PCI-1755 DAQ Tip

This PCI-based card manufactured by Advantech is the high speed 32-channel digital I/O device used for the multiphoton image acquisition system. It has an extra general-purpose 8-ch DI/O feature that comes in handy. However, make sure to flip the on-board 8-pin switches in order to designate individual pins DI or DO. This is something that is easily overlooked and caused confusion for me.

Project Build error in Visual Studio 2005

I came across the error "SignTool Error:ISignedCode::Sign returned error: 0x80880253 The signer's certificate is not valid for signing." when trying to build/publish my VB code in Visual Studio 2005. I know a few people in the lab also use VS2005, so I'm posting how to get around this error in case you come across the same thing.

The first time you publish your solution, VS creates a certificate that expires in one year. If you try to update your solution or re-publish over a year later, you will probably get the error mentioned above. Microsoft explains this problem and gives a fix for it here... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925521

I did not get the Microsoft fix to work for me, but I was able to work around it as follows.
Go to Project -> Properties -> Signing Tab.
Click "Create Test Certificate"
Enter a password
Click "OK"

This doesn't exactly fix the problem, but it extends your certificate for another year so that you can publish your project.

FCS Bin Size - Board #1 (Revised)

The FCS counter board #1 (used by Phill Jones) has been re-flashed with updated firmware to allow one- or two-channel data acquisition mode.

The bin sizes for one-channel mode are 0.479 μs, 0.998 μs, 1.995 μs and 4.989 μs. For two-channel mode it's 0.818 μs, 0.998 μs, 1.995 μs and 4.989 μs.

FCS Bin Size - Board #2

New FCS hardware and firmware now provide the FCS application-level software the option of choosing one or two data channels. Lisa measured and verified the actual time bin sizes generated from the new board.

The bin sizes for one-channel mode are 0.4801 μs, 1.0002 μs, 2.0003 μs and 5.0007 μs. For two-channel mode, the values are 0.8201 μs, 1.0002 μs, 2.0003 μs and 5.0007 μs.

FCS Bin Size - Board #1

The FCS software provides four different user-selectable bin sizes. Nominally, the available bin sizes are 0.8 μs, 1 μs, 2 μs, and 5 μs. The actual bin sizes will be slightly different because of how they are calculated in the firmware. (I will go into more detail on this below.) In reality, the bin sizes used by the software are 0.818 μs, 0.998 μs, 1.995 μs, and 5.009 μs.

The FCS hardware is controlled with an SX48 microprocessor, and the different bin sizes are generated by adding or removing instruction cycles to the SX code. The SX uses a 50MHz crystal, so each instruction cycle is 20 ns. These actual bin sizes are the closest we could get to the ideal values given the 20 ns resolution. The code for the 0.818 μs bin size has no delay cycles added, so this is the smallest possible bin size.

Code Profiler for Windows

Very Sleepy is a nifty little C/C++ profiler. It's been useful for me in code development. Plus, it's free!

Make sure to activate the proper compiler options (/Zi) in Visual Studio's property settings to produce the necessary debug information in Program Database format.

MPM Scan - Version 0.4

Latest version of the software also executes in simulation mode without being tied to the PCI DAQ card. This enables it to function as a standalone desktop app in order to test certain features, portability, etc ...

Modified the interface layout to accommodate image statistic graphic view, region-of-interest selection capability, image frame resize, and multi-channel and single-channel capture modes.

Read more ...

Download latest project source code.