Apogee ALTA drivers for Mac OS X

Introduction

This distribution contains the drivers and associated packages for Apogee Instruments 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.

Upgrading to the latest version of your release is recommended.

Contents

The following packages are included in this distribution :

Installation

X-windows runtime

The image display component used is the SAOIMAGE DS9 program. This program requires an X-windows environment. Your OS X distribution cd's should contain a version , but we include a copy here for your convenience, just in case you did not select it during your OS installation.

Install the X-windows package first

Choose a convenient location to unpack the archive

Double-click on the X11 metapackage icon

Agree to the license and select a destination volume,
installation should then proceed.

Tcl/Tk

The graphical user interface is built using the Tcl/Tk scripting language. Your OS X distribution includes a limited version but we recommend you install one of the more comprehensive versions included on this cd (unless you are running 10.4 or later which includes TclTkBI). Select the appropriate version according to your version of OS X.

Install the TclTkBI package second

Installation requires root priviledges, so enter the admin password for your system.

apogee-driver

This package contains the drivers and GUI's.

Install the drivers package third

Agree to the license

Select an installation volume. It is recommended that
you accept the default location of /opt on the root Volume.
If you choose another location then you must issue the following
command in a terminal session after installation completes. 

        sudo ln -s /where-ever-you-installed /opt

Installation requires root priviledges, so enter the admin password for your system.

Configuration

Once all the requisite packages have been installed, the following steps are required to configure the drivers :

The X-windows icon will most likely appear either on the Desktop
or in the Applications folder, double-click to start

Depending upon wether you are using the Apple provided X11 release
or the X-Darwin version, you may or may not see the next screen.

Once X is running you should see at least 1 Xterm window.
In that window type the /opt/apogee/runmefirst command.
In the dialog that appears, select the appropriate config file
for your camera type (alta_net.ini or alta_usb.ini), click "Open".

For ALTA-E models the system will now start searching for
your camera, so make sure it is powered on , and connected to
your ethernet switch.

For ALTA-U models you can check that the Mac OS can detect your
camera using the "System Profiler" tool.

Standard Usage

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).

ALTA-E

The ALTA-E series cameras operate over standard ethernet
and may require you to temporarily alter the IP address of
your PC during configuration (if you have no DHCP server).

Log in with the username you will use to operate the camera, and type 

 
        /opt/apogee/scripts/altaDiscover

A small window will appear logging progress of the search.

The camera obtains its IP address from a DHCP server on your local network.
This means that every time the camera is powered on it
may obtain a different IP address. In this case you will have to run

 
        /opt/apogee/scripts/altaDiscover

again each time.

To avoid this you can configure the camera to have a static IP address.

Run altaDiscover once to obtain the current address. Then start a webrowser and navigate to

http://address-reported-by-altaDiscover

The cameras onboard webserver shows a welcome page.
Choose the "Configure Network properties" option.
Use a username of "admin" and password of "configure"
to access the page.

Disable the DHCP option, and then enter the cameras
IP address in the appropriate box.
Use the same network mask and gateway settings that
were reported on the welcome page.
Then click "Commit" to save the settings.

Once you have setup the camera with a static IP address,
it is also a good idea to enter this address into the
hosts database on your machine.

For example, if the IP address is 192.168.0.100, then add the following line to /etc/hosts (as root) 

 
192.168.0.100   alta    alta.localdomain

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. 

The Random Factory
P.O. Box 44070
Tucson AZ 85733-4070

Tel: +1 (520) 822 5221
Fax: +1 (520) 822 5223
email rfactory@randomfactory.com / rfactory@theriver.com
url  http://www.randomfactory.com/apogee-osx