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NickK

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  1. NickK
    Since B2 behind the scenes, B3 is becoming a hardcore test-fest.
    * 4-series have now been tested after a minor bug fix with the USB pids - they work (all - including the 490ex!)
    * Titan and 383L tested independently - working
    Now the bit that will interest 4000, 11000 owners - I have hardware incoming! (only temporarily!)
    This means I'll be setting them up on the Pentax and giving them some serious grief as we've noted a problem that I'd fixed at Olly's creep in with changes since then.
    Additionally B3 will also have the 10.6 drivers too and probably will become the first release (finally!).
  5. 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.
  6. NickK
    Just a simulation at the moment, however attached is a non-cooled integration so I can see what can be done with fast video-like integration.
    27x30 second exposures with registration, no guiding, no polar alignment and no cooling (for extra noise!) and sigma integration.. so I picked a nondescript, but darkish part of the sky (straight up to minimise light polution.

    It bodes well with 9Boo being the brightest and some nice mag 13-15 in there running at 670mm f/6.38.. binnign 2x2 would make for even easier finding (faster download and brighter target).
  7. NickK

    Bugs!

    By NickK,

    Well I've been doing some dogfooding.. this time for image processing live in realtime using the titan :D
    However it appears I have found slightly minor programmer issue.. hands up who can tell me seconds, milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds.. in short the beta 1 drivers have a little issue with converting between these after the abort changes I made.. hence the odd timing behaviour. This is fixed (and the programmer supplied with beer for his troubles).
    Expect an update for beta shortly..
  8. NickK
    Well.. at least to support ye-olde 3.3 fully! (3.3 is basically like DX11.. the latest is something like 4.2..) - supposedly it runs 3.2 but I'm not convinced.. I can see the logic of avoiding 4.x as it's too new and a mess...
    Which basically means that the only thing buying a higher end graphic GPU in an apple is that it goes faster by clock speed and number of pipelines.. nothing about using the (now standard) features available - a PC and linux have more advanced graphics sub-systems!
    I'm having to use OpenCL to render 3D volume visualisations rather than OpenGL!
    Oh.. yes.. it is astronomy related ;)
  10. NickK
    Features (where camera supports)
    Image exposure
    Image Binning (up to 3 times in X&Y - this is an artificial limit imposed to shorten automated testing time)
    Image sub-framing
    Image preview
    Setpoint Cooling
    EFW2 Number of Filters
    EFW2 Filter selection
    Camera & Filterwheel Hotplug connect and disconnect
    Abort exposure time


    Lots of bug fixes, some improvements too - things such as being able to set the capture location by simply dragging the directory on it.. I should have time over the next few days to finalise the remaining outstanding bits.

    Experimental Alpha Release (internal) - v0.04 (xx Apr 2013)
    Changes/Fixes
    Internal bug fixes and continued restructuring - both for the current and legacy drivers.
    Added new 490ex series USB codes to current driver
    Camera and Filterwheel disconnection via thrown ATIKDeviceDisconnectedException
    Abort exposure/download now works
    Major improvement for initialisation coping with flushing etc
    Camera unique identities based on serial numbers etc or bus location
    USB codes correction - this should pick up 400 series and 16/16C/16HR/16HRC/16ICS series correctly
    Testing at SGL8: 16HR, 460ex OSC, 314L+ as well as at Olly’s: 11000M, 320E
    Sorting out of the header files... it’s a little easier - everything should work with one include per driver.
    Friendly comments in the header files.. documentation!
    Legacy driver - fixed for exposures less than 1 second

    Example application - Unlikely to have “unknown” now
    Example application - File Capture doesn’t show every image but every 10th image
    Example application - image save location
    Example application - removed thread race condition (Cocoa binding causing a bypass of my queue..whoops!)

    ​So these will have the testing done at SGL8 too :)
  11. NickK

    Nailed the flush..

