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NickK

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Blog Entries posted by NickK

  1. NickK
    In time for some SGL star party usage!
    http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/192900-atik-osx-drivers-r100-example-app/?p=2263424
    A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1.00, this latest release shows a real jump between 1.00 and now - it feels like a stepping stone. Perhaps a little bit of a pause after the 10.6.8 release considering some of my driver code goes back to 2011! I have many ideas and rework under the hood within ExampleApp is almost providing a base for these. However I have to balance these with ever growing demand on my time from work and home.
  3. NickK
    Igor - it lives.. again.
    Apple have just replaced the MBP's complete circuit board for the failed GPU under the GPU repair scheme. Free to me.. but if it hadn't been covered it would have been at least £800. However my battery snuffed it during the time under the desk so that was replaced too. The Apple bods noted my hard drive was also on the way out - I'd known this for a while.. so I've fixed a replacement myself. In short the screen, keyboard, and case are about all that remain of the original MBP... 
    However I now have a working graphics chip again  bring on the deconvolution fun again.... and the laptop that means I can now use the telescope in the garden again for astrophotography!
    I'm tempted to switch over to a ODroid based INDI installation, simply because it's less hassle having a completely designated controller. How well Kstars and INDI work.. hmm will have to see.
  7. NickK
    Just finishing the final testing on the 10.6.8 build and I'll put together the 10.8+ 64bit build..
    The Example App has had an overhaul in the graphics display system. It's far faster and I have a couple more optimisations todo but I thought this would be a good point to release.
    You'll note that it lacks the ability to adjust the display brightness etc.. but I'll add that later.. however it scrolls, zooms etc and has a reticule...
  8. NickK
    You know you're pushing the boundaries when the development tools get scared..
    GuardMalloc[ExampleApplication-42660]: If you really wanted to allocate so much memory, launch your executable with the environment variable MALLOC_PERMIT_INSANE_REQUESTS set to any value to circumvent this check.
    GuardMalloc[ExampleApplication-42660]: Explicitly trapping into debugger!!!
    GuardMalloc[ExampleApplication-42660]: Attempting excessively large memory allocation: 268435456 bytes
    GuardMalloc[ExampleApplication-42660]: If you really wanted to allocate so much memory, launch your executable with the environment variable MALLOC_PERMIT_INSANE_REQUESTS set to any value to circumvent this check.
    This isn't an error.. it doesn't stop anything working..
  9. NickK

    ATIK status update

    By NickK,

    So I've been ploughing on and I'm finishing some additional architectural changes that affect all cameras. I still want some additional testing around stability - such as performing 12 hours of exposures.
    The 383L is now setpointing and reporting temps, images with binning, subframe from 0.000001 to minutes are now working nicely. In short - the 383L is very usable (read there's just the beta usage trials on this) :D I've also pinged ATIK about an idea for this camera and I'm hoping that they'll implement it. I still have "overlapped" exposures to complete but that's progressing.
    This seems happy with repeated exposures atm.
    The Titan is running, naturally it cools uncontrolled, currently just battling this due to the architectural change (worked before but there's something that's not happy).
    The 4000 carcass I have has allowed progress on this. Ultimately I need to put some additional time into this (not having a sensor means I can't see if the resulting image is correct).
  12. NickK
    Well I spent the day yesterday receiving a corrupt hard drive after a sudden black screen and then blank on boot.. given 10 minutes it restarted.
    Today I got another... exactly the same symptoms..
    https://www.change.org/p/timothy-d-cook-replace-or-fix-all-2011-macbook-pro-with-graphics-failure
    It appears it's a wide spread graphics chip issue caused by the GPU desoldering it.
    What really annoys me is that this MBP was to replace a MBP that failed with the nVidia GPU-gate GPU.. so that's 2 MBPs dead/poorly. The mac mini that was bought to cover short any issue occur is still working...
  15. NickK

    House of boxes.

    By NickK,

    Well it's all gone a bit quiet recently as I've just moved house!
    Good news is it's ours and it has lots of space/garage/possible obsy.
    Bad news is the local street lighting is white but it's a sky of bright orange.
  17. NickK

    ATIK Progress (and AOSX)

