开云体育

19.11.2019?

We're currently working on firmware 0.4.20 for the IMX174. This version improves the maximum frame rate from 20 fps to 30 fps and allows for exposure times shorter than the frame time. Gain settings greater than 31 dB will be fixed as well.

09.11.2019?

First light on the 50cm Newton telescope with firmware 0.4.19. Things are working fine. There's significant amp glow for exposure times larger than about a second, and the gain adds random noise to the exposure.

Example: 4s exposure of M27 with +18dB analog gain, unprocessed image:

A direct comparison between the AR0130 and IMX174 shows a slight advantage of the IMX174 over the AR0130, but that needs to be done more rigorously to get a clear result.

?

22.10.2019

A first alpha version of the IMX174 firmware 0.4.17 is available. This version supports the native resolution of 1920x1200 and several binned resolutions such as 960x600, 640x400 etc. The following screenshot shows a picture of my workdesk at 1920x1200 (with a much-too-small 1/3 inch lens...):

There's a large number of issues with this firmware that we'd like to fix before providing it to our beta testers. These issues are currently known:

• Stream initialization doesn't work correctly yet. Manual stopping and starting of the streaming and switching resolutions is required before the image stream begins.
• The maximum frame rate is limited to 20fps at the moment.
• Gain settings above 32dB don't work yet.
• The timestamp is currently not correct.

But there's also some good news. We now have 4 working IMX174 sensor boards. One is only useful for development because the sensor is from a broken camera from ebay and is a color version with a bayer matrix filter on it. One should be available for our beta testers soon.