Newb Software Question

[ChadS]

I sorta work in a lab. The home office in CA has a solid lab but most of the time I work out of my house (in FL). I've built up a "lab" in one port of my garage. How many people have an optics table in their garage?

We used to have a license to the MATLAB image processing toolbox but I didn't keep it. I had to modify so many of the scripts and understand what they were doing that it was just faster to write my own. That's the problem I've always had with PS. Yes, there are some powerful tools but the math behind them isn't always exposed - not to mention anything that requires mouse input. I'm not an artist! Thanks for the input though. It's always good to have a better understanding of the tools available as one never knows when the need for them may arise.

[jrw]

At least FL is more seismically stable than CA. Would not envy the person who needs to re-align everything due to a tremor.

Sounds like you are quite capable of programming. Have you considered using some of the existing image processing libraries and building your own wrapper? At least you'd know how the functions work...

[ChadS]

Oh, I use public libraries often enough. I just didn't find the upkeep on the MATLAB one to be worth the money (whereas the basic MATLAB maintenance fee gets paid on time!). We generally do ... odd stuff so there aren't libraries generally for what I need. That's ok. That gives me something to do all day when I'm not reading this site!

As far as realignment goes we tend to deliver instruments that can bolt onto a truck, airplane, or helicopter. A little earthquake wouldn't bother them. Things like holography would drive me nuts. I hate precision alignment. We tend to use FedEx and UPS as our vibration testers. If the instrument can ship from CA to me and back again still working it's ready for just about anything!

[jrw]

An alternative to MatLab is SciLab which is opensource. Have been using it for crunching through data analysis for some time. Has ability to import MatLab scripts and files. Functionally, it is similar to MatLab, but i believe it has a larger function library. With the large number of people contributing to the toolboxes there is a broad range of interesting applications covered (neural networks, vision systems, robotics, etc).

If you need more rigorous vibration testing I believe the Civil Engineering Dept is planning to start doing seismic testing once they figure out how to achieve full isolation of the shaker pad from the rest of the building. Cracking buildings is best confined to the experimental structures.