Wasatch.NET is an application-level wrapper over Wasatch Photonics' USB and SPI APIs. It is provided so that application developers don't need to worry about opcodes and [de]marshalling octets of raw data; they can simply call high-level properties and methods like integrationTimeMS and getSpectrum().
Wasatch.NET is expected to work from all .NET-compatible languages, including:
| Platform | Test status |
|---|---|
| C# | tested with Visual Studio 2017 Community |
| LabVIEW | tested with 2017 32-bit (see Wasatch.LV) |
| MATLAB/Simulink | tested with 2017b 64-bit (see Wasatch.MATLAB) |
| Embarcadero Delphi | tested with Delphi Community Edition 10.2 over COM (see Wasatch.Delphi) |
| VBA (Excel) | tested with Office 2010 64-bit (see Wasatch.Excel) |
| R | not started (planned via rClr) |
| Xamarin | not started |
| Visual Basic.NET | not started |
| F# | not started |
| Wolfram Mathematica | not started |
If there are others you would like to see listed, please let us know and we'll test them!
Pre-compiled installers are available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows:
\code{.cs}
WasatchNET.Driver driver = WasatchNET.Driver.getInstance();
if (driver.openAllSpectrometers() > 0)
{
WasatchNET.Spectrometer spectrometer = driver.getSpectrometer(0);
spectrometer.integrationTimeMS = 100;
double[] spectrum = spectrometer.getSpectrum();
}
\endcode
For sample calling code, see the included C# WinFormDemo.
API documentation is available here:
The driver is designed to closely mimic the USB APIs defined in the following documents:
- http://wasatchphotonics.com/eng-0001/ (USB API)
- http://wasatchphotonics.com/eng-0034/ (USB EEPROM structure)
- http://wasatchphotonics.com/eng-0072/ (SPI API)
Therefore, most questions about parameters, modes and options can likely be resolved by review of the underlying spectrometer communication interface.
Wasatch Photonics application drivers are provided as reference implementations to demonstrate how to command and control our spectrometers over USB from a variety of platforms and languages. As working examples and "convenience wrappers" over our USB API, they are not guaranteed to include convenience functions for every call and option within the hardware API, nor are they necessarily the most efficient or optimal implementation in any given language.
The formal and complete interface to our spectrometers is provided in our USB API documentation. Standard USB drivers to access that direct interface are plentiful on all standard operating systems: libusb, WinUSB etc. No additional wrappers or libraries are required to make full use of our spectrometers from the platform of your choice.
If there is a spectrometer or spectroscopy function that you do not find provided in our open-source wrapper collection, please contact us and request its addition; or if you wish to "get your hands dirty," feel free to create your own implementation and optionally share it with us for merge into the base distribution. Wasatch Photonics is proud to help support our online community, but not too proud to decline patches when they improve the product!
That said, some known areas for improvement can be found in our Backlog (below).
Wasatch.NET is distributed in a Microsoft Installer (.msi) file, which installs the WasatchNET.dll and LibUsbDotNet.dll under C:\Windows (so they'll always be in the system path). FTDI drivers are also installed to support SPI communications.
It also installs a simple C# spectroscopy GUI app, WinFormDemo, under \Program Files\Wasatch Photonics (or Program Files (x86) on 32-bit systems), giving you a means to control the spectrometer and quickly verify the driver is installed and working correctly.
Besides double-clicking the .msi installer, there are one or two additional steps required for a complete installation:
Wasatch.NET is a high-level "application driver," which communicates with our spectrometers using the "mid-level" driver LibUsbDotNet, which in-turn communicates using the "low-level" USB driver libusb-win32. However, Windows doesn't know that our spectrometers are meant to use libusb-win32 until we tell it!
So the first thing we need to do is install the .INF files which associate our USB devices (via VID/PID) with libusb. This is the process to do so:
-
Plug in a USB Wasatch Photonics spectrometer.
-
Windows may prompt you to "locate drivers for this device". If not, go to the Device Manager (just type "Device Manager" into the Win10 search field on the Start Bar).
-
Your spectrometer(s) should appear as "Stroker FX2" or "Stroker InGaS Camera" under "Other devices".
-
Right-click on the Stroker entry and select "Update Driver".
-
Select "Manually browse for drivers" .
-
Ensure "[x] include subfolders" is checked
-
Browse to "C:\Program Files\Wasatch Photonics\Wasatch.NET\libusb_drivers" or "C:\Program Files (x86)\Wasatch Photonics\Wasatch.NET\libusb_drivers" as appropriate.
