8.1. Basic concept

Obviously the power of itom comes from the embedded scripting language Python that is enhanced by a graphical user interface and many other features programmed in C++. itom should be able to either communicate with various hardware devices, like cameras (grabbers), AD-DA converters, communication protocols or actuators. On the other hand, the acquired data has to be analyzed, processed and visualized.

In order to provide a fast access to these devices, it is necessary to link to them by specific SDKs. All this is done via plugins in itom, hence every hardware device is wrapped by an itom plugin that is loaded at startup. Nevertheless, it is not desired to have plugins with arbitrary interfaces, such that one has to find the right command set and communcation strategy that differs from camera to camera (this is maybe a little bit the case in Matlab or LabView, where every manufacturer can implement its plugin with its own function-set and communication strategy). itom provides a unified interface for the three device categories: dataIO (for all grabbers and other input/output devices), actuator (for actuators and stages) as well as an interface for algorithm plugins that allow a fast implementation using C/C++, CUDA, OpenMP, OpenCL or other 3rd Party libraries. This interface is either callable by other C++ programmed plugins or by the Python scripting language.

Beside the script-based access to plugins, they can also offer configuration dialogs or a toolbox to easily control the device by the GUI of itom. The unified interface also allows implementing further generic structures, that can be called or operated with any camera or actuator without a need of rewritting parts of the code.

See this section for more information about how to use hardware and software plugins.