Overview
========

The areaDetector module provides a general-purpose interface for area
(2-D) detectors in `EPICS <http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/>`__. It is
intended to be used with a wide variety of detectors and cameras,
ranging from high frame rate CCD and CMOS cameras, pixel-array detectors
such as the Pilatus, and large format detectors like the Perkin Elmer
flat panels.

The goals of this module are:

-  Minimize the amount of code that needs to be written to implement a
   new detector.
-  Provide a standard interface defining the functions and parameters
   that a detector driver must support.
-  Provide a set of base EPICS records that will be present for every
   detector using this module. This allows the use of generic EPICS
   clients for displaying images and controlling cameras and detectors.
-  Allow easy extensibility to take advantage of detector-specific
   features beyond the standard parameters.
-  Have high-performance. Applications can be written to get the
   detector image data through EPICS, but an interface is also available
   to receive the detector data at a lower-level for very high
   performance.
-  Provide a mechanism for device-independent real-time data analysis
   such as regions-of-interest and statistics.
-  Provide detector drivers for commonly used detectors in synchrotron
   applications. These include GigE video cameras, IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
   cameras, CCD x-ray detectors, scientific CCD and CMOS cameras, online
   imaging plate detectors, pixel-array detectors, amorphous silicon and
   CMOS flat panel detectors, and many others.