Hi,

I really like the feature set of CCDInspector and it seems to have a reasonable price. The problem is that I don't have Maxim and having to buy that too makes it a not-so affordable solution. I was wondering if you have any plans to support the ASCOM camera drivers in a future version. It should allow cheap skates like myself to cherry pick cool software like CCDI without having to commit to buying the 1000 Lb gorilla at the same time

The ASCOM camera driver is still a work in progress, Craig Stark just recently suggested some changes that came to light as he added ASCOM support to Nebulosity. If in your opinion ASCOM camera drivers are incomplete, would you be willing to help solidify this driver?

Thanks,

Sander

Hi Sander,

I'm not up to speed with the ASCOM Camera interface, but I'd be willing to take a look at it and make comments or suggestions after CCDI v2.0 is released.

Note that CCDI already supports any and all acquisition software packages that can capture and then write FITS, TIFF, SBIG, or supported DSLR RAW image files in a specific folder.

I'd think that even the simplest camera control software using ASCOM interface will have the image auto-save capability, so, in effect, they are all already compatible with CCDI, even before they are written

Regards,

-Paul

Hi Paul,

I didn't realize that CCDI can monitor a specific directory, that's great! Both CCDCap and Nebulosity can do binned and fast downloads which would make focusing feasible. Does CCDI use sub frames to speed up focusing? If it does then that would be a reason to still have a look at the ASCOM driver when the time is ready post 2.0.

I'll download your software and give it a whirl. See how well it works for focusing when it depends on downloaded images rather than talking to Maxim.

Thanks for your quick and informative response,

Sander

Hi Sander,

CCDInspector will read whatever files are written by the acquisition software. If the file contains a sub-frame, CCDI will read and analyze just that sub-frame, or a binned frame. This all depends on what the acquisition software can do; CCDI will consume whatever image is written out to disk.

Performance-wise, there's no noticeable delay due to the use of a monitored folder (as long as the software doesn't take too long to write to the file )

Note that CCDI can be set to automatically delete the file after measuring it: this is useful while focusing, so that the focus image files don't fill up the hard disk.

Regards,

-Paul