Sorry Paul,
I just cannot see how SBIG have copied QSI who supposedly invented the idea of putting a guide port in front of the filters
Placing a guide camera in front of filters has been an Off Axis Guiding standard that everyone has been doing ever since Off Axis Guiding was developed.
QSI has only been around for 20 years at most and did not even exist when people in amateur and especially professional circles, were doing this and other companies were making the OAG equipment to do it.
The first OAGs were the human eye in an eyepiece with manual control - not sure if this predates our time in centuries or just decades !
The camera was merely a later addition as was electronically automated RA and Dec correction.
Neither company has really done anything particularly new, except that SBIG did commercialise the novel idea of having an integrated guide chip within their cameras and since they were able to Patent that idea that serves as legal proof of of it being an original idea.
They then merely took that a step further (probably at public request for narrowband guiding or AO) and put the chip on the front side of the filter wheel in the same manner that most OAGs had been doing for such a long time.
What is good is that there is always progress that results in more opportunities for better and easier imaging.
Rally
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Haese
No; place the guiding solution (does not matter if it is a camera or sensor) in front of the filters in the camera body is QSI's idea and as such is a good reason to copy it. SBIG did copy the idea. Besides looking in a QSI and then seeing those images in the PDF does show a lot of similarities and therefore means they did copy a lot of the features or more correctly reverse enginnered the ideas. Yes there is some copying going on.
Greg, the guide issue is still present but there are easy fixes. These should be included as part of the purchase kit for the camera I think rather than being optional extras.
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