2025-05-08.md

areaDetector Collaboration Meeting (2025-05-08)

Attendance

• Érico Nogueira Rolim
• James Souter
• Mark Rivers
• Wang Xiaoqiang
• Qun Zhang
• Kevin Peterson
• Gustavo Reis
• Josh EC
• Elaine Chandler
• Mark Engbretson

Previous meeting action points

• Small documentation and typo changes don't need PRs, but code changes can have them
• Open issues/PRs specifying PV behavior more explicitly
  • Acquire -> people should use the busy callback
  • "Detector is ready for triggers" -> ARMED PV? Acquire_RBV?
• Send list of issues/PRs to tech-talk to bring interested people into meeting
• Find owners (contact points) for drivers and define obsolete drivers sent to tech-talk: https://epics.anl.gov/tech-talk/2025/msg00536.php
  • Diamond might take up ADAravis no updates on this
  • Even so, merging PRs doesn't have to depend on the owner; code review can come from anyone, and the author has presumably tested it
• Releases are made when someone needs a new feature or driver change, or when changes have accumulated
  • Update all drivers to master
  • Tag ADCore and top-level areaDetector simultaneously
• Inclusion of new drivers
  • Include documentation
  • Code quality
  • Build out of the box if possible
  • Generality (can other people use it?)
• Help required: fix ADCore CI DONE!

Issues

• areaDetector:
  • PRs:
    • Add ADPimega as a submodule (branch: lumentum-v3) - Let Lumentum know about remaining issues (PR was for master branch)
• ADCore:
  • Issues:
    • Out of bounds read/type confusion in compressed arrays with NDPluginStdArrays, can cause segmentation fault - try to document the limitations from this use case, see what can be done regarding out-of-bounds reads
    • Convert NDPluginPva to use PVXS
  • PRs:
    • Convert NDPluginPva to use PVXS
• ADEiger:
  • Issues:
    • The lz4 data in Stream2 is different from Stream
    • Driver is copying data twice for each frame in Stream mode, not efficient
    • Support Stream2 CBOR format and multiple threshold frames - what's the best interface? split into channels for current viewers supporting only 2 dimensions, try to transform into RGB image, look into new viewers with support for more dimensions?
• ADLambda:
  • Issues:
    • Probable bug in driver - updating parameter values (including ADAcquire) and calling frame callbacks seems to happen in different threads/control flows, probably causing this issue
• ADPICam:
  • PRs:
    • Implement pulse parameters and re-populate enums after a parameter is marked as existing - someone needs to review this code
• ADPcoWin:
  • Issues:
    • Linux support? - installation on Linux is more complicated than on Windows, but everyone is interested in getting it working on Linux. Wang's driver is less complex than ADPcoWin
• ADPilatus:
  • PRs:
    • Check for 7 OK message when waiting for an image to actualy end the acquisition - pending testing
• collaboration:
  • PRs:
    • Update get-issues-and-prs.py script. - will be merged in ~1wk
• Stale Items:
  • Stale Issues:
    • HDF5 plugin feature where datasets with type=constant is broken - pending testing to confirm still an issue
    • Find a way to stop misbehaving plugins from slowing down driver - can likely be closed after documenting expected plugin behavior
    • HDF5 NDAttribute datasets to support "extra" dimensions like detector datasets - is it still necessary?
    • Expand CI services to cover more configurations - do we really need to cover 32-bit? Is AD relevant there?
    • option to not write NDAttr* attributes in HDF5 dataset - can probably be closed, issue author has resigned to it
    • MEDM slider behaves badly on some Windows systems - repository will be archived
    • Allow use of the 2nd ethernet port of the SA-Z for data transfer - repository will be archived
  • Stale PRs:
    • prosilica.cpp: - stale updates, timestamp feature has been implemented in asyn
    • Added new prosilica resend params and rates for packet counts - ADVimba already has this
    • Added driver support for NDBitsPerPixel and NDBytesPerPixel parameters - feature likely won't be added to ADCore
    • Added redef of Gain in prosilica.template so we can set driver limits - ADVimba has this
    • FIX: call start() after NDEdgePlugin object is created for plugin to work for ADCore >= 2.5, don't process plugin if input NDArray dimension > 2 (i.e. for Color modes) - try to review code, seems simple enough
    • Slac edl - likely outdated, don't know if it makes sense to include custom GUIs in repository
    • Applied bitsPerPixel.patch to bring in bitsPerPixel support from pcds… - feature likely won't be added to ADCore

Action points

• See if PyDM autoconvert can be added to autoconvert recipe
• Open issues/PRs specifying PV behavior more explicitly
  • Acquire -> people should use the busy callback
  • "Detector is ready for triggers" -> ARMED PV? Acquire_RBV?
• Find owners (contact points) for drivers and define obsolete drivers sent to tech-talk: https://epics.anl.gov/tech-talk/2025/msg00536.php
  • Mark will respond to the email with further suggestions
  • Diamond might take up ADAravis