Linkam Scientific Instruments.

Leaders in heating, cooling and freezing microscope stages.

Temperature control software

Linksys 32 Now available with
Q-Imaging high performance digital Firewire cameras

LINKSYS 32 Software Systems

Linkam has developed a series of temperature control and image capture packages compatible with Windows Operating Systems (from Windows 2000 upward, not yet Windows Vista)

The Linksys 32 software displays the live temperature, active ramp information and allows the user to have full control of the rate of heating, limit and hold time of up to 100 ramps within the temperature profile.

The software recognizes which stage is connected, automatically limiting the temperature control parameters specific to that stage and opening the relevant operation windows. (such as XY motor controls, Vacuum pressure control and second temperature window and controls for thermal gradient stages).

The software is supplied as a full set of 'Active X' controls so that the user can use the software either as a standalone suite of temperature controls, or import these controls into third party software such as Labview or image analysis.

Free maintenance and upgrades emails are available in the first twelve months with new features available at low cost thereafter.

Linksys 32 is available as a number of packages and is modular so that further features such as digital image capture can be added at a later date:

Linksys 32 Package Options:

Linksys 32
Temperature Control and data aquisition software (no image capture)

Linksys 32-AV
Temperature Control and data aquisition software with Analogue Video Capture (incl. PCI capture card)

Linksys 32-DV
Temperature Control and data aquisition software with Digital Video Capture. A range of Q-Imaging digital firewire cameras are available to cover all temperature controlled image capture applictions.

See Q-Imaging website for details of the Retiga, QIcam and Micropublisher cameras which are all compatible with Linksys 32-DV and available from Linkam with software to control all thermal stages and capture images with associated temperature data.

Linksys 32 - CFR
Temperature Control and data aquisition software in compliance with the FDA risk assessment ruling, 21 CFR part 11 regarding the use of electronic records and signatures. For more information on this ruling see www.21CFR11.com.
Contact linkam for further info on implementing this software and its compatibility with your setup.

The Linksys 32-DV software screen capture below shows:
Live temperature. The active ramp data, a saved plot, the temperature profile (Data Table) a sample image and a gallery of captured images.

Temperature Profile
A Profile of up to 100 ramps can be created in a simple on screen data table.
The green start row shows a rate of 25°C/min, a limit temperature of 180°C a hold time of 2 minutes and the image capture delay of 1 image every 5 seconds (only available in Linksys 32-DV and AV packages.)

Temperature Control Tools
Profiles can be interrupted at any time by clicking on the 'Cool', 'Heat' and 'Hold' buttons and using the 'nudge buttons' on the temperature tool bar to change 'Rate °C/min, Limit °C, or Hold in minutes.

Temperature/ Time Graph
The profile can be viewed as a graph which is updated every second. The information is sampled from the temperature programmer every 0.3 seconds and saved to file so that the temperature plot of the experiment can be viewed when the experiment is complete.
In the graph below, images have also been captured and can be quickly viewed by either clicking on the individual points or dragging a box around a selection of points representing the temperature range of interest. These images are then loaded into a gallery of either 2,4,8,16 or 32 images, for closer inspection.

Linksys 32 -DV and AV packages
Standard Linksys 32 temperature control software can be upgraded to Linksys 32-DV (digital video) or AV (analogue video), so that image capture is integrated with temperature programmer data capture.
The DV package is complete with a pixelink digital megpixel FireWire camera and offers image capture at megapixel resolution (1280x1024) previewed on screen in more practical window sizes at near live frame rates. Images can be captured and stored with full tempeature at rates from 20 images per second (dependent on image size) to 1 image every 9999seconds.

Up to 80GB worth of information can be captured. Images and programmer Information can easily be searched by clicking on individual points or dragging a box around areas of interest on the temperature/time graph. Images loaded into the gallery can be compressed into many different formats (JPEG, TIFF, PSD etc..) or into movie files (AVI). When creating a movie, the user can select the compression codec used and the playback frame rate of the movie. All temperature programmer info (temperature, time, date, rate of heating, magnification etc..) is scrolled along the bottom edge of the playback window within the Linksys 32 media player.

The AV version of the software utilizes an Analogue camera (not suplied) which can output at 25fps or 30fps depending on PAL or NTSC. The system includes Linkam's own Fusion capture card which can be used with any CCD video camera outputting either Y/C (S-video) or BNC (composite) signals in either Pal or NTSC.

Image Tools

Images are loaded into a viewing window at the resolution they were captured at. A series of image tools appear at the top of the window including:
Image save (number of different formats available)

Send to Printer
Copy
Line colour
Text Colour
Selection Tool
Adjustable Scale bar
Length Measurement
Regular Shape Measurement
Ellipse Measurement
Irregular Shape Measurement
Angle Measurement
Annotations
Measurements Data Table

Capture Options
Images are captured in one of three ways:

Manually - simply press the 'Camera' button above the temperature programmer status window, to take a quick snap shot of the live image, which can be either be rejected, by closing the image, or saved to file.

Delay - Images can be captured at timed intervals from every second to every couple of hours depending on the experiment (Image capture as fast as 20 frames per second are possible with faster CPU and smaller capture window).

Profile Delay - Using the temperature profile table, it is possible to set the rate of image capture for each ramp in the temperature profile.

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