Beam Profiler FAQ’s

Other than by connecting a camera and collecting data, the best way to verify that your BeamGage installation is working correctly is to select Beam Maker as the source. You should see a simulated beam come up in the display. If it does not, it signals that the installation of the software has failed to install one or more components correctly. The solution is to uninstall and reinstall the software, ensuring that it is performed with administrator privileges.

The Video Trigger monitors the digitized camera sensor area and acquires new frames whenever a pixel from the camera sensor exceeds the preset trigger level. If the camera is free running with Video Trigger enabled, then there is one or more pixels in the acquired camera sensor area that exceeds the trigger level. You may be able to increase the trigger level to prevent free running, which is selectable from 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, and 1/2 of the camera dynamic range. It may be necessary to reduce the camera Exposure setting or Gain setting if it is set higher than 0.0db. If none of these suggestions work, then the camera may have bad pixels that are mis-performing with artificially higher responsivity, and the camera will need to be returned to have its bad pixel map updated to exclude the mis-performing pixels.

The most common problem we see with BeamGage software installations are that the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is not installed completely or correctly. Make sure all of the available Windows updates are installed and also that the Microsoft .NET Framework 4 is installed and fully updated by running Windows Update.

The second most common problem are attempts to install the BeamGage software when the log-on account is not an Administrator level account on the computer. For Windows 7 we recommend right clicking on the Setup.exe file and selecting Run as Administrator. Don't click on the other files on the installation CD as the Setup.exe file looks at your computer to see what additional components may be required to install the BeamGage software.

The third most common problem we see is when the BeamGage software is downloaded from the web page and attempts are tried to run the installation from inside the downloaded zipped file. Make sure you unzip the file to a folder on your desktop and then enter the folder and run the Setup.

The fourth most common problem we see is IT departments setting security settings tight enough that Anti-Virus or Fire Wall programs block the installation of BeamGage so it will not correctly complete the installation.

The fifth most common problem we see is on laptops using a built in web cam. This is typically revealed when you try to launch BeamGage and get an error that states the Spiricon Console Service is not installed on the computer. If you do not receive this same error when you try to run Beam Maker, uninstall your web cam software and it should resolve this error.

With the release of BeamGage 6.9.1 the ability to install an Ophir power meter is available through the Spiricon Driver Manager. This allows the Ophir power meter equipment to work with BeamGage, and without the need to separately run the StarLab PC power meter application. The Spiricon Driver Manager can be accessed at the end of the BeamGage installation or at a later time by clicking on the Windows Start, going to All Programs\Spiricon Tools and select Spiricon Driver Manager. With an Ophir power meter connected through the USB cable, then Under “Select a device:” you will now see an option to install the Ophir Power Meter. Click on the Ophir Power Meter and then the Install button, located to the right, to install a connection to the Ophir power meter equipment. Power meter control options are now available through BeamGage such as selecting the appropriate wavelength and power/energy scaling factor.

Yes.

A camera is not meant to be a power meter. Even though BeamGage has the ability to measure and display a power/energy reading, you first need to use a NIST calibrated power/energy meter to get a calibrated power or energy meter reading to relate it to a given beam profile that is taken simultaneously. Then you can have a relative power reading come from your BeamGage beam profiling camera system. In adition, BeamGage reading can indicate a trend of laser power at same settings. For example, if you have a laser source with known Power/Energy, you can mark that parameter in BeamGage>Computations>Power Energy tab, and see trend in case of increase or reduction in laser intensity.

If you use an Ophir USB based power/energy meter display you will be able to link this equipment into BeamGage to get a continual feedback from your Ophir equipment into BeamGage to create this connection for you. You need to keep your Ophir sensor in the beam path so it will continually update the related reading to the given beam profile.

BeamGage Ultracal is the camera baseline correction process that nulls the camera background energy so accurate measurements can be obtained. Upon completing the Ultracal baseline correction cycle, the Ultracal checkbox will turn ON and a Green “U” indicator will illuminate in the status bar. When a camera setting changes that can compromise the Ultracal accuracy, the “U” indicator will turn Red, and Ultracal processing will be suspended. You may notice that the Ultracal Indicator has changed to Red, indicating Ultracal suspension, and not know what changed to cause it. To see an explanation for Ultracal suspension, hover over this indicator with the mouse pointer and a pop-up message will appear providing information of what changed that caused the Ultracal suspension.

With laptops being ever so more popular in the work place these days most of them are coming equipped with a built in web cams. These built in web cams most commonly use a Microsoft Direct Show driver which is the same driver used by the Ophir-Spiricon SP line of USB cameras. Since the web cam is built in it gets priority on the system and gets in the way of BeamGage finding the SP line of USB cameras. With some laptop computers you can enter the Windows Device Manager and disable the web cam to allow operation of the SP line of USB cameras with BeamGage. However, some computers also require that you uninstall the web cam application program to release control of the Microsoft Direct Show driver so it can be used by BeamGage to operate the SP USB cameras.

Multi-machine, multi-camera users can use BeamGage to throw enough hardware at a problem to get the job done. This is one of the market “sectors” that has not been addressed by previous beam analysis systems. Laser manufactures, government agencies, and large corporations should love this feature as it will support the notion of networking to centralize control rooms and automation systems that make use of BeamGage's new (and replete) automation interface. The custom computational package feature described above should target many new niche markets. Many scientists process video data or compute new results from the information provided by beam analysis systems. They don't want to invest in a massive amount of effort interfacing cameras and writing complicated user interfaces. BeamGage has made it easy for them to do their custom computations but still use all the facilities of BeamGage to manage those results. We are really hoping this “round hole” can accommodate more of the disenfranchised “square pegs” out there.

BeamGage will be a big plus to users that want to sample optical paths in more than one location simultaneously.

Those that align two or more beams or an array of fibers will greatly benefit from partitioning features.

All users will enjoy the rich 2D/3D beam rendering and expanded computation, pass/fail, and statistics features.

If BeamGage does not recognize your camera immediately after the installation, reboot the computer.

The graphics settings on some computers may be preventing the BeamGage Chart graphics function. Please try the following;

Right click on the Desktop

Click on; Configure Switchable Graphics

Click on spiricon.version5.exe and change the Graphics Setting to “Not Assigned”

BeamGage has the ability to connect to an Ophir USB power meter to display the power measurement in the BeamGage Results window without needing to install the StarLab software. You can run the Spiricon Driver Manager and select Ophir Power Meter to install the drivers for the Ophir USB interface units and meters. However, if your interface or meter has an older ROM version that needs to be updated, you will need to install the latest version of StarLab that can be downloaded from our web site here to update your ROM version so it will then show up in BeamGage.

In previous versions of BeamGage it was required to install and operate BeamGage with elevated privileges. The BeamGage 6.1 application core has been over hauled to eliminate the need for operating the software with elevated privileges. You still have to install BeamGage 6.1 from an Administrator level account, but now you can operate it OK with restricted user privileges.

BeamGage uses industry standard Microsoft Windows technology and is fully compatible with most desktop or laptop PC's. Laser beam images are brought into the PC using a camera with a standard USB or Firewire interface.

BeamGage is the first fully scalable beam analysis system. Any number of cameras can be viewed/analyzed/controlled from any number of networked machines, simultaneously. This gives the user the ability leverage large amounts of hardware power (RAM, CPU, storage and networks) to solve more complex video analysis problems. It has even been optimized to allow local-machine analysis clients to run uninhibited by the slower cross-network clients.

BeamGage is the first system to implement true multi-client functionality. This allows the user to launch any number of analyzers that subscribe to a single camera source and partition the detector data for area of interest based analysis. In other words, you can analyze any number of spatially-separated beams on the same detector or compute different results on overlapping regions.

