Image Aquisition Toolbox, islogging versus isrunning confusion

Hello, I have a couple of questions over the IMAQ toolbox.

1: Im getting confused over the checks islogging and isrunning. Which one actually checks whether the camera is collecting light? (The documentation isn't very clear)

2: Is there anyway to flag the start of the camera collecting light (I dont mind how the camera is setup, i.e. trigger manual or immediate, but Im only collecting 1 image). The reason I want to flag the start of the camera actually collecting photons is I want to also send a command to a laser to turn on 200ms after the start of the camera collecting photons.

Thanks

Jason

Answer 1

[Vidip]

In the context of the Image Acquisition Toolbox (IMAQ) in MATLAB, the ‘isrunning’ function checks if the video input object is in a running state, which means it is either ready to acquire or is currently acquiring data. However, to specifically determine if the camera is actively collecting data (or "collecting light" in your terms), the ‘islogging’ function does that, it returns true when the camera is actively writing or logging acquired data to memory, indicating that it is indeed collecting photons.

For flagging the start of the camera collecting light, you can utilize the camera's trigger configuration along with MATLAB's timing functions. After setting up your camera with either a manual or immediate trigger, you can start the acquisition with the start function and then trigger the camera using the trigger function if in manual mode. You can use a MATLAB timer object initiated right after triggering the camera. This timer would wait for 200ms before executing the callback function.