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What's it all about?

This part of the website provides details on all the different projects either completed, planned or in construction - mostly in support of astronomy.

So what's here then?

The things I've worked on in the past include a complete telescope control system using the I2C serial interface, stepper motors and encoders, CCD camera controllers, magnetometers and ADC projects.

What's new ?

What's current ?

• PIC Projects
  • Autoscope - distributed Telescope controller
    • Stepper motor controller
    • Quadrature encoder interface
    • I2C master/slave interface interrupt code for PIC16C62
    • Incremental encoder interface - uses HP encoders
    • Keyboard controller code for PIC
  • PIC_visync : Vision Sync project code - synchronises flash output with video camera frames, controllable at line-offset and frame-offset levels.
  • Led_test - simple PIC assembler code example to drive pic leds
  • PIC RS232 - simple CCS c code project to drive PIC serial port interface.
  • PIC_ccd_ctrl - CCS c code CCD control interface using the USB-I2C interface as the high-speed databus and 16G877 Flash device as the main device controller.
  • PIC_isa_SPI_CTRL - CCS C code program to implement an ISA card interface to provide PC SPI capability using a PIC as the SPI generating device.
  • PIC_lcd_ctrl - project using CCS c code to control the industry-standard Hitachi LCD display controller - tested and working as part of the display for the autoscope project.
  • PIC_metronome - copy of public project for programmable metronome.
• PC projects
  • Java
    • Telecontroller - a JSP project to control a telescope and dome over the web and provide feedback on current pointing and image acquisition Uses JSP pages and a controller servlet to implement control activities.
    • HttpBuilder - a project to replay sniffed URLs to a proxy for content analysis in a web-audit fashion
    • SmtpBuilder - similar to the above using the java mail api's and sniffed SMTP traffic.
    • jGif - create a starmap dynamically in the servlet layer to support the telecontroller application - actually creates jpegs. Output should go in a client-side map for the user to click on.
    • jSaoConv - project to load the SAO star catalogs - and others into the MySQL database that provides the source for the dynamic star map creation of jGif. Requires MySQL4 , the db schema script and the SAO catalog.
    • jsMimeRead - project to resend a captured/saved plaintext RFC (2)822 email Mime blob as the original email using the javamail APIs.
    • smimemail and smtest are other very similar projects to the jsMimeRead
    • TCPFilter - project to act as high-level stream filter for TCP data streams sniffed from network captures. Uses capture from the network to rebuild network packets in sequence for TCP replay
    • ImageDB - project implementing multipart file upload via Caucho Resin JSP servlet engine for insertion into image database The intention is to create the thumbs and force user description data to be uploaded/created at the same time.
    • X509 - dumps out the x509 headers of any cert in a file format recognised by the JCE.
    • jExposure - Swing project to calculate astronomical exposure times
    • JSH - copy of public project to put java command line shell on any java-compatible device - e.g the PPC.
  • C++/C
    • Telescope Series of C++ classes in MSVC to describe the pointing, topographic location, mounting, encoders and telescope state for a specified telescope. Provides a generic driver interface wrapper, coordinate conversion classes, initialisation classes, physical and geographical limits control. Mostly outdated by the Java telecontroller project.
    • 8584i2c - Design using Phillips 8584 chip to interface pc to I2C. Uses ISA wire wrap card hence needs port acces sunder NT, Win2K etc provided by the likes of DirectIo.
    • ADC - project using Bluebird PC 12bit-ADC
    • Parallel port I2C interface for PC - complete & includes serial port version too. Compiled in Microsoft QuickC
    • Phillips PCX8584 code for driving 8584 chip
    • DirectIO Sample project using direct I/O app to control hardware under NT
    • F2C Fortran 2 C runtime support library code - gcc code to enable direct fortran to C code conversion using the f2c utility. Source and binaries. MSVC compilation.
    • Hardware SPI interface for PC - using NEC TP 3465 interface. Header and sample driver code.
    • Phillips IICTV controller app for chips supporting the Phillips I2C protocol.
    • I2C driver for NTi2cdll - dll interface wrapped around a device driver layer for NT to support common serial protocol calls from user layer.
    • Spi NT driver using PCI or ISA card and NEC TP3465 - SPI hardware driver interface layer wrapper for NT
    • public copy of VB comms spy application .
  • Astronomy oriented
    • SkyMap telescope interface dll for Vixen- interface to control autoscope project from commercial planetarium software. Implements telescope pointing and locale descriptor classes and polymorphic serial driver classes to allow interchange of control hardware.
    • testscope - code to test the telescope pointing classes - used for reading and writing/setting the ini files that describe the telescopes.
    • SLALIB -Trarlink Astronomy Library - cross-compilation from the original Starlink Fortran90 implementation to MSVC/GCC C code. Requires the f2c runtime ( above ). Very useful for anyone thinking of implementing something similar to the TPOINT telescope position modelling software in their own control setup.
    • Resource: LX200 command supported by Vixen SkySensor S2K-PC
• Pocket PC software
  • Java telnet client
  • VNC for Pocket PC
  • VxUtils - FTP and Unix comms tools for PPC

• SpiHere are code projects for several SPI ( two wire addressable fast serial protocols ) for use on multi-drop serial networks. These include a simple ADC and Win32 driver code.
• CCD CameraThis CCD camera uses a DevaSys USB to PIC interface to provide fast serial comms back to the remote host computer. The PIC controls the CCD sensor using the IO pins to generate the digital signals for the rows and columns which are level shifted using MOS gates. Interface any sensor you like- you have complete control of the voltage levels.
• Telescope control classes in C++ This code is a complete object-oriented description of a telescope and its pointing model in C++, including location limits, topography limits, hardware separation and different pointing and alignment models. Just plug in a comms protocol handler to talk to your Telescope.
• Aurora observations using a flux-gate magnetometer

• Camera meteor platform using relays and servos for automated exposure control and wind-on

  This project hasn't started yet - it consists of building a meteor photography platform using multiple manual SLR cameras and a mechanical construct of solenoids and cables to automate the wind-on and bulb exposures between cameras.

• SLALIB in C! The SLALIB starlink library compiled to C using the GCC F2C library ( you'll also need the runtime libraries). All compiled in MSVC.

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