Area Detectors and Cameras

Area detectors are all largely the same but with small variations from device-to-device. All area detectors are the newer (awaitable) device definitions based on ophyd-async. They can be found in the :pyd:mod:`haven.devices.detectors` package.

Currently supported detectors:

  • Eiger (e.g. 500K) (EigerDetector)

  • Lambda Flex and 250K (LambdaDetector)

  • Simulated detector (SimDetector)

  • Aravis cameras (AravisDetector)

EPICS and Ophyd do not make a distinction between area detectors and cameras. After all, a camera is just an area detector for visible light.

In Haven, the device classes are largely the same. The only substantive difference is that cameras have the ophyd label “cameras”, whereas non-camera area detectors (e.g. Eiger 500K), have the ophyd label “area_detectors”. They can be used interchangeably in plans.

Data saving is handled automatically by the Ophyd-async device. For Tiled to read the HDF5 file properly, it may be necessary to set the “Dim 2 Chunk Size” PV in the detectors HDF5 NDFilePlugin to 1.