LED, laser, or other PWM control using Triggerscope

pwm example

It appears that more and more people want to use PWM control for illumination devices from Micro-Manager and other imaging software. PWM may be used for any number of applications, from high speed pulsing of an LED, or a laser, in order to reduce phototoxicity or just to control brightness, or to drive a DC motor at a varying speed, or to drive a device like a spinning disk to set the PRM. I figured I’d address this using the Triggerscope system controllers. rIn order to support PWM drive over an external device, I wanted a few useful functions to work in MM:

  • PWM duty cycle should be controlled form presets
  • PWM should be called to “off” from a TTL or other “shutter” style command
  • Once off, a similar “ttl on” type command should re-enable PWM at the alst used duty cycle
  • multiple output lines should be supported at different duty cycles.

Version 407 of the Triggerscope firmware now supports this, and uses the existing driver available for these devices. I’ve made a short demo video showing how this works on an oscilloscope output. I’ll place an option for this on the store. Please get in touch with any questions or post here – thanks!