Updated G2/G3/G4 CCD camera drivers for MaxIm DL and AstroArt available for download

Main page▹Product Overview▹Software	22.2.2011 \|

New drivers for G2 revision 3+, G3 and G4 cooled CCD cameras for MaxIm DL and AstroArt software packages are available for download. New drivers support new camera models (including the latest large-format G4 cameras) and also add some new features.

All G2 revision 3+, G3 and G4 CCD cameras are software compatible, so they share the same driver.

Driver for MaxIm DL

New driver works under both MaxIm DL (camera control and image processing software—see the Diffraction Limited version 4 and version 5.

Driver version 1.1 added the following features:

Added support for G2-8300, single-shot color G2-8300C and new large-format G4-16000 and G4-09000 cameras.
Driver version 1.0 returned image with coordinate system origin (pixel at coordinate 0, 0) in the bottom-left corner. This is the standard, defined by FITS format. But images appeared in MaxIm DL vertically mirrored, because MaxIm DL software obviously uses bitmaps with coordinate system origin in upper-left corner and also requires driver to return images from camera in such format.
MaxIm DL obviously reserves only 15 characters long string for both camera and filter wheel names. Returning longer string can cause improper display of such names and even program failure if MaxIm DL is used for script-controlled observing. All names were cut to fit in 15 characters in this driver version.
Camera setup dialog allows choosing of camera read mode. Standard (slightly faster) mode can be chosen beside the default low noise (slightly slower) mode.
Camera Setup dialog box allows choosing of camera read mode
Driver file renamed to “CCDPlugGx.dll” from original “CCDPlugG3.dll” to reflect increased number of supported camera types.

Driver version 1.2 added the following features:

Vertical image mirroring, introduced in version 1.1, were not reflected in coordinates of sub-frame. This version also mirrors sub-frame coordinates to be in concordance with top-down coordinate system used by MaxIm DL.

Remark:

Beginning with version 1.2, MaxIm DL driver is newly linked with C-runtime library MSVCR90.DLL. This particular library is included with all Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating systems, but it is necessary to preinstall this library on older systems. The preferred way to do this is running “Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Setup” package 'vcredist_x64.exe' for 64-bit systems or 'vcredist_x86.exe' for 32-bit systems. This redistributable package can be downloaded from Microsoft web server.

Because this library is used by many other software packages, it is likely that it is already installed also on older systems.

It is also possible to copy the 'msvcr90.dll' dynamic link library directly to the MaxIm DL folder (where the 'CCDPlugGx.dll' is placed), but it is also necessary to copy appropriate .manifest file 'Microsoft.VC90.CRT.manifest'. Still the best way is to use above-mentioned redistributable package, which installs Visual C++ support libraries for all applications on the particular operating system installation.

Driver for AstroArt

New driver supports AstroArt version 4.

Driver version 1.1 added the following features:

Added support for G2-8300, single-shot color G2-8300C and new lagre-format G4-16000 and G4-09000 cameras.
Camera setup dialog allows choosing of camera read mode. Standard (slightly faster) mode can be chosen beside the default low noise (slightly slower) mode.
Camera Setup dialog box shows current temperature and allows choosing of camera read mode
Camera setup dialog also displays the last measured CCD temperature.
Fixed problem, which could cause downloading of image before the shutter was closed. This problem was caused by the inability of the driver to handle messages due to continuous activity of AstroArt main thread during exposure.
Driver file renamed to “d_gxccd.dll” from original “d_g3ccd.dll” to reflect increased number of supported camera types.

Drivers can be download from Download page of this site.