Configuring

Command line arguments

control.exe takes several command line arguments to customize the software launch sequence:

• --camera <camera name>, -c <camera name>: select a specific camera to control; <camera name> is the name of the camera used within the settings file, such as ppimaq_0. Normally, if several cameras are available, the software first shows the dropdown menu to choose the camera to control. However, if this argument is specified, this camera will be selected automatically. Can be used to, e.g., create separate shortcuts for controlling different cameras.

• --config-file <file>, -cf <file>: specify a configuration file if it is different from the default settings.cfg. The path is always specified relative to control.py location.

Settings file

Software settings are defined in settings.cfg file inside the main folder. These include the camera connection parameters, as well as some additional interface and camera settings. The settings are described in a plain text format with one parameter per row. The most important settings are either defined by default, do not need explicit definition, or filled in by the camera detection. However, you can also edit them manually. Below is the list of available parameters.

General parameters

interface/compact

Switch to compact three-panel layout with a smaller controls area.

Values: True, False

Default: False

interface/color_theme

Color theme (based of qdarkstyle).

Values: dark, light, standard (standard Windows style)

Default: dark

interface/expandable_edits

Enable or disable expandable text boxes for paths and event logs.

Values: True, False

Default: True

interface/plotter/binning/max_size

Maximal size of the image shown in the plotter window (any image larger than this size gets binned). Only affect plotting, and only useful to speed up image display.

Values: any positive integer

Default: not defined (no maximal size)

interface/plotter/binning/mode

Binning mode for plotting display, if the frame needs to be binned. Works in conjunction with interface/plotter/binning/max_size.

Values: mean, min, max, skip

Default: mean

interface/popup_on_missing_frames

Show a pop-up message in the end of saving if the saved data contains missing frames.

Values: True, False

Default: True

interface/datetime_path/file

Template to generate file names when Add date/time is selected but Create separate folder is not.

Values: pfx (add date as a prefix, e.g., 20210315_120530_video.bin), sfx (add date as a suffix, e.g., video_20210315_120530.bin), or folder (create folder with the datetime as name, e.g., 20210315_120530/video.bin)

Default: sfx

interface/datetime_path/folder

Template to generate folder names when both Add date/time and Create separate folder are selected.

Values: pfx (add date as a prefix, e.g., 20210315_120530_video/), sfx (add date as a suffix, e.g., video_20210315_120530/), or folder (create folder with the datetime as name, e.g., 20210315_120530/video/)

Default: sfx

interface/cam_control/roi_kind

ROI entry method in camera control.

Values: minmax (ROI is defined by minimal and maximal coordinates), minsize (ROI is defined by minimal coordinates and size), or centersize (ROI is defined by center coordinates and size)

Default: minsize for PhotonFocus cameras, minmax for all other cameras

frame_processing/status_line_policy

Method to deal with a status line (on PhotonFocus or PCO edge cameras) for the raw image display. Only affects the displayed image.

Values: keep (keep as is), cut (cut off rows with the status line), zero (set status line pixels to zero), median (set status line pixels to the image median),or duplicate (replace status line with pixels from a nearby row)

Default: duplicate

saving/max_queue_ram

Maximal size of the saving buffer in bytes. Makes sense to increase if large movies are saved to slow drive, or if large pre-trigger buffer is used (the size of the saving queue must be larger than the pre-trigger buffer). Makes sense to decrease if the PC has small amount of RAM.

Values: any positive integer

Default: 4294967296 (i.e., 4 GB)

Camera-related parameters

In this section <camera name> stands for any camera name, e.g., ppimaq_0. For example, cameras/<camera name>/params can become cameras/ppimaq_0/params.

css/<camera name>/<key>

Camera-specific parameter. Allows for any generic parameter (such as GUI parameters described above) to take different values for different cameras. For example, if there are two cameras named ppimaq_0 and uc480_0 defined in the file, then one can use css/ppimaq_0/saving/max_queue_ram to specify the saving buffer size for the first camera, and css/uc480_0/saving/max_queue_ram for the second one. Either of those can also be omitted, in which case the generic value (either specified or default) will be used instead. Note that this option is not supported for select_camera, cameras, and dlls parameters (css entries are ignored for those).

select_camera

Default selected camera. If this parameter is set, then this camera is automatically selected even if several cameras are present (i.e., the camera select menu doesn’t show up). In this case, the only way to start other cameras is by using --camera command line argument.

