PHD 1.13 released

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

From Craig Stark

I've pulled together all the revisions in the 1.12 series and a few more and released PHD 1.13. Full details of the changes below. One thing I wanted to note here for Mac users, though, is that this is going to be the LAST build for PPC processors and 10.4. It's just getting too tough to continue support while the rest of the world moves on. The latest SBIG library is 10.5/Intel only and there may just be one oft-requested camera supported soon that would also be 10.5/Intel only.

Release notes:
- All updates from pre-releases 1.12.1-1.12.4
- LAST build on the Mac that supports 10.4 and the PPC processors.
- Support for Starlight Xpress CoStar on Mac (earlier versions supported it on Windows)
- Updated support for The Imaging Source Win-7 drivers
- Fixed bug in display of some cameras (e.g., Orion SSAG) on netbook sized screens
- Fixed memory leak in ASCOM (late) camera driver

1.12.x Pre-releases
- (1.12.4) Added Preference to scale dither commands sent via capture program (e.g., Nebulosity). Default is 1 (to keep things at ± 0.5, 1, 2, 3, and 5) but you can now multiply these levels by anything you want.
- (1.12.4) Updated to new drivers for Fishcamp Starfish (Win)
- (1.12.4) Fixed issue that could make the Advanced dialog be super-tiny (came in from a nice feature in OpenPHD). If you're stuck with a small dialog, on Windows fire up RegEdit (Start, Run, enter in "regedit") and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\StarkLab s\PHDGuiding. You'll see an entry there for "Advanced dialog fontsize". Just delete that key.
- (1.12.4) Fixed issue on Mac with incorrect positioning of guide box for some odd image sizes
- (1.12.4) Added ability to save star images as FITS files (hold down shift while pulling down Enable Star Image Logging)
- (1.12.3) Allowed ranges on parameters in graph log and advanced dialog synced.
- (1.12.3) Support for "late bound" ASCOM cameras ("ASCOM (late) camera" in menu). This will allow in v4 and v6+ ASCOM cameras and any v5 cameras that did not support the (now defunct) "early binding" mode.
- (1.12.3) Support for "subframe" mode on late-bound ASCOM cameras
- (1.12.3) Last-used ASCOM camera now remembered in ASCOM Chooser dialog
- (1.12.2a) Mac-only fix to >1 Starlight Xpress camera
- (1.12.2) Tweak to Star Mass tolerance. Hopefully, it's less prone to rejecting things now. You can disable it entirely (promise!) by setting it to 1.0. Also, it will only reject two frames in a row because of this.
- (1.12.2) Calibration portion of log file cleaned up to put commas between values for easier analysis
- (1.12.2) If entering calibration data manually, current value will be pre-filled in dialog
- (1.12.1) Log file changed: Another column has been added to list what kind of fault PHD might have found with a star during guiding. 0=OK, 1=saturated (but still trying to work with it), 2=Low SNR, 3=Low star mass, 4=High change in star mass, 5=Large motion detected. Anything above 1 causes PHD to sit still and not move.
- (1.12.1) "Max RA Duration" parameter added to Advanced menu(default is 1000 ms). Can be used to cap the RA duration during guiding.
- (1.12.1) Flip RA data entry added to Tools menu to flip the vectors post meridian-flip
- (1.12.1) "Star mass tolerance" added to Advanced menu (default is 0.3). If the change in mass from one time to another exceeds this fraction, the current sample is rejected and not used for guiding. So, if the star mass on one sample is 10000 and the next it is 12000, the command is sent. If the next is 14000 (or 6000) it isn't (with the threshold set at 0.3 -- if it were at 0.4, these would be sent).
- (1.12.1) Reworked Advanced dialog

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Thanks for that Andrew. I can now run my DMK on 64 bit and use PHD .

[g__day (Matthew)]

For those wondering where it is on the website - its on the main download section - incorrectly labelled as v1.12.4 still.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Where's that Matt? Its showing 1.13 here http://www.stark-labs.com/downloads.html

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Originally Posted by g__day

For those wondering where it is on the website - its on the main download section - incorrectly labelled as v1.12.4 still.

Where was that link? The PHD in "Downloads" is not the prereleased 1.12.4.

7075690 2011-07-12 05:54 Setup_PHDGuiding.zip

contains (pretend the numbers line up):

7098017 07-12-2011 05:54 Setup_PHDGuiding.exe
0 07-12-2011 06:10 __MACOSX/
161 07-12-2011 05:54 __MACOSX/._Setup_PHDGuiding.exe

(yes Craig is a Mac person) whereas 1.12.4 when it was in prerelease was:

6017793 2011-04-18 21:01 Setup_PHDGuiding_1_12_4.exe

Andrew

[g__day (Matthew)]

I think there is some kind of stuff up in Firefox 5 version 5's cache management (not detecting a website has changed). Google Chrome, IE 9 and Safari - all see the correct / current page content. I could not get Firefox to work correctly until I flushed its entire cache!