I have a couple questions while I am waiting for the new camera to be introduced: I am curious about the SPF plus Fiber Ethernet cable described in the Aluma AC455 datasheet. Is this just a standard ethernet cable with a RJ45 connection? I no longer see any filters offered on your website. Have you gotten completely out of the filter resale business? I am going to be getting a new laptop soon. My old laptop has a non-upgradeable Windows 10 operating system. Do you recommend that I replace my laptop before getting the camera? If so, do you have any specific recommendations for what features it should have? Regarding the laptop, do you have any particular recommendations for the type of I/O ports I should get? Should I also be looking for a hub with multiple USB and ethernet ports, and if so, can you recommend a specific brand and model? This question applies to MaxIm DL. I am assuming that my MaxIm DL 7 license will be transferrable over to a new laptop, but can I also transfer my MaxIm DL 6 license over? Mike
It's fiber Ethernet, not copper. It's very well-established technology but not everyone is familiar with it. It's not complicated at all. Basically you need a fiber cable with connectors on each end, and transceiver modules for both end. These are all widely available, e.g. on Amazon. The details are in the user manual, and we can also provide them with the camera if you like. We do have some recommendations for the transceivers because it's important to have wide temperature range. Yes we've stopped selling filters. We had some quality problems with our supplier and decided to leave filters to our dealers going forward. We do have leftover inventory listed on our "Garage Sale" page https://diffractionlimited.com/product/filter-sale/ You will want a decently powerful machine with lots of memory. A fast i5 machine can just about keep up with the full transfer speed. If you don't mind the download taking longer then a slower machine will work fine. A Thunderbolt port is recommended as there are fiber-to-Thunderbolt adapters available. Alternatively if you have a 10G copper Ethernet port then you can use a format converter to get to fiber (this will need to be dedicated to the camera - you probably use WiFi for internet anyway.) I haven't tried USB-to-Ethernet with a format converter to fiber... but I rather suspect it will be slow. USB3 isn't as fast as 10G Ethernet. Yes you can transfer the licenses to your new machine.
A YouTube channel "ServeTheHome" has interesting reviews of small PCs and switches for 10GbE. One could go full out and setup 10Gb with WiFi-7 -OR- simply stay 1.0Gb and ignore the extra second to download. Be that as it may, getting rid of USB at the camera is huge.
That was our thinking. We have so many issues with USB. Windows drivers are almost plug-and-play but then you get hit with dumb stuff like USB Selective Suspend. The USB chipset drivers aren't well-developed for Mac and Linux, leading to support issues on those platforms. High-speed devices with long cables sometimes don't play well with the front jack connectors on PCs because of the crappy internal cabling. Desktop USB hubs don't work right in the cold, which manifests as reliability issues. etc. etc. Ethernet is industry standard, robust, and well-supported on all platforms.
I see you have officially launched the IMX455 based Aluma (finally!) I see a small mistake, you have the release showing the chip is 41x31mm.
That's the chip size. I've fixed the webpage and we'll fix the sentence on the front of the spec sheet. The usable pixels work out to about 36 x 24 mm as you mention, and the pixels are 3.76um square. The actuals including overscan/reference pixels are approximately as follows: Total: 9602 x 6498 = 36.103 x 24.432mm = ~62.39 M pixels Effective: 9576 x 6388 = 36.005 x 24.019mm = ~ 61.17 M pixels Active: 9568 x 6380 = 35.975mm x 23.988 = ~ 61.04 M pixels Chip size 40.961 mm x 31.108 mm So yes, about the same size as the SBIG STXL-11002 or the size of a 35mm film frame, 43.3mm diagonal.
All of our cameras since 2014 are SBIG(R) cameras. We acquired SBIG a decade ago, and honour the Santa Barbara Instrument Group name with the SBIG brand. For example: SBIG Aluma CCD47-10 SBIG StarChaser SC-4 SBIG Aluma AC455 Thanks for asking.
Are native drivers available for this camera and related accessories? Specifically, can we operate this camera and accessories using TheSkyX without ASCOM? Unrelated question: are cooled guiders (StarChaser series or otherwise) available? Thanks!
DL Imaging drivers are the native drivers. Our ASCOM drivers sit on top of the DL Imaging drivers. Do you mean does the camera include proprietary X2 drivers specific to Software Bisque, and on which operating system, and for use with TheSky X (32 bit or 64-bit) Camera Add On?? We have a number of observatories using our STC-428 and Aluma CCD47-10 cooled camera specifically for guiding. The relatively large pixel size of the 428 makes it an excellent match for many scopes > 14 inch, or for use with on-axis guiding and a dichroic (beam splitter) setup. https://diffractionlimited.com/product/sbig-stc-428-m/ We've also done a modified version of that with a water block, fanless cooling system. The Keck Planet Finder uses our Aluma CCD47-10: https://diffractionlimited.com/product/sbig-aluma-47-ccd10/ What is it you need? Happy to discuss options.
>>Do you mean does the camera include proprietary X2 drivers specific to Software Bisque, and on which operating system, and for use with TheSky X (32 bit or 64-bit) Camera Add On?? Yes. Specifically, would it be possible to operate the camera and its accessories using X2 drivers within TheSkyX, with no ASCOM on Windows 10/11? >>We have a number of observatories using our STC-428 and Aluma CCD47-10 cooled camera specifically for guiding. Thank you for that information. That's good to know. Eric
We specify it in the handy Backfocus Calculator Spreadsheet, which you can find on the camera's download page. Or go directly here: https://diffractionlimited.com/downloads/BackfocusCalculator.xlsx