this is an attempt to reduce the costs in a 2 Photon microscope

given developments in hardware, there is potential space to use affordable tools to substitute components tradionally used in 2P microscopes:

Galvanomotors that drive the scanning mirrors - current alternative: galvos for laser shows (~75€)

signal amplifiers for PMTs - current alternative RedPitaya

IO Boards for driving motors and digitizing data: current alternative Red Pitaya (200€-300€)

software: luckly someone already wrote what seems to be a very well documented API for python and the Red Pitaya: PyRPL http://pyrpl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html this project starts with that, in the hope to leverage from open source tools and contribute to their further development.

#####pmt: http://sensl.com/downloads/ds/DS-MicroMseries.pdf http://sensl.com/downloads/ds/UM-MicroM.pdf http://sensl.com/downloads/ds/APP-Biophotonics.pdf http://sensl.com/applications/biophotonics/ http://www.sensl.com/downloads/irp/2012_Li_SPM_Detection_Low_Level_Bioluminescence_Development_Deployable_Whole_cell_biosensors.pdf http://www.gaudi.ch/GaudiLabs/?page_id=718

------------------------------ outdated------------------------------------------- This setup uses a Red Pitaya to generate waveforms (eventually will be used to collect data as well) and galvo motors that can be bought on ebay - the ideia is to try their performance with the same movement used in 2 photon microscopes.

Useful information about how to write code to control the redpitaya with code can be found here: http://redpitaya.readthedocs.io/en/latest/appsFeatures/remoteControl/remoteControl.html