External trigger not incrementing frame number / returning on falling edge

[kmcgrathgenerate]

Edit:

when using external trigger mode in "Sub-Electron Mode" it takes about 9 seconds for a 700 ms exposure signal to read back the image. I was hitting the timeout beforehand and likely grabbing a stale image. things work normally in other read out modes, its specifically sub electron mode

LOGS: READOUT_PORT = 3

Parameters:
Shutter pulse: 750.0 ms

[INIT] Connecting to Kinetix camera...
[CAMERA] Found camera: PMUSBCam00
[CAMERA] Started in Internal Trigger mode
[CAMERA] Live mode started (binning=(4, 4), readout_port=3)

[STEP 1] Live mode + external trigger (baseline)...
[CAMERA] Switched to EXT_TRIG_LEVEL (value=2560)

[TIMING] ========== SEND_PULSE ==========
[TIMING] Shutter: 750 ms
[TIMING] Pulse train completed in 0.910s
[TIMING] ==========================================

Live external trigger: success=True, elapsed_ms=8090.3

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I am using an external trigger, which I can confirm through an oscilloscope is being sent to the cameras trigger in. I am setting the camera into trigger mode and despite sending the pulse, when I am in LEVEL mode, the function just goes on to timeout. The image is new and from the pulse, but i have to wait for the poll_frame function to timeout to get the frame each time.

import time
from pyvcam import pvc, constants as const
from pyvcam.camera import Camera

# Initialize and configure camera
pvc.init_pvcam()
cam = next(Camera.detect_camera())
cam.open()
cam.exp_mode = const.EXT_TRIG_LEVEL  # Level trigger mode
cam.start_live()

# Get baseline frame_count
frame, fps, initial_count = cam.poll_frame(timeout_ms=100, oldestFrame=True)
print(f"Initial frame_count: {initial_count}")

# I send pulse here

# Single poll with 10 second timeout - should return when falling edge occurs
frame, fps, new_count = cam.poll_frame(timeout_ms=10000, oldestFrame=True)

print(f"After trigger frame_count: {new_count}")
print(f"Frame count incremented: {new_count > initial_count}")

which prints false for the count increase. but the frame is correct.

[vondrejPM]

Hello, we can confirm that the level triggering with SubE mode is currently not working properly. SubE mode does multisampling of an image which results in multiple exposures being taken for given exposure time. For example, when you have set 100ms exposure time, the camera will take 16 images, each with 100ms exposure time, resulting in overall 1.6s exposure time. With your setup, the overall exposure is 700ms x 16 images and therefore it takes so long. I can also confirm that the other modes are working correctly. As a workaround you can try setting 1/16th of the 700ms as an exposure time to see if that works. If you cannot control the shutter pulse length, you can try using different trigger mode and setting the exposure time manually. Please note that we are aware of this bug and we are working on fixing it as fast as possible.