Apogee ALTA drivers for Mac OS X

Introduction

The Random Factory is pleased to announce the availability of Mac OS X based drivers and control software for
Apogee Instruments ALTA series of Scientific CCD cameras.

Both ALTA-E (Ethernet interface) and ALTA-U (USB interface) models are supported.

ALTA-E is supported on any OS X release 10.1 or greater.

ALTA-U is supported on any OS X release 10.2.8 or greater.

The software is available direct from The Random Factory on CDROM for $200.

The following packages are included in the kit :

apogee-driver-1.5.pkg - The driver and GUI interfaces
celestia-osx-1.3.1-1.dmg - A fully featured star-chart package
external-packages.tar - The sources for component packages (for developers)
Java1.4.1.dmg.bin - Java JRE for use with starjava
Java3D_and_JAI.dmg - Java imaging extension for use with starjava
starjava.jar - Starlink astronomy packages
TclTkAquaBI-8.4.7.0jaguar.dmg - Tcl/Tk for jaguar (10.2.x)
TclTkAquaBI-8.4.7.0panther.dmg - Tcl/Tk for panther (10.3.x)
TclTkAquaBI-8.4.9.1.dmg - Tcl/Tk (latest version for Tiger, untested)
X11UserForMacOSX.dmg.bin - X-windows runtime distribution

Installation

The graphical user interface is based on X-windows, so this package should be installed first.
The software also requires a comprehensive Tcl/Tk environment.
Suitable versions are included on the cd. Tcl/Tk should be installed next.

apogee-driver

The driver and GUI's are delivered as a standard OS X package, to be installed using the system Installer program.

Install the drivers package third

Screenshots

The normal procedure for using the ALTA package is to start the X-windows environment, and then type

	./startapogee

into an xterm window. This will start the GUI, and the default image viewer (DS9).

Select "Dark" frames from the menu, and check the "Overwrite files"
checkbox. Change the exposure time to 10 (seconds).
Now click "Observe".

A small countdown window will appear (it may be hidden by
the main GUI window)

Once the readout completes, the image is automatically
displayed in the DS9 viewer. Use the "Scale" button in DS9
and then select "hist equ" to do a histogram equalization.
Full documentation for DS9 is available in the /opt/apogee/html
directory, or online.

This snapshot shows the screen in the middle of a long (100 frames)
calibration run.

The "Edit" menu provide access to the "Properties" window.
This window provides lower level control/feedback of the camera.

The "Temperature" panel of the Edit-Properties menu item
lets you control the setpoint, and see the Temperature history graph.

The "Geometry" panel of the Edit-Properties menu item
lets you control the frame size and binning properties.
It is usually more convenient to use the Observe menu
to interactively select ROI's.

Advanced users may wish to explore the capabilities of the
StarJava image processing and data reduction toolset which
may be installed from the cd (double-click the starjava.jar icon
on the installation cd).

The User Guide and Programming manual provide more detailed
explanations of all the aspects of the user interface, and the
embedded scripting commands available (some tcl/tk expertise
is advisable).

Credits

The Mac OS X version of the ALTA drivers are developed with the
support of Apogee Instruments Inc. Development and support is
provided by The Random Factory and questions about the software
should be addressed to them in the first instance.