• General
  • Added "attributes" to NDArray. Attributes are used to contain metadata about the array. Each attribute has a name, description, datatype and value. Attributes can be added by drivers or plugins, and travel with the array through the plugin chain, and can ultimately be written with the array data to a file. Attributes can come from driver or plugin parameters, or from EPICS PVs anywhere on the network.
  • Separated parameters and functions which are general to NDArray data (asynNDArrayDriver base class) from those which are specific to areaDetector data (ADDriver base class). This makes it easy and clean to use asynNDArray driver for future applications beyond areaDetector, such as drivers for the XIA xMAP digital spectroscopy system.
• Drivers
  • New driver for mar345 online image plate detector. This driver communicates via a TCP/IP socket with the mar345dtb program, which must be used to control the detector.
  • New driver for Firewire IIDC/DCAM cameras under Windows. This driver uses the Windows 1394 camera driver from Carnegie Mellon University.
  • New driver for the Perkin-Elmer amorphous silicon flat panel detectors. Thanks to Brian Tieman and John Hammonds for this driver.
  • New driver for the Roper Scientific detectors using the PVCAM library. Thanks to Brian Tieman for this driver.
  • Added support for color to the simulation detector driver. It now supports color modes Mono, RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3.
  • Fixed 2 serious bugs in the Roper driver. It was not selecting ROI mode correctly. When NumAcquisitions was > 1 it was only collecting the first frame correctly, subsequent frames were the same as a first one. This has been isolated to a bug in the WinView COM interface, and a workaround for the problem has been implemented.
  • Solved problem of Prosilica driver crashing on Linux. The problem was with the SIGALARM signal handlers in EPICS base (R3.14.10 and earlier). There is a patch for base to fix this problem, and this fix will be included in EPICS base 3.14.11.
  • Added an additional state, "Initializing" to DetectorState_RBV record.
  • Added support for ADTriggerMode=External in marCCD driver. In this mode the AcquireTime is not used to stop acquisition; acquisition must be stopped by external software settings Acquire=0. The AcquireTime PV is written to the marCCD TIFF file header as usual. This allows an external timing control of the shutter but with the actual exposure time written to the header. Fixed minor problem with marCCD driver. If Acquire was set to Stop when it was not acquiring then the next time acquisition was started it would stop immediately.
• Plugins
  • Changed NDPluginFile from directly supporting netCDF to be a base class from which actual file plugins derive.
  • Changed netCDF file support to be derived class inheriting from NDPluginFile. Added support for writing NDArray attributes to the netCDF file.
  • New file plugin for TIFF files. The TIFF support includes 8, 16 and 32-bit integers. It supports monochrome and color images, including all 3 color interleave modes (RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3. areaDetector contains all required support files to build and run the TIFF file plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86 and Linux. To build on other operating systems it is necessary to install the libtiff and libtiffstatic packages. Thanks to John Hammonds for the initial work on this plugin.
  • New file plugin for JPEG files. The JPEG support is limited to 8-bit integers, but it supports monochrome and color images, including all 3 color interleave modes (RGB1, RGB2 and RGB3). Control is provided for the JPEG quality (compression) on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (best). areaDetector contains all required support files to build and run the JPEG file plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86, and Linux. To build on other operating systems it is necessary to install the libjpeg and libjpegstatic packages.
  • New file plugin for NeXus HDF files written by John Hammonds. The NeXus support has not been extensively tested, and is currently limited to writing a single array per file. Support for multiple arrays per file will be added in a future release. areaDetector contains all required support files to build and run the NeXus file plugin on win32-x86, cygwin-x86 and Linux. To build on other operating systems it is necessary to install the Nexus, HDF4, HDF5, and MXML packages.
  • Fixed bug in NDPluginFile: was not closing file properly when stream mode was stopped before the requested number of frames.
