Cameras

Camera acquisition is handled by the GCM service. A protocol can use one camera block or multiple suffixed blocks such as GCM1 and GCM2.

Supported Backends

cam_type selects the backend:

cam_type	Dependency
Dummy	Built in; useful for smoke tests.
Spinnaker	FLIR Spinnaker SDK and Python bindings.
Basler	Basler pylon and pypylon.
Ximea	Ximea driver and Python package.
Hamamatsu	DCAM driver and pylablib.

Run etho version --debug on the rig to confirm the expected backend imports.

Protocol Fields

GCM:
  cam_type: Spinnaker
  cam_serialnumber: 30959651
  frame_rate: 100.0
  frame_width: 640
  frame_height: 200
  frame_offx: 78
  frame_offy: 10
  shutter_speed: 5000
  external_trigger: false
  callbacks:
    save_avi:
    save_timestamps:

The service acquires one test image during setup, then applies external_trigger before the experiment starts. If triggering is enabled, confirm that the camera is armed before the DAQ or counter trigger starts.

Operator Checklist

• Confirm the camera appears in the vendor tool before starting Etho.

• Match cam_serialnumber to the physical camera.

• Validate ROI offsets, width, height, and binning in a short preview run.

• Check exposure and frame rate in the service log after setup.

• For externally triggered cameras, verify trigger polarity and cabling on the rig.

• Run a short saved acquisition and inspect both video and timestamp files.