Values: any camera name (e.g., ppimaq_0)

cameras/<camera name>/params

Parameters for camera initialization (interface name, index, etc.) Created automatically by the detect script, and usually does not need to be changed

Values: depends on the camera

cameras/<camera name>/display_name

Camera name to be shown in the camera select window (if multiple cameras are available) and in the window header

Values: any text

Default: automatically filled by the detect script based on the camera kind, model, serial number, etc.

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc

Additional minor camera parameters

Values: depends on the camera (see generic parameters below)

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc/buffer/min_size/time

Minimal camera frame buffer size defined in terms of acquisition time (in seconds). For example, for time = 0.5 the frame buffer size would be 50 frame for 100 FPS frame rate and 500 frames for 1 kFPS frame rate.

Values: any positive floating point number

Default: 1 second for most cameras

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc/buffer/min_size/frames

Minimal camera frame buffer size defined in terms of number of frames.

Values: any positive integer

Default: camera-dependent; usually, between 100 and 1000

For any given FPS the maximal of the two declared buffer sizes is used. For example, if time = 1 and frames = 100, then at 50 FPS the frame buffer size is 100 (defined through frames), and at 1000 FPS the frame buffer size is 1000 (defined through time).

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc/loop/min_poll_period

The period to polled the camera for new frames. The new frames are read out from this camera with this period, which means that the display period is limited by the poll. However, since multiple frames are read out at once, the overall readout frame rate does not depend on the poll period. Lower number results in higher image update rates but also, usually, in somewhat lower performance.

Values: any positive number

Default: 0.05 (corresponding to the maximum of 20 FPS update rate)

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc/trigger/in/src

Source of the input trigger for cameras supporting several trigger sources

Values: camera-dependent. For IMAQ cameras (e.g., using NI frame grabber) a tuple (kind, index), where kind can be "ext" (external SMB connector), "rtsi" (RTSI connection), or "iso_in" (ISO connection), and line is an integer line number. For example, ("ext",0) is the default external SMB connector, and ("rtsi",4) is the RTSI line 4.

Default: ("ext",0)

cameras/<camera name>/params/misc/trigger/out/src

Destination of the output trigger for cameras supporting several trigger destinations

Values: camera-dependent. For IMAQ cameras (e.g., using NI frame grabber) a tuple (kind, index), where kind can be "ext" (external SMB connector), "rtsi" (RTSI connection), or "iso_out" (ISO connection), and line is an integer line number. For example, ("ext",0) is the default external SMB connector, and ("rtsi",4) is the RTSI line 4.

Default: ("ext",0)

Specific system parameters

dlls/<camera interface>

Paths to camera-specific DLL locations, if different from the device location. <camera interface> can stand for one of the following:

• andor_sdk2: path to atmcd64d.dll for Andor SDK2. By default, search in the default location of Andor Solis.

• andor_sdk3: path to atcore.dll and related DLLs for Andor SDK3. By default, search in the default location of Andor Solis.

• dcamapi: path to dcamapi.dll and related DLLs for Hamamatsu/DCAM cameras. By default, search in System32 folder, where it is placed after installing DCAM API or Hokawo software.

• niimaq: path to imaq.dll for NI IMAQ frame grabber interface. By default, search in System32 folder, where it is placed after installing NI Vision Acquisition Software.

• niimaqdx: path to niimaqdx.dll for NI IMAQdx frame grabber interface. By default, search in System32 folder, where it is placed after installing NI Vision Acquisition Software.

• pco_sc2: path to SC2_Cam.dll for PCO cameras. By default, search in the default location of pco.camware or pco.sdk.

• picam; path to picam.dll for Princeton Instruments cameras. By default, search in the default location of Princeton Instruments PICam Runtime.

• pfcam: path to pfcam.dll for PhotonFocus cameras. By default, search in PFRemote folder specified in the PATH environment variable.

• pvcam; path to pvcam64.dll for Photometrics cameras. By default, search in System32 folder, where it is placed after installing PVCAM software.

• sisofgrab: path to fglib5.dll for Silicon Software frame grabber interface. By default, search in Silicon Software Runtime Environment folder specified in the PATH environment variable.

• thorlabs_tlcam: path to thorlabs_tsi_camera_sdk.dll and related DLLs for Thorlabs Scientific Cameras. By default, search in the default location of ThorCam.

• uc480: path to uc480_64.dll and related DLLs for uc480 camera interface. By default, search in the default location of ThorCam.

• ueye: path to ueye_api_64.dll and related DLLs for uEye camera interface. By default, search in the default location of IDS Software Suite.