getting started with thorlabs lc1-usb

[jimmyinCT]

Thought you were going to look at a new product?  J

What you may not know is that the NI people on this forum wont help you out.  They only support hardware that they made drivers for.  Ironically, they don’t have an equivalent for this anyway and if they did, it would cost 10x more.,

Im not sure why you have to start the thor labs application to get your example to work, the odds are your program isn’t doing exactly what you think it is but rather they are both using a similar or shared dll to initialize and close the device.   The device I really don’t think should work.    I cant look at  your code, the ftp link uses internal rather then external dns, and even if fixed, gives access denied..

its been a while since ive used this product. I dont remember it inverting the values.  I do remember a problem related to saturation, that being that normal room intensity light reduced the dynamic range by approximately 50%.  This can be resolved by using reduced intensity lights or lights which have a different spectrum.  With the sample application, you should see that if you block the line elements, it should go down in intensity, I think.

To be quite frank, I spent a lot of time evaluating all the possibilities with this.  The dll sounds difficult but it honesly should just take you a few hours or a day at the most.    To be quite frank, what most real engineers do in rare occasions that your stuck with a device that only has a labview driver is to build the dll.   Yes, you can set integration time and other parameters with the dll.  You can even set it each time you call it.

Here is an example on how to call a dll. 

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YIIQCA4&l=en-US

and the example for how to create the dll is here.

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3063 

This is going to be my last post on this subject. Good luck.

[EncoderWhiz]

Ok - thanks for everything

RR

[lutzhoerl]

Hello all,

we - Thorlabs - provide a full driver package along with the camera. You can also find the drivers on the web. Navigate to http://www.thorlabs.com/software_pages/LC1-USB.cfm click on 'drivers' and then on 'LC1-USB_driver_V2.2.zip'. Alternatively you can use http://www.thorlabs.com/Software/LC1-USB/Drivers/LC1-USB_driver_V2.2.zip as a shortcut to directly download the driver package. After downloading please unzip the package.

Then you have to install the drivers. Run setup.exe from the package. After that you will find the driver sources, manuals, import libraries etc.  in the directory

C:\VXIPNP\WinNT\Thorlabs LC1-USB   (*)

the driver DLL itself is copied to

C:\WINDOWS\system32\LC1_Drv_32.dll

In the file LC1_Drv.c you have the source code of the driver. This source code compiles with NI-CVI to a DLL together with some import libraries. Please also read the Readme files. The DLL provided at C:\WINDOWS\system32\LC1_Drv_32.dll works with all common programming languages as long as they can access DLLs. The driver is relying on VISA. On the CD provided with the camera there is a copy of VISA. You can get an up to date version of VISA also from NI at http://www.ni.com/visa. Please install VISA before runnig the driver code.

For LabView users:

We recommend to create the LabView driver by yourself through importing the CVI-FP-file (= function panel file) at

C:\VXIPNP\WinNT\Thorlabs LC1-USB\LC1_Drv.fp   (*)

The advantage of this procedure is that you have all VIs then correctly in place and you get the driver for your version of LabView. Unfortunately LabView drivers are only very little up-/downwards compatible.

Sample Program:

We also provide a sample program in C compiled with CVI (in C:\VXIPNP\WinNT\Thorlabs LC1-USB\sample\cvi). This sample program also uses the driver, so one should be able to get an understanding of how the drivers have to be used.

We want all our customers to be happy with Thorlabs products and services. Please give us a chance to provide you with all the information needed to perfectly run Thorlabs products. Thank you.

Lutz Hoerl 

(*) starting with NI-VISA 4.3 the directory may have changed to

C:\prgram files\VXIPNP\WinNT\Thorlabs LC1-USB\LC1_Drv.fp

or the path you provided during installation of VISA.