Stage controller and a serial plugin released

[Vincenzo Della Mea]

Dear colleagues,
we finally released our IJStage serial controller plugins, for Prior  
Optiscan and Marzhauser LSTEP controllers, this time based on the  
open source RxTx library.
In addition to that, we also released a sample serial communications  
plugin (IJSerial), which can be easily used to manage a serial  
communication through macros. Also stage controllers are now usable  
through macros, without user interface. Values eventually returned  
from plugins are currently stored into the Results table, in order to  
make plugins compatible with ImageJ versions <1.37c.
Plugins have been tested on Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, and MacOSX  
10.4.2. We successfully esperimented with embedded serial ports when  
available, with a USB to serial adapter (Manhattan, on all  
platforms), and, for MacOSX only, a Keyspan Twin Serial Adapter.
You can find the software together with sources and some  
documentation starting from http://www.eslide.net (or, more directly,  
http://mitel.dimi.uniud.it/ijstage.php).

Hoping this will be useful for some of you,

Vincenzo Della Mea and Nicola Bortolotti

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------
-----------------------------  Vincenzo Della Mea, PhD  
------------------------------
------------ Medical Informatics, Telemedicine and e-health Lab  
------------
Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science - University of Udine, Italy
------------------------------- http://mitel.dimi.uniud.it 
---------------------------------

[Weller Andrew Francis]

Dear all,

I think this is a great contribution - thanks. But, excuse my ignorance,
we have a Marzhauser 'Scan 100 x 100' stage here
(www.marzhauser.com/engl/main/scanning.html) is this a LSTEP stage? I
can only see reference to LSTEP stages from the 'Downloads' section of
Marzhauser's website - I presume these are commands for all their stages!?

Many thanks, Andy

Vincenzo Della Mea wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> we finally released our IJStage serial controller plugins, for Prior  
> Optiscan and Marzhauser LSTEP controllers, this time based on the  
> open source RxTx library.
> In addition to that, we also released a sample serial communications  
> plugin (IJSerial), which can be easily used to manage a serial  
> communication through macros. Also stage controllers are now usable  
> through macros, without user interface. Values eventually returned  
> from plugins are currently stored into the Results table, in order to  
> make plugins compatible with ImageJ versions <1.37c.
> Plugins have been tested on Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, and MacOSX  
> 10.4.2. We successfully esperimented with embedded serial ports when  
> available, with a USB to serial adapter (Manhattan, on all  
> platforms), and, for MacOSX only, a Keyspan Twin Serial Adapter.
> You can find the software together with sources and some  
> documentation starting from http://www.eslide.net (or, more directly,  
> http://mitel.dimi.uniud.it/ijstage.php).
>
> Hoping this will be useful for some of you,
>
> Vincenzo Della Mea and Nicola Bortolotti

[Vincenzo Della Mea]

Dear Andy,
you do not have to look at the stage, but at the stage controller,  
which is the box between the stage and the computer (eventually, it  
could be a PCI board inside the computer). At present, Marzhauser has  
three controller models (http://www.marzhauser.com/engl/ 
i_steuer1.html). A stage controller may control many kinds of  
motorized stages.

Vincenzo

> Da: Andy Weller <[hidden email]>
> Data: 13 aprile 2006 11:47:19 GMT+02:00
> Oggetto: Re: Stage controller and a serial plugin released
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> I think this is a great contribution - thanks. But, excuse my  
> ignorance, we have a Marzhauser 'Scan 100 x 100' stage here  
> (www.marzhauser.com/engl/main/scanning.html) is this a LSTEP stage?  
> I can only see reference to LSTEP stages from the 'Downloads'  
> section of Marzhauser's website - I presume these are commands for  
> all their stages!?
>
> Many thanks, Andy

[Weller Andrew Francis]

Dear all,

When reading from the Results Table, ie:

answer = getResultLabel(0);

how can I eliminate characters from the returned (answer)?

For example, if the following is returned:

50062abcxyz

I am only interested in "abcxyz" not the "50062" part - I would like them
removed?

Many thanks, Andy

[Wayne Rasband]

> Dear all,
>
> When reading from the Results Table, ie:
>
> answer = getResultLabel(0);
>
> how can I eliminate characters from the returned (answer)?
>
> For example, if the following is returned:
>
> 50062abcxyz
>
> I am only interested in "abcxyz" not the "50062" part -
> I would like them removed?

You can remove the first 5 characters from the string 'answer' using

     answer = substring(answer, 5, lengthOf(answer));

-wayne