IMX455 based SBIG camera?

Yes, right now we're getting the firmware and drivers finalized. Trying to wring out any glitches.

 

1. 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.
2. 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/
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Yes you can transfer the licenses to your new machine.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

Here you go:

 

The advice in the manual is to help users get started.
If you were to use ASCOM, you would need to enable the External Trigger option in the Properties, like this (circled in green):

Unless I'm misunderstanding you, the camera has to be configured for external trigger in the Properties settings.
Then it is command to do an exposure by software, and the camera will wait for the trigger to commence exposure as soon as it rolls to the beginning row of the sensor. (Keep in mind it is a rolling shutter device). Then it executes the exposure, completes, and the usual download would begin.
The camera does not continuously push images at the software; the software is the boss.

A single SFP+ 10gigabit connection is excellent for most applications; however, if you truly need what you describe (eg for an SDA application or "full chip continuous imaging" at maximum performance), a single transceiver is not sufficient. We designed in a physical location for a second transceiver. If you want to discuss further, let's schedule a call during the week.

Thanks. Many of our CCD cameras had Ethernet as an option; however these large Sony sensors demand it for speed. Optical fiber is really the only way to go for distance which is also something people kept asking for.