Acquisition class doesn't work without z stage

[impact27]

I am trying to acquire 10 frames:

from pycromanager import Acquisition, multi_d_acquisition_events

if __name__ == '__main__': #this is important, don't forget it

    with Acquisition(directory='C:/Users/Quentin.Peter/Desktop/tmp0', name='acquisition_name') as acq:
        events = multi_d_acquisition_events(10)
        acq.acquire(events)

But I get

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\untitled0.py", line 5, in <module>
    with Acquisition(directory='C:/Users/Quentin.Peter/Desktop/tmp0', name='acquisition_name') as acq:

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\acquire.py", line 181, in __init__
    tile_overlap is not None, x_overlap, y_overlap)

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\core.py", line 261, in <lambda>
    fn = lambda instance, *args, signatures_list=tuple(methods_with_name): instance._translate_call(signatures_list, args)

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\core.py", line 348, in _translate_call
    return self._deserialize(self._socket.receive())

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\core.py", line 97, in receive
    self._check_exception(message)

  File "C:\ProgramData\Anaconda3\lib\site-packages\pycromanager\core.py", line 102, in _check_exception
    raise Exception(response['value'])

Exception: java.lang.RuntimeException: Problem communicating with core to get Z stage limits
org.micromanager.acqj.api.Acquisition.initialize(Acquisition.java:205)
org.micromanager.acqj.api.Acquisition.initialize(Acquisition.java:183)
org.micromanager.remote.RemoteAcquisition.<init>(RemoteAcquisition.java:33)
org.micromanager.remote.RemoteAcquisitionFactory.createAcquisition(RemoteAcquisitionFactory.java:36)
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:498)
org.micromanager.internal.zmq.ZMQServer.runMethod(ZMQServer.java:270)
org.micromanager.internal.zmq.ZMQServer.parseAndExecuteCommand(ZMQServer.java:325)
org.micromanager.internal.zmq.ZMQServer.lambda$initialize$1(ZMQServer.java:83)
java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)

The acquisiton is sucessful if I use mmcore directly.

[impact27]

It looks like the core can't communicate with the z stage, which is not surprising as I don't have a z stage (well a manual one)

[henrypinkard]

This was bug in the (Java based) acquisition engine used by pycromanager, which is now fixed (micro-manager/AcqEngJ#9). The updated version will build with micro-manager once this PR goes through (micro-manager/micro-manager#822).

In the mean time, you can download AcqEngJ-0.5.1.jar from here, and replace v0.5.0 in the plugins folder within your micro-manager install directory