Problem with Olympus IX81 system

[daj1u06]

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Dear All,

not directly confocal related but I guess that other folks will be in facilities
with other high end microscopes as well.

We have a fully automated Olympus IX81 time lapse system with prior stage
and SIS camera running under Cell^P. It behaves beautifully on phase contrast
only and fluorescence only runs, but when we do combined phase and
fluorescence (MFIP mode) runs, we experience random system crashes at
different times during the run on about 50% of occasions. This problem has
been ongoing for about 4 years now and neither Olympus nor I have come up
with the cause. We have had a loan system and swapped out every
automated part in turn, rebuilt the entire software installation (including off-
network operating system) several times, tried logging serial port coms etc
etc, all to no avail. We still can't even determine if it a software or hardware
issue.

Does anyone have a similar system and if so, have they experienced similar
issues / are they able to run combined phase / fluorescence runs without a
problem?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, feedback and ideas as Olympus and I
have run out of ideas!!

Dave Johnston,
Biomedical Imaging Unit,
University of Southampton.

[mahogny]

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On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 9:18 AM, David Johnston <[hidden email]> wrote:

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> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
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>
> Dear All,
>
> not directly confocal related but I guess that other folks will be in
> facilities
> with other high end microscopes as well.
>
> We have a fully automated Olympus IX81 time lapse system with prior stage
> and SIS camera running under Cell^P. It behaves beautifully on phase
> contrast
> only and fluorescence only runs, but when we do combined phase and
> fluorescence (MFIP mode) runs, we experience random system crashes at
> different times during the run on about 50% of occasions. This problem has
> been ongoing for about 4 years now and neither Olympus nor I have come up
> with the cause. We have had a loan system and swapped out every
> automated part in turn, rebuilt the entire software installation
> (including off-
> network operating system) several times, tried logging serial port coms etc
> etc, all to no avail. We still can't even determine if it a software or
> hardware
> issue.
>

To figure out if it is the software, install and use another software. if
it also crashes, it is a hardware issue:

www.micro-manager.org

In addition, if you use open source software like this we have a much
greater chance of being able to pin-point which part of your hardware is
failing.

One problem you might run into: I don't know if the SIS camera works
outside cell^p. Many of the big companies sell crappy hardware without any
consideration of compatibility (or rather, they don't want it). If that's
the case I guess you have to borrow another camera for the testing.

/Johan


--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Johan Henriksson
PhD student, Karolinska Institutet
http://mahogny.areta.org  http://www.endrov.net

[dbstongy]

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Hi, Dave,
We have went through same so called "acquisition automatic stop" problem on our wide field fluorescence microscope, Olympus BX61 WI, with the photometrics Coolsnap ez camera and MediaCybernetics software IPP. After about two years testing (tried almost the same things as what you have done), we finally changed the camera to Olympus xm10 and Olympus Cellsens Dimension. In my case, I suspect that the problem came from the mirror unit but the 3rd part software was not able to point out the error so the acquisition was stopped without any error message most of the time.
If I were you, I would like to ask Olympus try their acquisition software and camera on your system to find out if it will solve your problems the next.
The best,
TONG Yan (Ms) :: NUS Centre for BioImaging Sciences :: Department of Biological Sciences :: National University of Singapore :: 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543 :: (65) 6516 7202 (DID) :: (65) 6779 2486 (Fax) ::) :: [hidden email] (E) :: www.nus.edu.sg (W)Company Registration No: 200604346E
________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of David Johnston [[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2012 3:18 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Problem with Olympus IX81 system

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Dear All,

not directly confocal related but I guess that other folks will be in facilities
with other high end microscopes as well.

We have a fully automated Olympus IX81 time lapse system with prior stage
and SIS camera running under Cell^P. It behaves beautifully on phase contrast
only and fluorescence only runs, but when we do combined phase and
fluorescence (MFIP mode) runs, we experience random system crashes at
different times during the run on about 50% of occasions. This problem has
been ongoing for about 4 years now and neither Olympus nor I have come up
with the cause. We have had a loan system and swapped out every
automated part in turn, rebuilt the entire software installation (including off-
network operating system) several times, tried logging serial port coms etc
etc, all to no avail. We still can't even determine if it a software or hardware
issue.

Does anyone have a similar system and if so, have they experienced similar
issues / are they able to run combined phase / fluorescence runs without a
problem?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions, feedback and ideas as Olympus and I
have run out of ideas!!

Dave Johnston,
Biomedical Imaging Unit,
University of Southampton.

[Julio Vazquez]

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Hi Dave,


We had a somewhat similar issue on a different system (not Olympus). It turned out it had to do with the settings for the optical configurations. The config file for the fluorescent channels was remembering the transmitted light settings, including teh power which was set to zero, so every time the scope switched from fluorescence to bright field, the transmitted light power was ramping up and down at each cycle….. This seemed to throw off the timing, and the software woudl eventually stall. This wouldn't hapen when doing TL or FL only, because then the lamp stayed at the same power setting. We eventually told the fluor channels to ignore transmitted light settings, so that the lamp stayed ON and only the shutters were operating, and everything was OK from then on. Took a while to figure out though…  Maybe you can have a look at what the scope is doing during the acquisition, and/or review all the settings.


Julio Vazquez
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Seattle, WA 98109-1024

http://www.fhcrc.org

==


On Apr 5, 2012, at 12:18 AM, David Johnston wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> *****
>
> Dear All,
>
> not directly confocal related but I guess that other folks will be in facilities
> with other high end microscopes as well.
>
> We have a fully automated Olympus IX81 time lapse system with prior stage
> and SIS camera running under Cell^P. It behaves beautifully on phase contrast
> only and fluorescence only runs, but when we do combined phase and
> fluorescence (MFIP mode) runs, we experience random system crashes at
> different times during the run on about 50% of occasions. This problem has
> been ongoing for about 4 years now and neither Olympus nor I have come up
> with the cause. We have had a loan system and swapped out every
> automated part in turn, rebuilt the entire software installation (including off-
> network operating system) several times, tried logging serial port coms etc
> etc, all to no avail. We still can't even determine if it a software or hardware
> issue.
>
> Does anyone have a similar system and if so, have they experienced similar
> issues / are they able to run combined phase / fluorescence runs without a
> problem?
>
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions, feedback and ideas as Olympus and I
> have run out of ideas!!
>
> Dave Johnston,
> Biomedical Imaging Unit,
> University of Southampton.