FakeCamera

This camera adapter adds a virtual camera that can be configured to load arbitrary images from disk. Supported formats are all those supported by OpenCV’s imread, in particular:

• PNG
• BMP
• TIF/TIFF
• JPG/JPEG
• …

The pixel type can be set to 8/16-bit grayscale and 8/16-bit RGB (16-bit RGB does currently not work due to a limitation in Micromanager). All images are converted to the selected type, regardless of their true pixel format.

The path mask can be set in the Device Property browser and supports the following placeholders:

??

?{<prec>}?

?[<stage>]

?{<prec>}[<stage>]

The positions are rounded according to the specified precision (default is 0, i.e. integers). The resolved path (i.e. the path with the current positions inserted) is shown in the “Resolved path” property. Demo stages provided by the DemoCamera device adapter can be used in place of physical stages to fully work without hardware (to add multiple stages, add multiple DHub devices)

Example path mask

The examples assume the following stage positions:

• Focus stage: 7.41um
• “x-Axis” stage: 3.52um
• “y-Axis” stage: -1.33um

C:\imgs\img_??.png

C:\imgs\Img_7.png

C:\imgs\img_??_?[x-Axis]_?[y-Axis].png

C:\imgs\Img_7_3_-1.png

C:\imgs\img_?{1}?_?{2}[x-Axis]_?[y-Axis].png

C:\imgs\img_7.4_3.52_-1.png

Building on Linux

The device adapter can be used on Linux (RGB mode currently does not work). To build it, the instructions in Linux_installation_from_source_(Ubuntu) need to be adapted as follows (tested on Ubuntu 16):

• During “Install Build programs & libraries”, also install OpenCV 2.4.8.3, following the guide here. In short:
  • Dependencies

        sudo apt-get install cmake git libgtk2.0-dev pkg-config libavcodec-dev   libavformat-dev libswscale-dev tar
        

-   Download code & extract it

        wget https://github.com/opencv/opencv/archive/2.4.8.3.Tar.gz
        tar -xvf 2.4.8.3.Tar.gz
        

-   Build & install it

        cd opencv-2.4.8.3
        mkdir release
        cd release
        cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -D CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ..
        make
        sudo make install
        

• During “Create the Autotools files” add --with-opencv to the configure call:

    cd ~/mm/micro-manager1.4
    ./autogen.sh
    ./configure --enable-imagej-plugin=/usr/local/ImageJ --with-opencv
    

• Continue normally

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