MX5 ccd camera driver - kernel module
Version : 0.1
Author(s) : David Schmenk (dschmenk@earthlink.net)
License : schmenk
Website : http://home.earthlink.net/~dschmenk/
Installs from Open Source Astronomy for Linux cd 3
Disk space required for installation is 231.00 Kb
In order to image with Linux, two thing are required: camera driver support and a control application. Both are available here. The camera drivers are implemented as kernel device drivers. These must be built and installed for your specific kernel. The control application uses features of the camera drivers and other accessories such as filter wheels and telescope guiding interfaces. Two other applications are useful as well. A celestial charting program and an image processing program will improve the ability to acquire and enhance good images. XEphem and The GIMP are recommended.
Of course Linux is needed. Currently only the 2.2.x kernel is supported by the camera drivers. There are drivers for the Connectix parallel port Quickcam and the Starlight Xpress (MX5/16, MX5/12, MX5C, ,MX7C, MX9 - HX5 and HX9 untested) series of camers. Adding new drivers is fairly easy, so if you want to add support foryour camera, lookat the current source and send me some email. The control application, gccd , requires a Gnome installation. Gccd also uses the GDK-PIXBUF library, so make sure it is installed from your distribution. It seems that most make this library an installation option. You do not need a big or fast computer. I developed this software to run on an anemic 75 Mhz Pentium laptop with 16 MB RAM and 640x480 LCD. It is equivalent to a circa 1991/1992 desktop. However, the faster your computer, the better your experience. Faster downloads, more screen real-estate, more images in memory are the benefits of a newer computer.