December 2024 [v1.10.2]

Performance 🚀

• migration to Python 3.12 for better performance and compatibility with the latest libraries.
• faster loading and response time of the GUI
• subsampling of the camera image for less frequent rendering in the GUI (less CPU load) during acquisition, controlled by 'camera_display_temporal_subsampling': 2, parameter in the config file. Value 1 means no subsampling (show every image during acquisition).
• change recommended package manager to mamba to avoid Anaconda license issues.
• change the default timer for stage position update from 50 ms to 100 ms, to reduce communication and logging overhead. ASI stages updated every 200 ms, PI stages every 100 ms.
• zoom dictionary can include multi-word names like 5x Mitutoyo instead of 5x for better UI and meta-infomation.
• spinboxes are limited in scroll speed to allow hardware catch up with UI in the interactive mode
• #82: uploading UCL-Bechtop config file config/examples/config_benchtop_UCL_5laser.py by @TchLenn and parsing of double-digit strings like ao21:22 in config file.
• remove Log tab from the GUI, as it was not used by the users and was causing unnecessary overhead, esp. in DEBUG mode.

User Interface 🍭

• ETL config files (.csv) are automatically checked and updated with the laser-zoom combination selected in GUI, to avoid errors in the acquisition. User can even start with an empty ETL config file, it will be auto-filled with the laser-zoom combinations on the go.
• more tooltips added to the GUI elements for better user experience.

🔧 system changes

• pip depenencies are frozen for staibilty
• mesoSPIM_State is only nominally a singleton, but actually inherited by classes from their parent class to ensure unique state and thread safety.
• no signal from mesoSPIM_State every time the state is updated. The GUI is updated from state by a separate signal/slot from member classes, on demand.
• bugfix: serial communication with ASI stages is now thread-safe, with no conflicts between GUI (Main) and Core threads.
• bugfix: parsing config file with either 'laser_task_line' : 'PXI6733/ao0:3' or '/PXI6733/ao0:3' notation (Alan Watson).