From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: April 23, 2010 10:57:27 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Final question about the Flea3...

Hi Dave;

On 23-Apr-10, at 9:51 AM, doodlebun wrote:

Milton:

 Thanks much! The fever pitch over the Flea3 camera is running so high that some anxious astros have modified their DMK's by modifing it with a chip replacement (ICX618ala).

I'm a little surprised over "Fever Pitch". That's just a small format EXHAD CCD.

I don't want to do that. But I would like to be the first human to announce compliance with Astro IIDC.

It is compliant and it will work with Astro IIDC 4.06.00 out of the box.

One obvious difference is that the Flea3 is a Firewire 800 device. I don't know how important that is.

FireWire 800 has double the throughput over FW 400 (actually it's a bit higher than that because of improvements in the packet transfers), so you can push more data and run at faster frame rates, assuming the CCD can keep up. Some of the Express models of PGR cameras are running at 240+ fps.  FW 800 can also run at slower speeds over longer distances too.

Perhaps a Firewire 400-to 800 adapter would get the camera recognized.

No it won't make any difference if you use a FW 400 to 800 adapter, you just need to use Astro IIDC 4.06.00.

Early indications are that is is IIDC compliant. You have enough irons in the fire so I will pester PGR to see if I can provide you with the internal model number down the road.

Some of there earlier and specialty cameras (Digiclops, BumbleBee etc.) are IIDC compliant, but do not deliver video we can decode. To prevent that from happening when people blindly purchase software, we added code to check models and only support ones we knew worked. I have removed that restriction in 4.06.00.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle