Analog laser control

[Cody-G]

As we discussed in person @kdw503 sometime soon it would be nice to tap into the analog intensity control feature of the laser system. In the short term I don't think we'll need to change the software much because we can use one of the piezo analog outputs for the laser (lying to imagine). But I think Imagine may throw an error if we use two piezo control signals simultaneously? If so we may need to disable that error. I'm also posting a screenshot from the laser manual that will help us find the correct pins for analog control. Notice it has a minimum of 0.5V and a maximum of 4.5V, differently from the piezo control (0-10V)

[kdw503]

I looks there are 4 intensity controls. But we have only 2 additional free analog output. Do you think it is ok to use just two of analog signals? Or do you want to free one more analog signal that is assigned to horizontal piezo? From: Cody Greer <notifications@github.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2018 5:33 PM To: HolyLab/Imagine <Imagine@noreply.github.com> Cc: Kim, Dae Woo <kim503@wustl.edu>; Mention <mention@noreply.github.com> Subject: [HolyLab/Imagine] Analog laser control (#65) As we discussed in person @kdw503<https://github.com/kdw503> sometime soon it would be nice to tap into the analog intensity control feature of the laser system. In the short term I don't think we'll need to change the software much because we can use one of the piezo analog outputs for the laser (lying to imagine). But I think Imagine may throw an error if we use two piezo control signals simultaneously? If so we may need to disable that error. I'm also posting attaching a screenshot from the laser manual that will help us find the correct pins for analog control. Notice it has a minimum of 0.5V and a maximum of 4.5V, differently from the piezo control (0-10V) [laser_analog_ttl]<https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5176452/46443112-c4919400-c731-11e8-9a51-792689c74c9f.png> — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#65>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AV-GXij3mvhxZBJGzsOzGODddN9fJjOLks5uhTsrgaJpZM4XHD_y>.

[Cody-G]

I think the most we'll ever need is 2 because with 2 cameras people need at most 2 different excitation wavelengths at a time. I think in most cases (at least in my case) just 1 will be enough. In order to keep things simple for now maybe we can just use 1 and connect the voltage signal to all of the analog laser channels? If the TTL for a laser is low then I think the analog signal will just be ignored, so it should do no harm. Also since we have two laser systems (running as master and slave) there are actually a total of 8 analog channels that we could connect to (There are 8 - 5 = 3 slots that have no laser installed).