Minimal driver for the ASI662MM in Python

srenblad

Here is a minimal driver for the ASI662MM as an alternative to the existing closed source SDK. The ASI662MM is a cheap, good quality alternative to scientific cameras used in ion trapping. The official SDK, however, is only Windows/Linux/Mac and only amd64 and arm64. In comparison, our driver is lighter, without blobs and portable. It provides a thin wrapper over the underlying camera protocol, and it uses pyusb which runs virtually anywhere. ROI setting and exposure control are both implemented. We may integrate it with ARTIQ if there is sufficient interest.

awallin

Do you think this would work with an older ASI290MM camera?

We could test this in a week or two. Integration would be nice-to-have, not need-to-have since all quantitative work in our experiment is done with a PMT and photon counting.
A use-case would be to have a 'live' view of 1-5s exposures when we do diagnostics, or load an ion. This can be a small ROI out of the entire camera sensor.

srenblad

awallin

Thanks for your interest!

At a glance, you might be able to get an image out since the sensors seem to have some overlap in the register map, and the FPGA registers look the same. That being said, I expect additional support would be needed since it's two different sensors (IMX290 vs IMX662). I should note that the driver does not implement long exposure mode (>1s).

sb10q

awallin What lens do you use it with?

srenblad

srenblad I should note that the driver does not implement long exposure mode (>1s).

Long exposure mode is now implemented.

awallin

sb10q What lens do you use it with?

we use a home-built objective (NA=0.26, magnification ca 30x) for imaging fluorescence (at 422nm) from a Sr+ ion through a 5mm fused silica window. The design is similar to http://dx.doi.org/10.1078/0030-4026-00133 (there are many similar papers on objectives since that one). There is a narrow 422nm bandpass filter - this relaxes the requirements on the objective design.