[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,

The first light images with my new Flea3 GigE camera. This Saturn data was captured in rather ordinary conditions; however it does resolve an interesting bright spot within the EZ in the R channel data. The G & B channel data added nothing at all in the way of detail and detracted from the resolution of the RGB.

I have found several obstacles to overcome in getting the Flea3 GigE to run at its full potential, regarding both consistency of operation and frame rate. I hasten to add that all of these problems related to the hardware in my computers and not the camera itself. For anyone else that may be interested I will outline what I have found.

I recently purchased the Flea3 GigE camera to replace my old Flea3 1394 which had suddenly developed a problem and ceased to function.
It should be noted that I have no affiliation with any vendor and my comments are based on what I have experienced with the equipment I have at hand.

Firstly, the computers that I tried to run the new camera on were:
A 4yr old Toshiba laptop 32 bit core 2 duo T9300 2.5 GHz with 4 Gb of RAM, this was the computer I had been running with my Flea3 IEEE 1394. This computer has a Marvel Yukon 88E8072 PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

A 1yr old Toshiba Qosmio laptop quad core 64 bit i7-2360QM 2.00GHz with 8 Gb RAM. This computer has a Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.

A brand new LG desktop quadcore 64 bit i7-3770 3.4GHz with 16 Gb RAM. This computer has a Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller. Initially I also fitted this computer with another PCIe Gigabit LAN card sourced from LINDY (P/N 51191) here in Australia. I intended this card to be specifically for the new camera.

I found that (using the PGR Configurator) I could not configure the camera on the quadcore laptop at all, mostly the configurator just froze.

I found that I could not configure the camera on the LINDY card at all and received numerous error messages related to the bus.

I found that I could configure the camera on the desktops original motherboard controller but that I could not configure an MTU rate of higher than 1500 (note that the camera can run at 9000 MTU) I captured many test RGB data sequences and found that although the camera worked, the frame rate was all over the shop, extremely inconsistent.
I found that I could configure the camera on my old Tashiba core2 duo at 9000 MTU and that the camera performed as expected (I tested at up to 100 FPS)

It is nice to have friends and I must add that I had numerous phone conversations with Bird that stretched to several hours while trying to sort this out.
On the PGR knowedge base it is mentioned that standard PCIe Gigabit controllers may cause problems for GigE cameras and that they recommend PCIe adaptors with Intel Pro 1000 chips in them. Reckon that really needs to be in bold print.

Following further consultation with Bird I sourced an Intel EXPI9301CT Pro/1000 CT Gigabit Network Adaptor from Techbuy.com.au here in Australia. This time, when I ran the Configurator, everything that the Configurator help file said should happen, did happen.

My Flea3 GigE will now function to spec both on my old 32 bit laptop (Vista Ultimate) and new 64 bit desktop (Windows 7) and has performed flawlessly thus far on Torstens most excellent FireCapture 2.2.

At times this was a rather stressful process and it certainly helped greatly having access to the calming influence and knowledge of Bird, to whom I am indebted. I take from this the fact that not all Gigabit controllers were born equal and that the same applies to the range of Gigabit PCIe cards that are available. For sure, the correct information is right there within the PGR knowledge database but for non expert people like me it would have been much better to perhaps have that information more prominently displayed, like on the overview page for the camera on the PGR website, as well as in the knowledge base.

There has been little respite from the Jetstream over the last month and now that I am back to being fully operational, I look forward to some good seeing to really put the new Flea3 GigE through its paces.

Regards
Trevor