  • Fixed logic problem with FileNumber record in NDFile.template database. The previous logic that kept the ao record in sync with the ai record was causing the ao record to process when it should not have been, causing an extra call to the driver.
  • Added an additional record to NDPluginBase.template, PluginType_RBV. All plugins set this to a unique string to identify the plugin type.
• medm displays
  • Added new top-level detector-specific displays for Prosilica (prosilica.adl), Firewire (firewire.adl), and simDetector (simDetector.adl). ADBase.adl should no longer be used for these cameras.
• Viewers
  • Added new ImageJ plugin viewer. This was begun by Tim Madden from APS, and now includes support for all NDArray data types and color modes, i.e. Mono, RGB1 (pixel interleave), RGB2 (row interleave) and RGB3 (plane interleave). The plugin directory includes a plugin written elsewhere for reading and writing netCDF files, so ImageJ can be used to display images and image sequences (movies) saved with the NDFileNetCDF plugin. It also includes a dynamic profile plugin written elsewhere for line profiles that update in real time as new images are displayed.
  • Improved IDL epics_ad_display viewer. The last image is now stored in the program, and it is now redisplayed if the view mode is changed (TVSCL to iimage, etc.) or if the display parameters are changed (autoscale, flip Y, minimum, maximum, etc.).
• Documentation
  • Documented the source code with comments that doxygen can process to produce HTML documentation directly from the source. This provides documentation for each class, as well as the class inheritance tree. Thanks to John Hammonds for starting this.
• Internals
  • Moved the asynPortDriver base C++ class from the areaDetector module to the asyn module. The asynPortDriver base class was modified slightly to make it more general. In particular the constructor no longer hardcodes ASYN_CANBLOCK, ASYN_MULTIDEVICE, epicsThreadPriorityMedium, and epicsThreadStackMedium. This requires that asyn R4-11 or later be used, and requires 2 additional arguments to the constructor (priority and stackSize) for all areaDetector drivers and plugins.
  • Removed mutexId from asynPortDriver base class, and added lock() and unlock() methods. This hides the implementation of the locking, since we might want to implement these with asynManager->lockPort in the future.
  • Removed the file ADStdParams.h. Moved the definition of parameters that are general to NDArray drivers into asynNDArrayDriver.h, and those that are specific to areaDetector drivers into ADDriver.h.
  • Added an XML parser which is used for attribute definition files.
  • Fixed Makefiles to instantiate templates on vxWorks.
  • Moved createFileName() from ADDriver and NDPluginDriver to their base class, asynNDArrayDriver.
  • Changed colorMode and bayerPattern from being properties of NDArray to being attributes, since they are not general to NDArray but are specific to areaDetector.
  • Added new method asynPortDriver::drvUserCreateParam, which simplifies drvUserCreate code in all drivers and plugins.
  • Reduced number of files for all plugins and drivers. Previously there was an XXX.cpp, drvXXX.h, and drvXXXEpics.c. The .h and .c files were used to keep the drivers and plugins independent of EPICS IOC code. It was decided that that extra 2 files per driver and plugin were not worth the added complexity. If it is desired to run drivers and plugins outside of an IOC it could be done with conditional compilation of the IOC dependent code, which is all at the end of the .cpp file. The iocsh commands to create plugins have been changed from drvNDxxxConfigure to NDxxxConfigure, for example drvNDStdArraysConfigure was changed to NDStdArraysConfigure. This requires changes to all st.cmd files.
  • Renamed a few parameters and the drvInfo strings to logically separate things that are general to NDArrays and things that are specific to area detectors. For example, the drvInfo fields IMAGE_SIZE_xxx were renamed to ARRAY_SIZE_xxx, and IMAGE_COUNTER was renamed to ARRAY_COUNTER.
  • Added call to epicsExit() to all driver IOC main programs. This is important for allowing EPICS to exit cleanly. Without this on Linux it was often necessary to kill the IOC with ^C, rather than just typing "exit".
  • NDStdArrays.template had the DTYP field of the waveform record changed from asynInt$(SIZE)ArrayIn to asyn$(TYPE)ArrayIn. This was needed to allow it to be used with asynFloat32 and asynFloat64 data types. This requires a change to all iocBoot st.cmd files that load this template file.
  • Plugins can now add attributes to an NDArray, which means they can modify the array and hence need to make a copy of it. This requires that NDArray->release() must be called in the plugin itself, rather than in the NDPluginDriver base class as was done previously.

