[OpenSPIM] Plugin update (again)

[Luke Stuyvenberg]

Sorry about the cut-off email; here is (hopefully) the message in its 
entirety:
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Hi everyone,

I've just uploaded a new version of the plugin to the Fiji update site. 
Some quick features:

- Rebuilt device interactions to be less dependent on specific 
devices/properties/et cetera
- Overhauled asynchronous output to be more reliable and transparent
- Added some rudimentary acquisition profiling, for the curious

As always, I do my best to make sure that the updates are free of any 
use-impairing bugs or issues. However, and especially with this update, 
this is not always possible. Therefore, if you have any project-critical 
imaging to do, please do not update until you have finished.

I mention this because this plugin update completely revises the way 
OpenSPIM interacts with Micro-Manager devices, letting us easily add new 
features and supported hardware. However, this also means that, for 
certain features, the plugin now expects a limited subset of devices, 
and might cause problems with others -- in particular, anyone not using 
the OpenSPIM 1.0 specification on the site might run into trouble.

On the other hand, if you /don't/ have any project-critical imaging, I 
would greatly appreciate it if you could test the plugin on your setup. 
As I can personally only test the OpenSPIM 1.0 setup, I don't yet know 
if the plugin will operate seamlessly with variants on the setup. If you 
can, please test the new plugin and get back to me!

The rest of this e-mail describes the pros, cons, capabilities, and 
limitations of the new code, and might only be of interest if the update 
is giving you trouble (or if you're just curious about these sorts of 
things. ;-) ).

Thanks,
Luke Stuyvenberg
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The plugin should still work with any hardware compatible with 
Micro-Manager, but it will not be able to use any features not provided 
by the MM API. For example, it will not be able to determine the maximum 
position of most stages, and will be unable to control their velocity, 
or the laser power of most lasers. (These will need to be controlled 
another way, i.e. through the device property browser in Micro-Manager.)

/What it /can/do/: The plugin knows the attributes (minimum, maximum, 
and step size) of Picard stages, and can control the Z-stage's velocity. 
It also knows the minimum and maximum laser power of Coherent Cube laser 
devices, and can control that.

/What it /should/be able to do/: Additionally, it should be able to 
control the laser power of Cobolt laser devices (although the range is 
hard-coded to 0 - 50 mW).

I don't mention cameras because, as yet, the plugin doesn't take 
advantage of any camera features not available through the MM API. As a 
result, it should be able to use any camera MM can use without trouble.

If your hardware is having problems with the update, feel free to e-mail 
the list with whatever issues you're running into. You can also add 
support for your device yourself: download our development environment 
from http://openspim.org/How_to_build_the_software -- from there, take a 
look at 
plugins/SPIMAcquisition/src/main/java/spim/setup/PicardStage.java for an 
example of the code the new device manager runs on. I only ask that such
daring individuals as do so eventually submit a pull request on github, 
or contact the list with their new code, so we can extend this support 
to everyone using the software.
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