Help with miniscope camera (red screen of doom)

[Clara]

Hello! 

I recently set up the miniscope V4 and all the software aspects are running as they should be (as far as I can tell), however, when I try to view anything out of the scope itself, I am met with either a red screen or a grey screen - and the miniscope never gives any indication of actually being on (no blinking led or heat). I was wondering if anyone has encountered this problem before and if I could get any tips on how to resolve the situation.

Thanks! :)

[Federico Sangiuliano]

Hello Clara. A red Miniscope screen means that your field of view is saturating. On the other hand a gray screen means that your field of view is not saturating but not focusing on anything. If you want to quickly test your Miniscope you could use a piece of paper, like a Kimwipe. My personal choice for testing if the Miniscope is working, especially the electrotunable lens, is to place the Miniscope close to the screen of my computer and see the LEDs that make a pixel going in and out of focus as I move the EWL slider.

Also, if the Miniscope is connected to a powered DAQ a red LED should be on on the top PCB of the Miniscope.

Please let us know if you have any further questions

Federico

[Clara]

Hello Federico,  thank you for your help. 

The current problem we’re running into is that when everything is plugged in, and all the software is working, the red led on the scope doesn’t light up. As far as we can tell, the miniscope isn’t on. Another quirk that has come up in our testing is that when the two pin header is on K1 we can access the boot device but not the miniscope, and vice verse for K2. However, even when the miniscope shows up as connected for K2, the physical scope itself shows no actual indication of being on (no led or heat). If it’s on K3, nothing shows up. Any help or insight on this issue would be helpful.

Thanks!

[Clara]

Hello again!

To clarify, the red screen happens when the miniscope is connected and the grey screen appears when the boot loader is connected. In the case of the grey screen we get “msCam frame grab error!”, and for the red screen we get “msCam frame retrieve error!”, “reconnecting”, and “isopened 1,1”.

[Federico Sangiuliano]

Hello Clara. I think I understand whats going on with your setup. You are using the previous version of our software. If you post a screenshot I can confirm it. You can find the latest version on our Github repository by downloading the "Miniscope-DAQ-Software_build_v1_11.zip". You can also find the attached userConfig file for a single miniscope v4. Make sure to change the dataDirectory folder to one in your computer and the deviceID.

As for the DAQ, could you upload a picture of it?

Thank you

Federico