The ability to export ASCII data from BeamGage was recently added in the newest version 5.3. You can download it by following the link below. We also added the ability to export data in a number of different image formats. http://www.ophir-spiricon.com/laser-measurement-instruments/beam-profilers/services/software-download
Exporting ASCII or Image Data from BeamGage can be done by doing the following:

1. Open BeamGage and select your Data Source from the Source ribbon bar.
2. Click on the Logging ribbon bar and select the data you want to export from the Data section. Hint: the ASCII data is the icon that looks like a folder with the letters abcd on it.
3. If you want to export images select the image formats from either the 2D Image or 3D Image section.
4. In the Logging Controls section select how you would like to log the data as well as logging the data if you are using pass fail criteria.
5. In the File Set section click on black down arrow in the white box and select Browse to browse to where you would like to export the data to.
6. Give it a name and click Save. This name will now show up in the white drop down list.
7. To the right of this box is an icon that looks like a black exclamation mark inside of a yellow triangle over the top of a folder. Click this to turn on the Logging function.
8. When you click the BeamGage Start button that looks like a blue circle with the play symbol in it will start logging data.

We have a couple of articles on our website that help in determining which beam width measurement would be best for a particular application.

• Beam Width Measurement Accuracy
• Apples to Apples: Which Camera Technologies Work Best for Beam Profiling Applications, Part 2: Baseline Methods and Mode Effects

Frame Priority will attempt to capture data frames and store them into the frame buffer as quickly as possible. Results will be computed and posted as the remaining bandwidth will allow, but results posting will skip frames if it cannot keep up with the rate at which data is streaming in. Even in this mode, it may be possible that the camera will output frames faster than BeamGage can keep up.
 
Results Priority will make the computing and posting of results more important than how fast frames get placed into the frame buffer. If observing the results is the main focus of operation then use this mode."
 
Generally speaking Results Priority is the mode that should be used. In contrast, if performing post processing, one could disable all processing modes, results, and displays and then Frame Priority will capture frame data at the maximum rate possible on the PC.

BeamGage has the most extensive set of ISO and non-IS0 beam diagnostics computations assembled in a beam profiling tool. 

BeamGage is the first fully scalable beam analysis system. Any number of cameras can be viewed/analyzed/controlled from any number of networked machines, simultaneously. This gives the user the ability leverage large amounts of hardware power (RAM, CPU, storage, and networks) to solve more complex video analysis problems. It has even been optimized to allow local-machine analysis clients to run uninhibited by slower, cross-network clients. 

BeamGage is the first system to implement true multi-client functionality. This allows the user to launch any number of analyzers that subscribe to a single camera source and partition the detector data for area of interest based analysis. In other words, you can analyze any number of spatially-separated beams on the same detector or compute different results on overlapping regions. 

BeamGage is the first beam profile analysis system to allow users to analyze mathematically generated beam profiles in the same way they would analyze real beam profiles. With BeamMaker you can create synthetic profiles in virtually any camera frame format. Simulating not only width; height; 8, 10, 12, 14, 16… bit digitizers; but many other features like modal content, noise, and background effects. This opens up many reference beam processing options never available before. 

BeamGage is the first beam analysis system to fully address the problem of application complexity. It can be configured by the factory or the end-user to scale its complexity up or down, showing only the controls required by the user and hiding un-needed complexity. 

BeamGage is the first beam analysis system allowing the user to fully exploit their accelerated graphics card and render rich 3D visualizations of the beam in full camera resolution. 

BeamGage is the first beam analysis system to combine the accuracy of Ultracal^TM – Ophir-Spiricon's patented baseline correction algorithm that helped establish the ISO 11146-3 standard for beam measurement accuracy – with the simplicity of AutoX – an adaptive mode that automatically adjusts exposure, gain, and black level, simplifying optical system setup and alignment. 

BeamGage is the first full-featured beam analysis system to allow synchronized external power meter calibrations. 

BeamGage also supports custom computational packages. Said another way, we do the work of capturing video data and computing any enabled results. BeamGage passes those results and video data to end-user defined routines (which are simple to create); we then take the values returned from end-user defined routines and do the work of displaying, keeping statistics, checking pass/fail, buffering, saving, logging, and printing. This feature provides a simple solution to users who have problems that fall outside of the “typical” beam analysis domain. 

