# areaDetectorReleaseNotes.html

# areaDetector Release Notes

## 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.