You may encounter a situation where shortly after focusing and/or grabbing Scanbox quits and asks you to “verify the trigger”. If this happens proceed as follows: First, if you hear the resonant mirror starting to work (meaning you hear the 8khz tone) when you press focus or grab, skip to the next step below. Otherwise, make sure…
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Using the quadrature encoder to track locomotion
Scanbox allows you to acquire the position of a rotating platform at each frame of the microscope. To do so, you need a quadrature encoder to be mounted on the axis of your platform. We use the US Digital HS-360-IE-S, but any quadrature encoder will do as well. The encoder needs to be wired to an Arduino…
Read MoreHappy new year to Scanbox users everywhere!
Happy new year to the growing list of Scanbox/NLW users everywhere! Wishing you all a productive imaging year!
Read MoreYeti turns one! (and plans for next year)
The first image acquired by Yeti is just 1 year old! Happy birthday Yeti! We have seen Yeti grow a lot during the first year…. He added capabilities to stabilize images and extract signals in real-time, enlarged the field of view, offered volumetric scanning allowing for co-variation of laser power and focal plane, included bidirectional scanning, provided on-line computer-assisted segmentation, linear power…
Read MoreBlanking the laser between trials
Sometimes, during long behavioral sessions, it is advantageous to turn off the laser between trials to minimize damage while keeping the microscope scanning. To do this without introducing any additional noise that may influence the behavioral state we use the Pockels cell. Scanbox now allows one to blank the laser by sending a command over…
Read MoreScanbox is Windows 10 compatible
We have upgraded to Windows 10 without major problems. Scanbox along with all the other drivers appear to be running just fine. The only issue that we ran into is access to the parallel computing toolbox using a GeForce GTX Titan Z card. While Scanbox can still run without the parallel computing toolbox, some features will be…
Read Moreauto-tuning bidirectional scanning
To properly align even and odd lines in bidirectional tuning one has to set the values of the configuration variable ‘ncolbi’. This variable is a vector where each entry controls how lines are ‘folded’ for each of the magnification settings, x1, x2 and x4. The latest version of scanbox includes a function sbxautocalbd() that allows you to automatically determine the…
Read MoreLinear power
The following procedure will allow you to define a linearization table for your Pockels’ cell so you can obtain a linear power change with equal steps in the value of the power slider in Scanbox. During imaging the laser power is controlled by an 8-bit DAC that ranges from from 0V (at a DAC register value…
Read MoreHow large can you go?
Following the recent post on expanding the field of view, Cris Neill sends us a beautiful movie of an imaging field of 1.2 x 1.2 mm. How large can you go?
Read MoreLarger field of view and finer control of pixel size
There have been requests for Scanbox to accommodate a larger field of view and the ability to precisely calibrate the aspect ratio and size of pixels. The latest version (along with modifications in the firmware) allow you to do just this. [This paragraph about the diodes is only relevant to older boards] A first step to maximize…
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