As part of moving the site to Quarto I intend to write a single post to give an overview of changes in minor versions of the packages. In this case, all versions in the 0.4.x series. I will update this same post in the case of minor version updates, and start a new post when the first version in the 0.5.x series is developed. I hope this will reduce the clutter and still provide a good overview of progress. Differences between versions are listed in detail in the NEWS file. Installation instructions are given in the README file.
Overview of changes
Version 0.4.2 Tracks a change in ‘photobiology’ (>= 0.11.0), and depends on these newer versions. The vignette is also updated to work correctly with ‘ggspectra’ (>= 0.3.12).
Versions 0.4.0 and 0.4.1 have full support for acquisition of time series of spectra. Version 0.4.1 adds checks for two conditions that are frequent when acquiring time series of spectra: 1) increased dark counts in only a part of the detector array, and 2) changes in irradiance between successive exposures when using integration time bracketing for HDR (high dynamic range) measurements. In the case of 1) all that is possible is to issue a warning, set an attribute to mark the spectrum as failing the quality control and expect the operator to solve the overheating problem. In the case of 2) merging of spectra taken with different integration times is skipped if they are not consistent and a message is emitted. This ensures that spectra with distorted shape can be avoided at the cost of a decrease in dynamic range in those cases that HDR cannot be validly applied.
The logic of the current user interface modes in described in detail in a tutorial. The most important new feature is the automatic acquisition of time series of spectra.
Time series of spectra
Three approaches to the acquisition of time series of spectra are supported: a) buffered, which is the fastest, as spectra are retrieved by the driver to a memory buffer, so that measurements take place non-stop, with the previous spectrum being transferred to the computer while the current one is being acquired. It is used when the step delay is set to 0 s and no HDR bracketing is used, i.e., no settings need to be modified in the spectrometer while acquiring the whole time series. b) fast, minimizes the delay with HDR bracketing. It is slower than buffered as acquisition of spectra stops and restarts when settings are modified, and because spectra are retrieved directly by R without buffering. fast acquisition is enabled when step delay is 0 s but HDR bracketing is in use. c) timed, the user sets the time interval at which the successive spectra will be acquired. This approach is enabled whenever the step delay is more than zero, with the caveat that an estimate of the time taken by individual measurements will be computed and this estimate used to limit the shortest accepted setting for step delay. If the step delay is deemed too short, it will be changed to zero and spectra acquired using either the fast or the buffered approach, or to the step delay set to the estimated duration.
Before using the new "series" mode for acquiring spectra at a rate faster than about once per minute, please read the ‘ooacquire’ vignette that describes acquisition of spectra. This is crucial as timing considerations are far from straightforward because of how spectrometers work.
Plans for the near future
If spectrometers are maintained at constant temperature, measurement of long time series spanning even multiple days is possible. For this type of measurements, regular timed saving to disk of time-series-data chunks becomes necessary for reliability.
Documentation web site includes all help pages, with output from all examples and vignettes in HTML format .
Please raise issues concerning bugs or enhancements to this package through GitHub at https://github.com/aphalo/ooacquire/issues. Pull requests are also welcome.