flyManipVac use

[tom-f-oconnell]

Is it a mistake that flyManipVac doesn't seem to be used in any of the commonFlyTasks.py functions? I would have thought something like homeWithdraw or arenaWithdraw would need it.

Is that output enabled by default or something (and just left on)? It is explicitly turned on, where I'd expect, in Examples/PlateLoad.py and Examples/FlyPick1.py.

Another point of confusion: the way I understood the housing module, it wouldn't need smallPartManipVac to be used to unload a fly. So why is that vacuum pin turned on in homeWithdraw?

[flysorter]

Fair questions! Pinging @tomalisch who wrote this code and can hopefully chime in. May be a bug that snuck in when we were cleaning up the repository in anticipation of publication.

[flysorter]

Alright - after some back and forth with @tomalisch, starting to understand.

Sounds like the hardware in Boston had an issue with one of the load switches on the Smoothieboard. It failed "open" (that is to say, the solenoid valve connected to it always allows air to flow). So Tom swapped the physical tubing lines between the small part manipulator and the fly manipulator, since his program wasn't using the former. He checked in his code.

I will address this (perhaps after dealing with your camera abstraction pull request).