qe65000 spectrometer and dark spectra

[MichaelHadrien]

Hello everyone, 

I'm working with an Ocean Optics QE65000 spectrometer and am trying to automate the process of acquiring and subtracting a dark spectra in the same way that SpectraSuite does. Does anyone know of a VI that does this without having to manually take a spectra with the shutter closed on the spectrometer? I tried using the Ocean Optics Spectral Processing vi but it doesn't work with the WE65000 specifically. I also searched their site for any drivers or vi's that have a dark spectra acquisition feature. 

If there isn't a VI for this, is there a way to call up an external program from LabView and tell it to run? For example, to call up SpectraSuite, tell it to acquire a spectra and subtract the dark spectra, save the text file, return to LabView and read the SpectraSuite text files.

I'm relatively new with LabView, have only been working for two months or so, but I'm willing to learn G and dig through the code if necessary. I just don't know where to start.

Thanks in advance!

--Michael

[MichaelHadrien]

bump. any help please?

[PaulRB]

Hi Michael,

The first thing I would try is using the instrument driver that is available for download here. I don't personally have this driver installed so I don't know if it will do what you want, but it is a good first step.

If this doesn't work, there are several other options. If this SpectraSuite program has an ActiveX interface, you should be able to call into it through LabVIEW. Also, the SpectraSuite software might call into some dlls that you can use from LabVIEW. You would do this through a call library function node.

Let me know if any of these things work for you!

Thanks,

[MichaelHadrien]

Hi Paul, 

I figured out part of the problem. The SpectraSuite drivers and the Oceon Optics Labview drivers were both installed. I uninstalled SpectraSuite completely off my system and replaced the instrument drivers with those on the link you posted, and now I don't receive any power cycle errors. 

After more researching I don't think there's a way to acquire a dark spectra from the QE65000 spectrometer without manually taking it. 

Thanks for your response! I really appreciate it.

--Michael

[James_G1]

If you look up the QE65000 dataset you will see that there are some "optically dark" pixels on the spectrum.  These can be averaged together and used to approximate a dark for correction purposes.