Thorlab Kinesis: .Net conatiner able to multithread?

[bockdoug]

Hey, I am controlling two Thorlabs stages (MTS50-Z8 & LTS300) using the Kinesis software provided by Thorlabs (My specs are Kinesis 32-bit, LabVIEW 15 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, .NET 4.x). I want to be able to see the current position of the stages even as they are moving. I believe this is a multithreading problem, so here's my question: Does the .NET container allow multithreading? More precisley, can I query the stages while they are running? If so, how? Has anyone got any Kinesis experience?
Cheers in advance.

[PezDeSpencer]

Hey bockdoug,

LabVIEW does allow multithreading but it would depend on how the .NET is processing the .dll from Thorlabs and this functionality is abstracted away from the user.

As for querying the stages while running I found some documentation from Thorlabs that describes how to "Query the Device Position." On the link attached, this will be on pages 14-17. 

I am not familiar with these Thorlab Stages, but hopefully this will provide you some help on how to query the position while running. Your best resources on how the capabilities of the driver and how to control it will be best directed to Thorlabs I believe. Best of luck!

Link:

https://www.thorlabs.com/Software/Motion%20Control/Kinesis/Kinesis-labview.pdf

Spencer R.

National Instruments

[bockdoug]

Thanks for your reply, Spencer! I should've mentioned that I know of the link you've posted. The example given there does work, however as soon as the flat sequence is modified slightly, everything goes down the drain. Even replacing the method "SetMoveAbsolutePosition" on page 21 to "SetJogStepSize" ruins everything. There seems to be absolutely no documentation for Kinesis at this stage, so debugging is practically impossible... I think it'll be best to leave my vi as it is without updating the position, until Thorlabs dedicates some intern to typing up the docs.

[Kyle97330]

Actually there is a lot of documentation, it's just written for C# programmers.  You can still get quite a lot of use out of it.  It installed with the rest of the Kinesis software.

Unless you installed in a non-standard location, just go here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Thorlabs\Kinesis\Thorlabs.MotionControl.DotNet_API.chm

From that document:

Parameters:

waitTimeout: The wait timeout
If this is value is 0 then the function will return immediately.
If this value is non zero, then the function will wait until the move completes or the timeout elapses, whichever comes first.

So you should be able to issue a movement command with a 0 for waitTimeout, then (assuming you have an indexed motion stage) poll the Position property as much as you like.  You may need to run the StartPolling function first.

[bockdoug · Accepted solution]

This is true, however, LabVIEW does not have some of these methods, and still others have completely different arguments. I've written Thorlabs and they can't really help at this stage, but they acknlowledged that Kinesis still needs further developing.
I've transfered back to the older APT program also provided by Thorlabs which works much better at this stage.

[KKJha]

Hello 

As discussed above, how can I get position of stage while moving. I am using APT software tool of Thorlabs. Earlier I have used Getposition method but this only detects when motion is completed ie final position, I want to plot position vs time of motion, but real time position is not retrieved. Need help in this regard.

[Kyle97330]

I have an older version (3.5 years ago) that I have not updated because it works fine, and on that one I get the position live with "GetPositionEx_UncalibPosition".  Maybe you can try that if you have that option?

[KKJha]

Thanks for your answer, can you share your program if possible, I would like to see how and where this APT method is suitably placed to get live position.