- When prompted to confirm whether you wish to install the libusb drivers, click "Install."
- Confirm that your spectrometer now appears under "libusb-win32 devices".
This step is believed ONLY required for developers using Visual Basic 6 (VB6) or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA, part of Microsoft Excel).
Because our .msi installer does not register the .tlb file needed by VB6/VBA, you need to perform one additional manual step:
-
Navigate to \Program Files\Wasatch Photonics\Wasatch.NET (or Program Files (x86) on 32-bit systems)
-
Right-click the batch file "RegisterDLL.bat", and select "Run as Administrator"
- Confirm no errors appear in the result
So you'd like to build and compile Wasatch.NET yourself from source? Good, that's how we like to do it too...you learn so much more that way :-)
The driver was written and tested under Visual Studio 2017 Community on Win10 64-bit. It is itself dependent on the following libraries:
URL: https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusbdotnet/files/LibUsbDotNet/
This is a .NET wrapper over the standard libusb-win32 which is used by many USB device vendors. The pre-compiled DLL provided in our lib/ directory was built from v2.2.8 using Visual Studio 2017 Community against the .NET 4.0 Client Profile.
To use XL-Series spectrometers with the Andor camera system, Wasatch.NET requires the Andor Driver Pack 2 be installed. This is currently available from Andor at the following link:
See README-SPI.md.
Our standard DLL is built against .NET 4.8 Client Profile against the Debug target, so the DLL will have the maximum amount of debugging symbols and metadata for user troubleshooting. The WinFormDemo is built against .NET 4.8.
The standard and recommended build configuration is x64, but we also distribute installers for x86 (Win32), as for instance many users are have 32-bit versions of LabVIEW even on 64-bit operating systems.
By user request we include an "AnyCPU" installer as well, but this configuration is missing some functionality (e.g. drivers for Andor / XL spectrometers).
Users are welcome to build the library themselves against any target configuration or architecture; please let us know if you encounter any issues which we can help resolve.
If you still need to build against .NET Framework 4.0, checkout the "framework40" branch and build using Visual Studio 2019 Community Edition.
The simplest way to test whether your installation is successful is to run the provided WinFormDemo, which should be available on your Start Menu under Wasatch Photonics -> Wasatch.NET -> WinFormDemo.
If you have a Wasatch Photonics spectrometer plugged-in and correctly showing under "libusb-win32 devices" in the Device Manager, you should be able to run the demo, then click "Initialize" to connect to the spectrometer.
Although the library lets applications configure logging programmatically via Driver.Logger.level and .setPathname(), not all applications do so. End-users of compiled applications can still configure logging manually by setting these environment variables before running a program using Wasatch.NET:
C:> set WASATCHNET_LOGGER_PATHNAME=C:\temp\wasatchnet.log (assumes directory exists)
C:> set WASATCHNET_LOGGER_LEVEL=DEBUG (can be DEBUG, INFO, ERROR or NEVER)
These environment "defaults" can still be overridden by application code which explicitly calls the above methods and properties, however.
At least one client language (LabVIEW NXG) only supports .NET assemblies loaded in the GAC (General Assembly Cache). In order to be loaded into the GAC, an assembly has to be "strongly named" (digitally signed)...along with its direct dependencies (3rd-party DLLs like LibUsbDotNet).
For information on digitally signing Wasatch.NET assemblies for GAC support, Wasatch maintainers should reference "Admin/Keys/Wasatch.NET".
- see MultiChannel
If you have trouble installing our libusb-win32 drivers, see:
This can happen when Wasatch Dash or another older Wasatch driver product has been installed on the same computer as ENLIGHTEN or one of our newer drivers (like Wasatch.NET).
You can tell that this is the problem if you look in the Windows Device Manager, and you can see "Wasatch Photonics Device FX2" listed under "Universal Serial Bus controllers".
To resolve, first uninstall the older driver, by right-clicking "Wasatch Photonics Device FX2" and selecting "Uninstall device":
Make sure you click "Delete the driver software for this device":
From the "Action" menu, select "Scan for hardware changes" to re-enumerate the device under the correct device driver:
You should now see your spectrometer listed under the expected libusb-win32 driver:
You should now be able to re-run your Wasatch.NET, Wasatch.PY or ENLIGHTEN software and connect to your spectrometer.
- change installer projects to WiX so they can auto-populate the GAC?
- refactor USB calls into Bus abstraction for Bluetooth/Ethernet
- see Changelog
For questions about the driver or API, please contact:
support@wasatchphotonics.com