- new features:
- add PEC calculation mode "Fit PEC to PE":
This keeps the shape and amplitude of a given PEC table, but moves it sidewards so that it fits the current measurement best (for recovering after worm-position got out of sync somehow)
- bugfixes:
- draw PEC graph with aggressiveness of current PEC table, not with what is selected for PEC table calculation
- improvements:
- set "Last Sample" to actual length of data (instead of 1000000000)
keep refreshing "Last Sample" in "Follow" mode, as long as user did not change it manually - Aspect now has an icon :-)
- new features:
- verify current PEC table against PEC table on MCU
- display content of logfile in menu Tools->Log View and add export facility to save logfile to a file
- bugfixes:
- make format of PEC files compatible with V4Control (firmware 4.00 and newer)
- reset first/last sample to the full range when loading a new PE file
- stop PE file following when PEC table calculation is started
PEC table calculation while following the PE file resulted in an empty table. - Tab "MCU": allow switching PEC off if PEC is on by handbox
Firmware v4.00 handles this correctly, I don't know about v3.59. Don't be confused that the handbox LED is still lit red, the MCU cannot tell the handbox to switch it off as communication is from handbox to MCU only. PEC is off when Aspect says so. - fixed memleak at PEC table generation
- fixed duplicate entries in path-history of fileselectors on Win platform
- improvements:
- make PEC aggressiveness and PEC factor editable; this might be useful for manually reparing PEC tables with broken aggressiveness/factor
- set default minimum aggressiveness 3 to get better performance when generating PEC tables with firmware v4.00 and newer. This is approx. the v3.59 behaviour. If you have a very smooth PE with little amplitude, you may want to lower minimum aggressiveness to 2 or 1 (menu Tools->Settings)
- cleanups:
- merged "PE Raw Data" and "PE Processing" tabs into one.
I hope this improves usability, as it reduces jumping betweed tabs. - add section "Experimental" to menu Tools->Settings that allows accessing the experimental/internal/development features of Aspect. Moved PEC profiling and the Tools->Mount menu to there, and hide them by default.
- removed IRIS import
I think IRIS import is obsolete, I haven't used it for quite some time now. V4Control gives much better data, as it knows how to query the worm wheel position from the MCU.
- improvements:
- adjust PEC acceleration for the upcoming firmware v4.00rc5 and newer.
Important note for testers of firmware v4.00 release candidates:
For PEC table generation and PEC profiling to work correctly with v4.00rc3 or v4.00rc4, you need to set PEC Acceleration to 1/240 (menu "Tools"->"Settings").
Remember to set PEC Acceleration back to 1/200 when upgrading to firmware v4.00rc5 or newer. Also note that you need to re-generate (or re-teach) your PEC tables when upgrading to v4.00rc5 or newer.
- bugfixes:
- fix problems with MCU communication on Windows by modifying the way QExtSerialPort handles timeouts:
- performance was bad when e.g. getting PEC table
- PEC profiling did hang with a polling rate of 0.5 seconds
- fix crash with PE curves with large discontinuities and/or extremely steep jumps (resulting in untraversable PE graph)
- improvements:
- reduce overhead when starting MCU communication: send an ACK instead of always querying the firmware version
- PEC profiling: query worm wheel teeth from MCU when starting
- show firmware version in statusbar
- tweaks for v4.00 firmware:
- send multiple store commands when saving settings to EEPROM
- don't send store command after changing PEC factor/aggressiveness as that seems to cause PEC count losses now and then
- new features:
- support for the upcoming v4.00 firmware:
- reworked MCU communication to support both firmware v3.59 and v4.00
- add PEC aggressiveness to PEC model (new in firmware v4)
- before uploading a PEC table to the MCU, check if it's compatible with the firmware that's on the MCU
- logfiles: introduced two logfiles that keep a history of what happened:
- aspect_log_xxxxxxxx.txt is a log of all major actions, e.g. reading a PE file, PE processing settings and Mount settings when generating a PEC table, etc. It's intended to help reproduce what has been done lateron, as one easily gets lost out in the field with all those parameters and files ...
- aspect_mcu_xxxxxxxx.txt is a log of all serial communication with the LittleFoot/MCU. It's intended for debugging serial communication problems (if there are any)
- logfile location is a temporary path that is reported the "Settings" menu.
- cure "PEC state not OK": Before uploading a PEC table to the MCU, check if PEC state is ok. If the MCU signals "PEC state not OK", start a minimal dummy PEC training to get it back to "PEC state OK", and then upload the PEC table.
- bugfixes:
- after switching away all graphs, the chart stayed blank forever
- improvements:
- PEC generation:
- widen the target corridor of internal PEC generation graph to avoid failing with very steep jumps
- improve accuracy of PE compensation: base PEC calculation on inverse of PE measurement, not on negative PE. This might help fine-tuning PE with high amplitude. A new graph "Ideal PEC" is introduced which, when compared to "Processed PE", shows the difference (marginal in most cases).