Release 1-4 (30-January-2009)

• Added a driver for Roper Scientific (i.e. Princeton Instruments and Photometrics) detectors. It uses the Microsoft COM interface to control the WinView or WinSpec programs. The previous support in the "ccd" module used a Visual Basic socket server and an SNL program to accomplish this. It was hard to maintain, because Visual Basic changed incompatibly from one release of Visual Studio to the next, and because it could not be built with the EPICS build system. The new driver is written in C++, and is built entirely with the EPICS build system. It also supports more WinView features than the ccd version, and makes the detector data available via callbacks. This allows detector data to be displayed with EPICS clients, permits ROI or other plugin calculations, and allows saving in other file formats if desired.
• Added support for color:
  • Added NDColorMode_t and NDBayerPattern_t to NDArray.h. Added new fields colorMode and bayerPattern to NDArray structure to indicate the color mode.
  • Added new parameter ADColorMode to ADStdDriverParams.h and new record ColorMode to ADBase.template.
  • Added new parameter NDColorMode and NDBayerPattern to NDPluginBase.h and new records ColorMode and BayerPattern to NDPluginBase.template. Added these records to all plugin medm screens.
  • Added a new plugin NDPluginColorConvert to convert colors. It currently converts Bayer to RGB1, RGB2 or RGB3, RGB1 to RGB2 or RGB3 and RGB3 to RGB1 or RGB2.
  • The Prosilica driver now supports color. It supports RGB1 and Bayer directly, and RGB2 and RGB3 through the NDPluginColorConvert plugin.
  • The NDPluginFile driver now saves the ColorMode and BayerPattern to the netCDF files.
• Added a Viewers directory. This contains an IDL viewer for displaying images. The viewer supports color and several different viewing modes. It can be run for free under the IDL Virtual Machine, and should work on any platform with a version of ezcaIDL.so or ezcaIDL.dll built with EPICS 3.14. This directory also contains IDL class libraries for accessing areaDetector. These classes are used by the viewers, but can also be used for other IDL applications.
• Added new parameters in ADStdDriverParams.h
  • ADTemperature
  • ADReadStatus
  • ADImageSizeZ
  • ADNumExposuresCounter
  • ADColorMode
  • ADPortNameSelf
• Pilatus driver
  • Send the imgpath command to camserver when the ADFilePath parameter is changed. camserver will then create directories if they do not exist, whereas specifying a path with non-existant directories in the "exposure" or acquire commands will not create directories.
• Prosilica driver
  • Added support for color.
  • Added support for the external sync in, sync out and strobe signals. The sync signals can also be used for general-purpose digital I/O.
  • Made minor changes to the code and to the build system to add support for running the driver under Linux. There are some issues with this drivers use of SIGARLM via Posix Timer library and EPICS signal handlers. I have made some minor modifications to EPICS base 3.14.10 to allow the IOC to run. Prosilica is working on a new version of their driver that should fix these issues, but it is not yet working. The prebuilt binary version of this release of areaDetector includes the fixes to EPICS base and does work satisfactorily.
• NDPluginROI
  • Fixed bug with missing roi argument to setIntegerParam call, some parameters not updating correctly.
  • Added maxBuffers argument to constructor and to iocsh configuration command. This was a serious oversight in the previous versions. maxROIs was being used where the missing maxBuffers parameter should have been used. Unfortunately it requires a new argument to the iocsh drvNDROIConfigure command, which is not backwards compatible with previous startup scripts.
• NDArray
  • Changed the NDArray::copy() methods to NDArrayPool::copy(). Previously the copy was being allocated from the NDArrayPool of the copy source, rather than from the caller's array pool.
  • Added colorMode and bayerPattern fields to NDArray class.
  • Fixed a bug in the NDArray::convertDim function that could cause an array bounds error if a dimension was reversed.
• asynPortDriver
  • Renamed the pasynUser member to pasynUserSelf. This avoids a name conflict with the local variable pasynUser used in many derived classes. Unfortunately this requires changes to derived class code where this->pasynUser was used.
• Added simulation code to ADSC driver. This allows it to be built and tested on systems that do not have the ADSC hardware or software installed.
• Added $(P)$(R)AutoSave to the save/restore settings in NDFile_settings.req so it will be restored on reboot. This requires care when using drivers such as the Prosilica which can rapidly save very large data files, since file saving may be resumed on reboot.
• Removed abusy record, replaced with new version of busy record from new busy module.
• Renamed ADPlugin library to NDPlugin, because it is really N-dimensional.
• Renamed marCCD library to marCCD_AD, because marCCD is already used in the ccd module, and it conflicts. Changed marCCDSupport.dbd to marCCD_ADSupport.dbd, name of register command, etc.
• Added PortName_RBV record to ADBase.template and NDPluginBase.template and to all driver and plugin medm screens. This allows the user to see the asyn port name of the driver or plugin, which is useful when switching the NDArray callback source.
• Modified the detector medm screens to contain links to the plugins that are normally loaded for that driver, e.g. a single instance each of NDStdArrays, NDROI, NDFile and NDColorConvert (for detectors that support color).