    By NickK,

    So I've been quiet - lots of things happening in the real world.. so rather than drop a beta, I've been focusing on a few bug fixes and enhancements as mentioned in my previous blog.
    One of the outstanding things that has been hanging around is solving the camera start up when something bad has happened - in this case when you pull the cable and the restart the application. Due to the difference in the way windows and OSX work at a low level this caused an the OSX driver to hang if a download was interrupted by an unplug until the camera was restarted.
    OSX doesn't flush USB or return data if a USB read times out.. now if you don't now how much you need to flush then reading till you timeout would be a very useful thing - Go Apple..
    This mornings fun has now resolved this scenario for the OSX drivers :D which is very very very important for remote installs and normal human beings that just want to get on and image :D Like me at SGL7.. as kev saw this bug at close hand with the titan.
    During this exercise I've located and fixed a few bugs - both in the driver and in the example application (one is a race condition that caused it to hang/crash).
    So I'm going to release an Alpha4 with fixes for this and the other fixes for issues in the Alpha3 drivers.. shortly..
  12. NickK

    Adding

    By NickK,

    Many thanks to those that helped with testing the OSX ATIK drivers at SGL8!
    Added Legacy camera: 16HR
    Added Modern cameras: 460ex OSC, 314L
    More dogfooding with the Titan with whitelight solar too!
  13. NickK
    For the goods:
    I've been squirrelling away on the commute to bring the test application up to a respectable level. I feel that it's basically usable in order to allow people to test the drivers by simply trying it! Although I've tried the drivers on all the main forms of camera, you always get differences appearing in real life when people attempt to use software and hardware with their own computers.
    So this will allow people to have some fun whilst my attention, rather like the eye of sauron, moves back towards AOSX and integrating this for the beta series of releases.
    It's been interesting experience, at one point I had two 11000 monos, 320E, 383L, Titan, 16IC, EFW2 and 4000 carcass on the table..
    Anyway.. for now - back to reality!
  14. NickK

    Update :)

    By NickK,

    I've been concentrating on a few things at the moment for the Alpha3 release:
    * The example application - this is smoothing out and I'm rounding out some of the issues/look + I'll be adding the filterwheel into this
    * The 16IC PC application to read the FTDIChipID - FTDI created a neat little example app in c# which I've been getting to work. Just run and read the id for your camera
    * Driver bug fixing with the threading - adding disconnect for the alpha3 too
    Basically I want the beta1 to be usable
  15. NickK
    The 'little' test app is coming along nicely..

    That's all my hardware running :)
    You select the camera at the side and the current live view is displayed :)
    I still have the following todo:
    * Threading - to allow things to happen concurrently.
    * Duration, temp controls - allowing you to select something in the UI
    * Image save - well you can play with it but you can't save it through the UI atm
    * Info tab - a simple table with info about the camera
    * Debug log tab - making it easy to email the debug log output to me
    * EFW2 live view and controls.
    As you can see it's all UI work so things I can do without the cameras attached.
    The only driver thing I may add is disconnect (clean unplug) as this was pencilled in for the beta as this would make the entire thing more 'clean' and feeling complete.
  16. NickK
    I've spent the time between the last release focusing on the 4000/11000 - with some fixes that also apply to other series cameras. Many thanks to Olly for allowing me access to his 11000M for testing during my stay there.
    Before releasing I just want to regression test the existing cameras and I'll package the new drivers along with a small demo application (including a pre-built version for people to try themselves).
    This will probably be the last alpha release (with it's specific functionality and associated bug fixes) before I move on to the beta release with it's additional functionality.
    Edit: added screen snap of the test application:

    Here's a test shot with the 383L against the wall.. (I've not added icons for the cameras yet):

    You can zoom in, change the contrast etc
  18. 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..
  20. NickK
    So I'm 99% on the alpha release.. I still have some daylight photos to take for the manual (demonstrating sub-framing etc) and two 'todo' list entries. I hope to have this done tomorrow.. The 4000/11000 support I've not manage to get a photo yet (I'll worry about that post alpha).
    I've tried compiling OpenPHD unfortunately the 3rd party package it uses for it's GUI doesn't compile on 10.8.. only 10.6.. so I'll let Craig tackle that headache.
  21. 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).
  22. NickK
    Got a bit distracted in the last week with work and my birthday yesterday, however the AOSX re-architecture now detects ATIK (and other USB devices), along with serial and firewire.
    It shouldn't be too long until we start seeing images and mount control that the V1 architecture had :D
  24. NickK
    If you've not been following - we have been working on a re-architecting (v2) of AOSX which is starting to appear. Just plugged my Titan in and it's recognised it. Early days but it's always a good feeling to see something to reassure you!
    I'm also taking delivery of ATIK 4000 carcass for testing. Electronically working to allow testing of the 4000/11000 support in the driver.
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