An existing Meade Deep Sky Imager ccd driver?

[classicu12]

Hi,

I am wondering if anyone has a driver for Meade CCD cameras, specifically the Deep Sky Imager?  It appears that NI doesn't have one on the site.  I am also relatively new to Labview in general, so let me give a little background on what I am doing.   You may have some other suggestions that I am overlooking.

What I'm trying to do is take images of laser pulses with the CCD camera (not exactly what this particular camera is made for, but I'm stuck with it).  The CCD is monochrome, which makes it difficult to see the pulse structure, so right now, I am taking black and white images with the software that came with the camera (AutoStar Suite) and feeding them into a VI that adds pseudocolor and writes the pixel values to a log so that other software can characterize the pulse.  This characterization software takes a long time to run, so feeding it good images in the first place is necessary.  My issue with this process is that it is inefficient when taking large amounts of data.  What I would like to do is view the images in pseudocolor in realtime so that the pulse structure can be easily seen immediately, which is not possible with the limited software provided.  Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.  It isn't vital to the work I'm doing, so a very involved solution is not necessary.  However, if there's a quick fix out there, please let me know.

[AnalogKid2DigitalMan]

I doubt you will be able to find a driver for this specialized camera, but you never know.

Since a laser is monochromatic light, what additional information will a color camera provide?

Regarless of the camera, watch out for saturation, use an ND filter if neccesary and possible. Your camera may be optimized for low light exposures.

For beam characterization high dynamic range of at least 10-12 bits is beneficial, and high spatial resolution (small pixels or use a beam expander).

[classicu12]

Thanks for the reply.  I appreciate the tips.  I figured this may be a longshot, but it never hurts to ask.

That's a good question about the info that the pseudocolor would provide.  Laser pulses are actually not monochromatic.  In fact, they are anything but monochromatic.  A continuous wave laser is one color, but it's impossible to make pulses from a continuous wave.  Pulses are made by overlapping light over a large bandwidth such that their phases overlap.  Anyway, to characterize the pulse (giving the duration and intensity information), there is a somewhat complicated method.  What it boils down to is that information is imaged on the CCD camera with time and phase axes.  There is a little bit of luck involved in getting a good image due to the pulse time variations, but the process used is symmetric in time, so if the image taken is good, it will have symmetry in it.  That symmetry is very hard to see in just black and white, so the pseudocolor helps determine if the image is a good one to feed into the actual characterization software.

[Kvasir]

Hi,

it was very funny for me to read your post, because i actually have literally the same problem.
Although i don't want to characterize the laser pulse, I'm also stuck with the DSI imaging laser pulses. I'm doing phase contrast imaging, but the problem stays the same, i need a Labview driver for the Meade DSI.

So if you actually find one, or maybe an active X Library, would you mind to post it here please? Although i fear you won't find one. Meade Customer Service at least has no solution.

P.S.: Are you doing FROG / GRENOUILLE setups for you characterisation?