Drivers Starlight Xpress USB Devices

Posted on 26-03-2021 by admin

Drivers Starlight Xpress Usb Devices Adapter
Drivers Starlight Xpress Usb Devices Wireless
Drivers Starlight Xpress USB Devices
Drivers Starlight Xpress Usb Devices Download
Drivers Starlight Xpress Usb Devices 3.0

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As per the title, Starlight Xpress SX USB filter wheel with the 5 x2in filter wheel, in excellent condition (comes with the original box and T thread adapters). I'm selling it as I am now using a filter drawer instead. The only thing missing is the USB cable, something you probably have. £120 + postage (UK only) paypal.

Latest news 9/17/03

This latest release is mostly a bug fix. Minor annoyances arefixed as well as improved timing for USB exposures >= 1second. Tested on latest 2.4.x kernel using Debianunstable. Both gccd and the kernel drivers are at verion 1.8.

In the Device Manager, when I plug in the USB cable with the camera connected, under Universal Serial Bus devices I get the 'Starlight Xpress CCD' driver added. If I click on that, it gives the version as 12.30.26.886 and the date. I use the 32bit version of the SX CCD driver as my PC runs under Win7 32bit Home Premium. The new code then restarts the chip and it now identifies itself as a 'Starlight Xpress USB2.0 camera driver'. This driver has a 'VID' (Vendor identifier) of 1278 (Starlight Xpress Ltd) and a 'PID' (Product identifier) which depends on the camera type - the SXV-H9 has a PID of 0119.

What is it

In order to image with Linux, two thing are required: camera driversupport and a control application. Both are available here. The cameradrivers are implemented as kernel device drivers. These must be builtand installed for your specific kernel. The control application usesfeatures of the camera drivers and other accessories such as filterwheels and telescope guiding interfaces. Two other applications areuseful as well. A celestial charting program and an image processingprogram will improve the ability to acquire and enhance good images. XEphem and The GIMP are recommended.

What is involved

As mentioned above, camera drivers and a control application arerequired to image. The kernel driver installs as a class level driver.The class driver is ccd. It does all the high level control ofthe camera and OS interfacing. Each camera will have a mini-classdriver that handles all the low-level interfacing to the camera. Thecontrol application is gccd . It is a Gnome base applicationthat can control cameras, telescopes, and filter wheels. Thereare also alternantive applications and perl scripts in the samplessub-directory of the kernel drivers.

What do you need

Of course Linux is needed. Currently the 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels aresupported by the camera drivers. There are drivers for the Connectixparallel port Quickcam and the Starlight Xpress MX5/16, MX5/12, MX5C,MX7, MX7C, MX9, HX5 (untested), HX9, and new SXV series of cameras.There is also a contributed Audine driver. Adding new drivers isfairly easy, so if you want to add support foryour camera, look at thecurrent source and send me some email. The control application, gccd, requires a Gnome installation. Gccd also uses the GDK-PIXBUFlibrary, so make sure it is installed from your distribution. It seemsthat most make this library an installation option. You do not need abig or fast computer. I developed this software to run on an anemic 75Mhz Pentium laptop with 16 MB RAM and 640x480 LCD. It is equivalent toa circa 1991/1992 desktop. However, the faster your computer, thebetter your experience. Faster downloads, more screen real-estate, moreimages in memory are the benefits of a newer computer.

Camera driver features

The kernel drivers allow applications to access the camera hardwarewithout having special priveledges. Also, as kernel drivers, timing ismore accurate for better image exposures and downloads. Using thestandard system I/O calls, the camera can be controlled andinterrogated. Each camera can be accessed using two methods. Both abinary and a textual interface are available. The binary interfaceprovides a high performance, low bandwidth interface preferable tointeractive applications. The textual interface is more applicable toscripted applications that want an easier interface to the cameras. Thetextual interface is based on an XML style for easy parsing. SamplePerl scriptsare included to show the simplicity of programming. Acomplete image capture script that saves the image ina displayableformat can be written in only a few lines. More advances camerafeatures are available for those cameras that support them. Inparticular, the Starlight Xpress MX series ofcameras can integrate its two fields independently. This can be used ina self-guiding application. The camera can be arbitrarily binned andwindowed for fast focusing, higher sensitivity, and other uses. Thesource code for the drivers is released under an X Consortium stylelicense.

The Starlight Xpress USB driver has some interesting additionalfeatures. By way of the embeded 8051 controller in the USBinterface chipused by Starlight Xpress, there are one or two serial ports accessiblefor use. The original USB controller can be modified to break outthe serial port and control devices like filter wheels and serialinterfacesto telescope mounts. The SXV series of cameras has a break-outboxthat provides the serial port connectors. The kernel driver hooksinto the tty driver layer to provide primitive serial port access from/dev/ttysx*. There is no hardware flow control and the baud rateis fixed at 9600. Click here to seehowto modify the original SX USB interface to provide a serial port. TheSXV also includes a built-in STAR2000 autoguider port. This isexposedas a write-only serial port that takes data in the same format as theoriginalSTAR2000.

Camera controlapplication features

The application, gccd, takes advantage of the camera driverto providesimple and full-featured access to the cameras abilities. Track-n-stackoperationsare provided with multiple image combining operations. A focus modehelpsin achieving better focus. Guiding can be used with a second camera or,ifthe camera supports it, integrating seperate fields on the same cameraforguiding and imaging simultaneously. The supported telescope interfacesincludethe Starlight Xpress STAR 2000 autoguiding module and the LX200 serialinteface.The TrueTech Custom Filter Wheel is supported for color imaging withmonochromecameras. Filter sequences can be automated and combined with guidingforhands-off deep-sky color imaging. One-shot color cameras are fullysupported.For track-n-stack operations with a one-shot camera, gccd will firstspliteach frame into its color components before registration. Raw imagescanbe viewed through the color matrix of the camera to see the unprocessedcolorimage. The image can be split into each individual color frame. Thesourcecode for the application is released under the GNU license.
There are additional applications and perl scripts in the samplessub-directory of the kernel drives. One of the more interestingapps is the drift-scan app, tdi. All of the SX camerassupportTDI mode. Others have written sophisticated perl scripts for skysurveys.