Quick progress using BlackBox

From: [at]} <skulski{>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2004 20:59:47 -0500 (EST)

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Helmut:

> all you need is the twain interface for BlackBox.
>

> While money is not a problem for you why don't you let build such a twain

> interface from OM and spend the result to the BlackBox community?

Just to keep you updated, and also to give some positive spin to this
mailing list. It took me exactly one day to connect to the camera
using DLL calls. The problem I need to solve is not the most general
interface to cameras. I need to achieve the goal and I need to achieve
it quickly. It looks like today I have broken the ice, and connected
to the camera digitizer board. My collegaues are getting impressed.
This will become a BlackBox licence purchased from the company
by the Laser Lab.

This would not have been possible if I had not interfaced to DLL before.
Interfacing is tricky and description in the "Platform-specific issues"
is sort of dry. Fortunately, Wolfgang Weck sent me a few hints a couple
years ago, and thanks to his help I interfaced my digitizers via DLL
calls. You can see a cool photo of my digitizer in this place:
http://web.pas.rochester.edu/~skulski/Devel_DDC8_BlackBox.pdf
My board is at the left, and the BlackBox interface is on the right.
That work was actually the main reason why they called for my help with
the laser project, of which you can read in this place if you are
interested:
http://www.lle.rochester.edu/pub/review/v96/96Coherent01.pdf

So today I got the first hint of data from the camera system,
in the form of a pointer to the data buffer sent to me by the
National Instruments DLL. I actually called the Nat'l Instr. support
when I was not sure about the error codes. The engineer was a bit
surprised by the word Pascal, but not too much. He knows high tech
folks are all nuts. It is his job to help, not to judge my language
preferences. Nat'l Instr actually want to sell their stuff,and they
grew big by selling and supporting what they sell, and they know how
they grew big on the high-tech, so the enginner was kind and helpful.
He put me on the right track, and a few hints from Wolfgang that
I keep on my disk did the rest. It looks like this week I will be able
to give the first spin to Robert's graphics library. We actually
need to Fourier-transform those images and do all the kind of usual
scientific stuff. Looks like we are moving forward.

The moral is, in this environment you have to move fast, be pragmatic,
call whomever you need to call, and get the first results quickly.
Nobody will care too much what language you are using. It was a bonus
that BB survived all my calling attempts to the low-level library.
I guess I would have crashed the machine a few times if I was using
some other development tool. Nobody was watching anyway.

Anybody who wants to sell at CERN has to emphasize these aspect of the
system: move fast, get results fast, get communication up and running
quickly, get some nice plots quickly, be able to get the job done,
and move forward. The quicker the development, the better.

My progress of today was possible thanks to very good documentation
by Nat'l Instruments, their support staff I could reach in 15 minutes,
a few hints from Wolfgang I still remember, and a good few years of
my hard work under BlackBox. I would be clueless if it was my first
project under BB. But then they would not have asked me to help them
in the first place.

Cheers and good nite,
Wojtek





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Received on Tue Feb 10 2004 - 02:59:47 UTC

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