Release 1-3 (24-November-2008)

• Added a driver for MarCCD detectors. Compared to the previous support in the "ccd" module, this driver uses the faster Version 1 protocol for the Mar server. It also makes the detector data available via callbacks (by reading the TIFF files as soon as they are written). This allows detector data to be displayed with EPICS clients, and for ROI calculations.
• Added support for shutter control. Supports shutters that are driven directly from the detector hardware, as well as shutters controlled by EPICS records. Shutter support is implemented for the MarCCD, Pilatus, and simulation detectors.
• Added new methods for shutter support to the detector base class ADDriver.cpp
  • ADDriver::setShutter()
  • ADDriver::writeInt32
• Reorganized the file I/O parameters, template files and medm screens
  • Moved the file capture parameters from NDPluginFile.h and NDPluginFile.cpp to ADStdDriverParams.h. This allows a detector driver to use these capture parameters if desired.
  • Removed all of the file I/O records from ADBase.template and ADBase_settings.req. These previously duplicated the records in NDFile.template and NDFile_settings.req, which was hard to maintain. IOCs for detector drivers that can do file I/O now need to load NDFile.template, while those that cannot no longer need to load these records. They also need to have NDFile_settings.req added to auto_settings.req. This does not effect the file plugin support, only drivers that directly do file I/O.
  • Removed the file I/O PVs from ADBase.adl. Added a related display link to NDFile.adl.
  • NDFile.adl now contains only the file related PVs, not the plugin related PVs. The new file NDPluginFile.adl replaces the previous version of NDFile.adl, and contains both the file PVs and the plugin PVs.
• Added new enums in ADStdDriverParams.h
  • ADFrameType_t
  • ADShutterMode_t
  • ADFileMode_t
• Added new parameters in ADStdDriverParams.h
  • ADShutterControl (replaces ADShutter)
  • ADShutterControlEPICS
  • ADShutterStatus
  • ADShutterMode
  • ADShutterOpenDelay
  • ADShutterCloseDelay
  • ADTimeRemaining
  • ADNumImagesCounter
  • ADFrameType
  • ADArrayCallbacks
  • ADFileWriteMode
  • ADFileNumCapture
  • ADFileNumCaptured
  • ADFileCapture
  ADArrayCallbacks can be set to 0 to disable callbacks with detector data. For the MarCCD and Pilatus detectors setting this to 0 will disable reading the disk files after collection. This can be used to reduce overhead when EPICS is being used just for control, rather than to access the data.
• Added variant of NDPluginDriver::createFileName that returns the filePath and fileName separately, rather than a complete file name including the path.

Release 1-2 (24-October-2008)

• Major update to documentation
• Significant enhancement to ROI plugin. Added net counts, ROI highlighting.
• Added driver for Pilatus detectors. This has undergone limited testing.
• Added driver for ADSC detectors (done by Lewis Muir, IMCA-CAT)
• Removed separate readback parameters in drivers and template files
• Changed from mbbi/mbbo records to bi/bo records where possible now that the asynInt32 interface supports bi/bo records.
• Internals
  • Renamed asynParamBase to asynPortDriver.
  • Renamed NDArrayBase to NDArrayDriver
  • Renamed NDPluginBase to NDPluginDriver
  • Renamed NDArrayBuff to NDArrayPool, now in NDArray.cpp.
  • Renamed ADDriverBase to ADDriver
  • Removed ADUtils
  • The asynHandle interface in asyn was renamed to asynGenericPointer, many changes to incorporate this.
  • Base class constructor no longer initializes all asyn interfaces, only the selected ones.
  • NDArray pool is no longer global, each server creates its own pool if needed.
  • Implemented real routines for writeInt32, writeFloat64, and writeOctet in asynPortDriver.cpp, removed them from ADDriver.cpp where they were not needed.

Release 1-1 (10-May-2008)

• Major rewrite. Converted device drivers and plugins from C to C++ with C++ base classes that handle many of the details of asyn and of callbacks and threading for plugins.
• Everything except device drivers and top-level EPICS databases and channel access clients are now fully N-dimensional, not restricted to 2-D.
• NDPluginFile now uses netCDF format, which is a portable self-describing binary file format.
• Added NDPluginROI which implements region-of-interest.

Release 1-0 (11-Apr-2008)

• Initial release, still many things remaining to be done.