Hi, I'm not subscribed yet but just wanted to get some general direction from experienced people about the practicality of what I am planning. I have read through some of the info and just wanted a reality check if what I am thinking is possible or reasonable.
I work in science and formerly built an image capture device for a SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope). The SEM device scans an electron beam on the sample in lines and produces analog output and sync signals that I use to produce pixels. It only does a couple of scan resolutions and my device will output 640x480 or 1920x1440 8-bit grayscale image data. I am re-working this project (old one was DOS+Assembly, example image at http://www.bio.umass.edu/microscopy/images/eggshell.jpg) to use a small microcontroller/A2D/interface "box" in the microscope that will do some minimal communications with a USB interface (from FTDI). Basically, the microcontroller looks at the USB chip/FIFO receive buffer for a command - to take a low resolution or high resolution image, then looks at the microscope for the start of the scan, then converts and stuff the bytes into the USB-FIFO send buffer. From my brief reading of the SANE workings, it seems I might be able to write a "backend" to interface with my microcontroller via the USB interface and then have access to the "front-ends" that are available - to receive the data and turn it into images and write files. My question. Is this thinking on track? Does this sound reasonable? Thanks much for any advice. Dale
