CCD data acquisition & Squeak

Kevin Fisher kgf at golden.net
Tue Sep 12 19:47:35 UTC 2000


> 
> First off, that sounds like a wonderful, fun application!

Well, I'm feeling a surge of motivation since my long-delayed colour
filter wheel is finally 'in the mail' (no more pictures through
a dog's eyes :)

I've been thinking about doing something like this for a few years now...
I've got this fantasy in my head about creating an observatory controlled by 
Squeak somewhere in the distant future.


> 
> Anyway, you might want to look at Dolphin Smalltalk.  Don't get me wrong,
> Squeak is way-cool... but, Dolphin has the best Windows support I've ever
> seen.  If the library includes COM components, Dolphin should wrap them
> pretty much automagically for you.  If not, DLLs wrap nicely as well. It's
> not free, (actually, the last version IS free, but doesn't have as nice COM
> support), but it is cheap, and very very nice.  You should check it out at:
> http://www.object-arts.com


I guess I should have mentioned that the library in question is a UNIX
static library.  I'm targeting Linux/*BSD mainly, but since Squeak
is cross platform I'd like to get it working on Windows (and maybe Mac?
I don't have access to one) as well.  There's a real dearth of control
software for CCD's on Linux, while there are about a million for windows
(CCDOPS, MaxIm DL, etc).

I'm not certain about the SBIG DLL's for windows...I need to look into
that one, but I'm fearing that it might require an NDA or an SDK license.
The Linux library is free to use, since the author signed an NDA himself
to produce it.   No source for it, of course, and no real front-end
to use it either.


> 
> That doesn't mean you would be forced to do everything in Dolphin, even if
> you decided to go with it to drive the control library.  You could write a
> simple app in Dolphin which runs the control software.  You could then talk
> to the app from your main, Squeak-based app via sockets.  I like the idea of
> different flavors of Smalltalk working together, each one with its own
> strong points...
> 
> Just a thought,


Hmm, that's a good idea, one way to get around the parallel port control
issue if I can't do it from Squeak.





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list