- usability:
- added a lot of sanity checks to report errors with message boxes
- status bar has a status indicator for the serial communication
- add a "Settings" dialog and moved some rather internal parameters to there
- file dialogs now keep a history of previously used paths
- make configuration persistent over application restarts
- new features:
- reworked the PEC model to use PEC factors higher than 1, if needed
- reworked PEC table generation to take a more global approach. The previous model just moved from one PEC point to the next, resulting in sub-optimal PEC tables when PE has sharp jumps. Now a complete view of the whole period is used to minimize the overall square error. This is especially necessary for taking good advantage of higher PEC factors. Generation takes more than an instant of time now, so show a progress bar.
- added a PEC touch-up mode to the PEC Processing tab. To use it, upload your favorite PEC table to the MCU and load/get it into Aspect. Switch PEC on and do a PE measurement with MCU Control Plus. Load the resulting PE log file into Aspect, select PEC mode "Touchup" and generate an new PEC table, which hopefully is even better than your previous favorite.
- bugfixes:
- setting the PEC factor was badly broken. It needs to be sent before PEC table to make the MCU actually use it. So changing the PEC factor and pressing the button "Put PEC table" now works.
- when smoothing data with gaps (measurement period greater than one pec point), some processed PE values were stuck at 0. fixed that, problem was introduced with v0.6
- changed sign of PE. positive PE values mean moving too fast (drifting westwards), PEC generation now gets that right.
- switch off PE file monitoring when opening a new PE file
- improvements:
- reworked serial communication to allow asynchronous command and answer handling. Use this to speed up "Get PEC table" by asynchronously sending/receiving the individual PEC values from MCU, as Doug does in MCU Plus
- new features:
- tab "PE Processing": add fields for entering a data range to cut away bad samples at begin and/or end of measurement
- tab "PE Raw Data": add "Follow" button. When toggled, the chosen file is monitored for further data being appended, with the PE graph being updated in realtime. You can use this to watch data come in during measurement with MCU Control Plus.
- bugfixes:
- limiting chart axis scales to 300 arcsecs to properly cope with huge values in chart (don't draw thousands of grid lines, makes Aspect appear to hang)
- if opening the serial port failed, all GUI elements that potentially lead to communication with the MCU were stuck disabled. fixed that, problem was introduced with v0.4
- improvements:
- tab "PE Processing": add field for entering guide star declination
- tab "PE Processing": reworked smoothing, such that to Raw PE graph is also affected by smoothing. Intention is to make manual drift compensation easier, as the curves of multiple periods are hard to match when there is much noise (e.g. due bad seeing)
- documentation:
- bugfixes:
- tab "MCU": fix "PEC" combobox to correctly show current PEC status and offer Off/On only if PEC is Off by handbox and not in teaching mode
- tab "PEC Table": replace "RA Rotation" and "Hemisphere" by "PEC Table Traversal", defaulting to Backwards, as it seems that the PEC table is always traversed with pecByte decrementing, regardless of rotation and hemisphere
- reduce MCU communication log history from 1000 to 40 messages, as it seems to hit performance of e.g. PEC table get/put
- improvements:
- tab "PEC Profile": widen poll interval range, raise default to 1 second
- hacks:
- tab "PEC Profile": default Graph Drift to -2.6 arcsecs/period, as that drift seems to be a general phaenomen. It's reason is still unclear.
- new features:
- load/save PEC profile measurements
- add MCU communication log for troubleshooting
- improvements:
- improve directory handling: remember the last visited directory and set as default in file dialogs (before always the home directory was set, which gets pretty annoying with deep directory hierarchies)
- disable buttons that might cause MCU communication if a MCU communication block is started
- PEC profile tab: better button feedback (use toggles; disable unusable buttons)
- bugfixes:
- write PEC table files with line terminator depending on platform: the last fix of v0.3 broke writing from Windows
- PEC profile measurement: remove hardcoded 144 worm wheel teeth (oops)
- experimental/internal:
- move east/west (at guide rate) during PEC profile measurements
note: PEC profiling has to be paused for starting/stoping movement.
- new features:
- generate PEC tables
- measure resulting PEC profile
- added user documentation fragments
- bugfixes:
- write PEC table files with CR/LF as line terminator, otherwise MCU Control Plus can't read them
- add timeouts at serial communication to avoid hanging the application if no LittleFoot/MCU is connected
- fix default file paths to be common locations
- new features:
- import PE data from Doug Dieter's MCU Control Plus
- get and put PEC tables from/to LittleFoot
- communication with LittleFoot via serial line basically works
- initial release:
- read and write PEC tables from/to .csv files
- read PE output from IRIS
- edit and chart PE and PEC
Generated on Sun Jun 3 16:45:46 2007 for Aspect by
1.5.1