    By NickK,

    I spent last night giving the drivers a final testing and fixing a couple of bugs in the Example App. I'll compile a 10.6.8 over the weekend, however the main version is ready for a full release - it's left me in a poignant mood.
    Looking at the emails I started this project in July 2011, and since then I've moved jobs, been to two weddings, see at least 5 kids born to friends, met/engaged/married, moved house, 99% through a house purchase and had a honeymoon in Hawaii (including going up Mauna Kia).
    Well, it's an odd feeling when you've not got anything substantial todo in the background.
    So what's next..
    I played with realtime alignment, rolling my own from the base maths rather than using a library. I have another idea that I want to work on too - under wraps at the moment.
    I have a house move soon but I think the next big push is AOSX V2 out the door. For anyone that's forgotten, part of AOSX is to create an ASCOM form of layer for OSX. I originally started AOSX before the ATIK stuff, and the folks at ATIK are happy for their work to work under it, as are many other vendors. AOSX V1 had some fundamental flaws - such as single point of failure and passing all imaging traffic through a single application.
    AOSX V2 can control the EQ6/8, support QSI, Firewire/USB IS thanks to David (EQMac) and now ATIK too (which took a bit longer than I was expecting!). I'm in it for the long slog so we will be pushing forward with this over the coming months.
    I'd like to thank Sandrine for putting up with my almost obsessive coding. Seriously she's had to put up with quite a bit which is difficult for a french redhead! Naturally I'd like to thanks the folks at ATIK including Steve, Vince (for fixing my 383L when I stepped on the cables one night) and Jonathan.
  18. NickK

    Interesting progress!

    By NickK,

    Well I've been making some interesting progress - all should be apparent soon enough!
    However - James @ Flo also found a bug in the 1.00 drivers that leaves the preamp on! Nice spotting!
    I'm up to 1.05 now (multiple changes/fixes).. safe to say the image quality has just shot up with James' fix!
    I'll shortly be putting together the next release.. There's some good fixes and some additions to the driver that some will find useful.
    Meanwhile.. I'm doing DIY...
  19. NickK
    Well, hot on the release of the beta one set - I'll be releasing beta 2 with the following (shortly):

    Changes/Fixes
    Bugfix: Titan - image now post-processes correctly.
    Bugfix: All cameras - timing bug introduced with the timing abort was taking the exposure duration as microseconds not milliseconds now fixed.
    Feature: Titan auto black-level working (enable using driver with example app switch for your playing pleasure!)

    Enhancement: legacy connect and disconnect is now threaded.
    Feature: Guide Port support - including a virtual play pad in the example application.
    Additional tidying and optimisation.

    I'll also have the subsample and precharge code present in the drivers, so these may make it into the B2.. if not B3 along with the overlapped exposure+download to speed up repeated frame capture.
  20. NickK

    From: Garden Pier..

    By NickK,

    Source: Garden Pier.. http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/226305-garden-pier/page-3
    Happy that I, finally, have this done. I've also put on a rapid curing cement in the hole.
    Currently sat waiting - just to see if we're ok for polar alignment :D
  21. NickK
    I upgraded to Mountain Lion (10.8) and it appears my Parallels 6 doesn't work. Looking for a patch to get it to work has resulted in an 11 page thread on the Parallels forum full of vitriol about being forced to pay $60+ on a parallels 7 for very little gain. Parallels blaming Apple however to develop a product like this requires lots of understanding and planning.. peeved/livid - yes I am.
    So in order to use ASCOM I now have to pay $64.. so 13.99 for ML costs more than you think...
  22. NickK

    AOSX.. onwards!

    By NickK,

    AOSX has had a little bit of a backseat recently with ATIK and the wedding.. over the last few days I've been discussing and finalising some ideas with OzDave and I'm progressing nicely with the architectural changes we've been thinking about for a while.
    The focus of AOSX is the user, so we've been building in some heavy duty crash protection. This means now that each device in service has it's own process - a heavy approach but one that means if the driver "blue screens" or crashes then it will not affect any other part of AOSX or the client application. Most cameras that support reconnect could then conceivably reconnect and recover the sub in the camera. This may not be a problem with 30 second shots but 30 minute shots.. that's a different matter!
    This will be the last iteration before it appears for general consumption *hurrah*. Now that OSX 10.8 means additional Parallels costs to run PC-based solutions.. I have decided to go 100% OSX in my astronomy so I have no choice to get this working before my trip to Olly's place! (optimistic me!) OzDave is really looking forward to integrating EQMac to allow EQMac to support different mounts and Crag Stark is interested for PHD and Nebulosity.
    I may have some additional holiday left to take - if so as Sandrine doesn't.. I'll spend the time on driving this forward!
    Enough.. back to the grindstone!
  23. NickK
    I've been asking around to see who's going to be interested, so far:
    * Craig Stark - Nebulosity & PHD
    * Software Bisque - TheSkyX
    If you know of more I'd be interested to know so I can approach them..
    The plan is to produce an experimental Alpha release around end of Dec. Let people play and report back before pulling together the feedback for the Beta release.
    Now the good news is that the driver has parallels with AOSX - so in theory it should plug and play..
  25. NickK

    First alpha dogfooding :)

    By NickK,

    Well I managed to get a nice evening dogfooding: http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/192900-atik-osx-drivers-r100-example-app/page-7#entry2530845
    With some very basic first setup imaging - including the flame nebula and the horsehead.
    However the attempting to process the 5 minute subs this morning in PI was fine.. but then attempting aladdin this morning at the same time was too much for my poorly MBP. After a good 2 hours of power button pushing it got beyond a blank screen and DVD drive whirr to start up... upon entering the desktop:

    Thanks Apple..

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