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Problems collecting images with Falcon

Added by Morgan Beeby over 10 years ago

Dear Anchi, all,

I have just upgraded from Leginon 3.0 to 3.1 on our Tecnai F20 with Orius / Falcon II combination.

After installation, I had problems acquiring images with the Falcon II (Orius worked fine). Images simply weren't collected. To attempt troubleshooting I tried some command-line pyscope:

from pyscope import tia
g=tia.TIA_Falcon()
g.setExposureTime(1000)
g.getImage()

However, this returned the error:

[Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘C:\\Titan\\Data\\Falcon\\IntermediateConfig.xml'

I managed to find the location of the erroneous 'Titan' directory (line 26, pyscope\falconframe.py) and altered it to read 'Tecnai'.

I was then able to collect images using pyscope as described above.

However, I cannot collect images using main Leginon. When I export a preset to the microscope that uses the Falcon, then click 'Acquire' in the Navigator node, the acquire icon grays out momentarily (as if taking an image), then becomes available, but no image is taken. The command-line window on the windows microscope machine reports:

(-2147352567, ‘Exception occurred.’, (u”Error during SelectSetup. Acquisition setup ‘pyscope-BM-Falcon Setup’ does not exist’, u’ESVision’, None, 0L, 0))

I'm a little out of my depth here -- any ideas?

many thanks,

Morgan


Replies (5)

RE: Problems collecting images with Falcon - Added by Anchi Cheng over 10 years ago

Hi, Morgan,

I think the version of the TIA and TUI on your computer does not call Falcon by the name "BM-Falcon". I have been wondering about that. We've seen the name change over time.

First, find out what Falcon camera name in your TUI interface in the Camera tab.
If it is not BM-Falcon, that would be one of the two possible reasons.

In this case,
On the microscope computer, find pyscope/tia.py (Would be in C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages). Edit it from

class TIA_Falcon(TIA):
    camera_name = 'BM-Falcon'

to
class TIA_Falcon(TIA):
    camera_name = 'the name you've found'

Second possibility, you did not sync the version on the microscope, it is still 3.0 I have not thought of that needs to be synced.

on the microscope TIA gui, a tab should show up when you initialize Leginon client and have a name either "pyscope" (3.0), or "pyscope-BM-Falcon" or whatever camera name you now use (3.1).

in this case, sync the version by installing the 3.1 branch on the scope by checking it out and run "setup.py install" as instructed in Windows_Installation_All. No configuration change needed.

RE: Problems collecting images with Falcon - Added by Morgan Beeby over 10 years ago

Hi Anchi,

Many thanks for you quick response.

In the 'CCD/TV Camera' panel in the TUI 'Falcon camera' tab, the Orius is called 'BM-Orius', and the Falcon II 'BM-Falcon' I'm afraid.

I've also made sure to update to 3.1 on the microscope windows computer. In TIA the tab is called 'pyscope-BM-Falcon'.

Strangely, Leginon controls the Orius perfectly well. And even more strangely when I first did my command-line pyscope test I was able to use Leginon to control the Falcon. But in all subsequent runs it failed with the error above...

thanks for your help!

Morgan

RE: Problems collecting images with Falcon - Added by Anchi Cheng over 10 years ago

There are two things I know as a possibility:

  1. TIA does not know that it has a setup pyscope-BM-Falcon even though it has opened it (hence restart TIA)
  2. We have observed that Falcon camera have to be selected in TUI for Leginon to control it. (I don't know why).

You may confirm the setup addition in tia.py installed on the scope computer

Change C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\pyscope\tia.py. Look for "AddSetup". And add these prints to see if it is added correctly at initialization

    self.acqman.AddSetup(self.setupname)
    print self.setupname
    print self.acqman.DoesSetupExist(self.setupname)

The way remote Leginon instructs the camera/scope uses the code compiled on the camera/scope. Therefore doing it remotely should make not difference in the setup from the local test. I don't understand this at all. This release was tested at another site and the difference between this and 3.0 is just to make it more stable.

If neither idea change anything, it might be more efficient for us to do a remote section because I am out of idea. Contact me offline if it is needed.

RE: Problems collecting images with Falcon - Added by Morgan Beeby about 10 years ago

Hi Anchi,

Thanks. That was obvious -- I simply needed to restart TIA. Sorry for not having done that before sending the message in the first place!

I also noticed that I needed to collect a Falcon image with TIA before I could do dark/bright references correctly. Not sure of the source of that, but everything seems in order now. On to a first attempt at data collection...

thanks again,

Morgan

RE: Problems collecting images with Falcon - Added by Anchi Cheng about 10 years ago

Good to hear that it is working now.

By the way, Falcon camera's gain/dark correction are done in TUI, you should not need to acquire bright/dark images in the Correction Node. I did keep the bad pixel/column/row correction in. If you need to do them, you can. In any node that acquires images, you don't need to change any default settings. It should know that it does not need to query for dark/bright nor apply them even if you ask to make correction. The only correction would be applied, if you have them would be bad pixel/column/row.

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