BeamGage is the first beam analysis system to output data in HDF5 format, an open source format compatible with tools like MatLab. 

We expect BeamGage to open several very important doors that were not available until this product.
 

1. Laser manufacturers knowledge for future laser advancements. With BeamMaker, the user can synthetically generate theoretical beam conditions to learn what can be accomplished versus what is being accomplished.
2. Beam analysis can now be performed on multiple beams at one time. This serves the communication industry using multiple fiber bundles and also the high temperature, high energy research community doing multiple laser based fusion experiments.
3. Data distribution via the Internet BeamGage is location independent. Now a user no longer has to be in the same location as the experiment. Both the data collection and the data handling can be remote and managed using browser technology.
4. Academic research advancements BeamGage also supports custom computational packages. Users can now easily input their own algorithmic packages into BeamGage for custom computations.

In some instances on laptops with integrated webcams, the integrated webcam drivers may be supplanting themselves in place of the Ophir-Spiricon driver, so the only way to overcome the driver mismatch and to provide support for the Ophir-Spiricon provided camera is to disable the integrated webcam in BIOS and remove the associated integrated webcam software.

BeamGage® supports a variety of different cameras for image acquisition. The cameras used with BeamGage have specific drivers required for active image acquisition. Included with the installation of BeamGage is a Spiricon Camera Driver utility for installing the required camera driver, which pops-up at the end of the installation or is accessed by clicking on the Windows Start\All Programs\Spiricon Tools\Spiricon Driver Manager. The Spiricon Driver Manager allows you to select the camera model being used and then click the Install button to install the required camera driver.

BeamGage is the first ground-up beam profiling development in 10 years. A complete rewrite, it has: a) capitalized on the latest technology advancements including client/server, Internet, and Windows tools advancements, and b) taken all the lessons learned from beam profiling users and extended proven ISO techniques to support all the new ways the laser manufacturers and user communities are innovating with lasers.

BeamGage can generate a report of what is being seen on the screen in either a PDF or XPS format. To do this, click on the Reports tab in the ribbon bar and click on the Include button to show what items to include in the report. Place a check mark next to the items to be included in the report. If you are including the beam profiles, they will be printed exactly as you see them on the screen. If you want to save ink, click on the purple square button to the right of the Include button to enable the report to be generated with a light background. If you want each section of the report on a different page click on the button that looks like two pages with purple squares at their top. The two number windows in this section are for selecting which frame to start the report with and how many frames to generate reports on. Clicking the Save button will allow you to save the report in either PDF or XPS format. The Printer button sends the report directly to your default printer.

The IEEE 1394 adapter card driver is likely not set properly to one that includes the name Basler. You will need to update the driver for the IEEE 1394 adapter card that the camera is connected to manually. Go to the Windows Device Manager, right click on the adapter card driver, select "Update Driver Software", then "Browse my computer for driver software", then "Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer". At this point, select a driver from the list that includes Basler in the name. Complete the wizard and then disconnect the cable from the back of the camera for 5 seconds, then reconnect it. Watch for a Basler category to show up in the Windows Device Manager at the top of the list. When it does, you should be able to open the FireWire BeamPro software again and select your camera from the list. Windows 10 does not support IEEE 1394 FireWire based device.

Yes you can. Go to Logging and select whether you want to log Continuously, by number of Frames, or by some duration of Time. The data will be saved in an Excel Friendly format. Now, take the data and you can have Excel load these files for your analysis.

Currently we provide no support or examples for the BeamGage Automation Interface using Python because Python does not fully support .NET interfaces and misses two critical features: .NET Remoting and Casting. Any programming language that supports those features for .NET Framework 4.5 or later, should work OK, but this typically is limited to compiled languages. As such, we do not have Python examples available.
 
While Python does not natively support .NET, IronPython (http://www.ironpython.net) , or Python for .NET (http://pythonnet.sourceforge.net/) are integrations for the language that may work, but may require separate implementation of wrapper libraries of the provided BeamGage Automation Interface to handle the casting and remoting functionality.