[OpenSPIM] Problem with the Z stage of the USB 4D stage of Picard Industry

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi Ke,

first of all: welcome to the OpenSPIM community! It is an exciting project
and it is good that so many people start building their own SPIM setups
and start sharing their experiences.

Especially in this light, though, I'd like to point out I do not discuss
Open Source (or, as in this case, Open Hardware) in private mails (unless
I am paid for it specifically, and I would charge what my work is truly
worth). Therefore, I Cc:ed the OpenSPIM mailing list and encourage you to
reply-to-all.

On Wed, 25 Jun 2014, Ke Li wrote:

> I'm Ke, a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University. Our lab now is
> building the OpenSPIM system:
> http://openspim.org/Welcome_to_the_OpenSPIM_Wiki

Great!

> During the process, I encountered a problem related to the 4D stage of
> Picard Industry. When I create the hardware configuration using
> micro-manager, an error (*Error in device Picard Z stage: Unable to
> communicate with the device.*) shows every time when I try to add the Z
> stage of the USB 4D stage.

Hmm... Typically, this means that the serial number is wrong... You should
be able to set it in the properties in the wizard.

> While the Picard Twister and the XY stage can be added correctly. The Z
> stage can be controlled by the software from Picard Industry normally.
> So I think the communication between the stage and the driver should be
> ok.

That is valuable information, thanks for sharing. I half suspected the
cable to be faulty.

> And I have followed the instruction here:
> https://www.micro-manager.org/wiki/PicardStage and the micro-manager I
> used is the newest version. I have encountered this problem both in
> 32bit and 64bit Windows system for almost one week and had no clue to
> solve it. Could you please give me some suggestion for solving this
> problem?

Well, I hope that the above comment helps you solve the problem!

Ciao,
Johannes