From: "Steve Bryson" <stevebeam@yahoo.com>

Date: November 27, 2005 1:51:37 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: DMK camera fixes itself - is there some kind of timeout?

Hi Milton - Your comments are helpful.  I don't know if there's a mystery here or not, but 

I've verified the same behavior with both the DMK and Fire-i.  Details below.

So long as I stop video before unplugging the camera everything's fine.  This is good 

practice in any case.

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Milton Aupperle <milton@o...> wrote:

--- snip discussion about strange behavior of camera

The problem you describe might also be the bad Sony CCD issue too  

that was brought up last week here. If any of the wires on the CCD  

are loose or not making good contact you can get weird behavior. You  

can also get weird behavior like that from bad FireWire cables  too.

You can check both by moving the camera around when attached and  

seeing if video stops being displayed when moved. If it does,  

somehtign isn't right.

I don't see anything like that: no problems with the video image even when the cable is 

under tension and the camera is moving with high acceleration.  So it does not appear to 

be a problem with loose hardware.

I checked the fire-i, and it shows the same behavior.  Very specifically, for both cameras:

The "white video" condition has the following symptoms: 

- the video preview screen is all white, unchanging no matter what the settings and light 

entering the camera

- no image sharpness display dispite its being selected

- no histogram line

This is very distinct from overexposed normal operation, where the image sharpness is 

displayed and the histogram line is flat at the bottom of the graph.

Using Astro IIDC there are two scenarios:  "display image sharpness" is selected in all 

cases

scenario 1:

1) unplug firewire cable from camera while capturing images: image freezes

2) plug camera back in, nothing happens

3) press stop video, then start video.  both cameras show white video output, no image 

sharpness display, no histogram.

4) exit and restart Astro IIDC, press start video, everything's fine.

scenario 2:

1) unplug firewire cable from camera while capturing images: image freezes

2) press stop video, then plug camera back in

3) press start video.  Fire-i shows white video output, no image sharpness output, no 

histogram.  DMK gets error message 

API Error

myStartCamera Err = -536870185 0xE00002D7

press OK, press start video again, get white video output, no image sharpness display, no 

histogram.

4) exit and restart Astro IIDC, press start video, everything's fine.

There is still the mystery of why the DMK took over 30 minutes to recover last night.  This 

suggests it's something in the camera, not Astro IIDC.  The camera was cold (about 45 F) if 

that matters.  

See anything interesting here?

Steve