Hello to the BLUG. For the past little bit I have been lurking, just watching the email stream. I have a question or two, perhaps pertinent. For now, I will stick with my experience trying to use cameras on microscopes, using GNU/Linux as the computer platform. This could be a long tale, or, hopefully, more direct.
I have three cameras plus a "smart" phone, all of which I have used on my microscope. This is a relatively crude setup with a trinocular head. Of the cameras I use, one of them is most problematic: a relatively cheap 21 megapixel "Industrial Microscope Camera," purchased on Ebay. This camera is primarily an HDMI camera, controllable via a crude on-screen menu using a very cheap looking remote control. When hooked up by USB2, it identifies itself as a "Venus" camera, the manufacturer being "Hayear." Hayear offers software for GNU/Linux, similar to other microscope camera software as available, fof example, from AmScope, and others. By way of comparison, I also have access to a It has a limited range of controls available to tthis and other, webcam type software I have use. It seems to me that the API (probably the wrong term) built into firmware is limited in scope.
By comparison I have access to a dedicated microscope camera, that identifies as "Novel", at 2 megapixel, with better "API" features (if that is the right term). When the GNU/Linux program "guvcview" is used, controls include gain, sharpening, exposure, contrast, saturation, and more.
I have learned that this area of work---whatever it is called, is not as well provided for as those softwares for "both Windows and MacOS." I have used Windows and MacOS both, but I dont work that way. So I'm stuck with what I can find.
I also have a Canon EOS mirrorless DSLR with an AmScope adapter, not optically optimal, but I can use the excellent GNU/Linux utility Entangle with it. It's a little rough, but the programmer, Daniel Berringer (I think) has made some other amazingly useful software as well, and this one has the needed operational levers, if not all bells and whistles. Actually it has some of these too!
I hope, with all the hardware expertise of the group, someone can point to other approaches I have not tried. For example, here is the big question: Can the controls of the more facile dedicated "Novel" camera be made to work with the Industrial Camera. And why? Actually there is a Windows/MacOS program for the Venus camera that has more controls. On GNU/Linux, I think this has not been done.
I have not been participating in the group for a while. Hopefully, I can find more time to attend in-person meetings. Sundays are family time, that's my main excuse; also our family is on a swing shift schedule, all upside-down and backwards. Who said that life only happens between 8 and 5 on weekdays?
My best wishes to all members of this group. May all be well and stay safe. We are all vaccinated and boosted, and we do not fear the mask.
Alan Davis
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"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." ---Benjamin Franklin
"This ignorance about the limits of the earth's ability to absorb
pollutants should be reason enough for caution in the release
of polluting substances."
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Meadows et al. 1972. Limits to Growth. (p. 81)