Author Topic: Firmware development  (Read 7660 times)

Offline Armando

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Firmware development
« on: Wednesday, 10.07.13 - 18:16:18 - CEST »
Hi @all,

I regret having to inform you that I'm no more involved in the LFEP firmware development.

As Rajiva announced he was no more involved in the FW development, I was pretty sure he would have allowed someone to keep development on by releasing him the FW source code. But this was not the case.

When I bought my LFEP I was sure EPEC was working as described. And, even if I knew none tested it, I would have expected FW fixes in case of needs. This was the reason why I tested it (by simulating an encoder output) and unfortunately I found it not working at all. Then (after a lot of time) I received by Rajiva some FW code related to EPEC and by giving a look at it I identified a bug that affects the remaining code, as confirmed by Rajiva himself. So I was pretty sure some interesting news would have followed with a firmware beta release just to allow further tests. But too much time has passed and development is still inactive.

The time spent to contribute to make LFEP working was probably not properly appreciated by Rajiva.
I don't like to waste my time and frankly, as I always tried to be of help for fun and without asking anything, I would have expected a proper behaviour by Rajiva.

The main mistake was assuming the LFEP description and the controller features comparison table (so many times linked by Rajiva himself - I prefer to omit the link) were correct.

I still hope someone else is involved in the FW development. If not... Rajiva could limit to fix the comparison table.

Clear Skies!
Armando Beneduce

Offline the_lizardking

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Re: Firmware development
« Reply #1 on: Thursday, 11.07.13 - 16:48:51 - CEST »
Hi Armando,

no good news but somehow as expected,...
However even this solution would not help a lot, you know as well as me that the firmware has more than one open issue. So from my point it would have been nice to get "epec" fixed and I understand it is your highest priority, but this afects only 10% of the users,... and if every change would as that time intensive,... well.

OK however looking forward maybe we get some input here building something complete outside of LFEP as discussed before,... this could help for the "epec" and "IntelyTrack" at the end. So in this case we would catch two birds with one song,...

cheers

Offline Armando

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Re: Firmware development
« Reply #2 on: Thursday, 11.07.13 - 21:32:08 - CEST »
Hi the_lizardking,

Hi Armando,

no good news but somehow as expected,...
However even this solution would not help a lot, you know as well as me that the firmware has more than one open issue. So from my point it would have been nice to get "epec" fixed and I understand it is your highest priority, but this afects only 10% of the users,... and if every change would as that time intensive,... well.
I mean only to point out that I gave higher priority to EPEC just for 3 main reasons:
1. some users (not me - I didn't buy any encoder) bought expensive encoders just to make use of EPEC;
2. I think a (working) EPEC would have been the main LFEP feature;
3. I think some missing/not working features (e.g. polar alignment, 2-3 stars alignment) are not essential as they are easily replaced by appropriate software.

What I learned is that henceforth I'll ignore untested features while choosing something to buy and I'll stay away from equipment offered by a single developer preferring well known brands or open source solutions.

Quote
OK however looking forward maybe we get some input here building something complete outside of LFEP as discussed before,... this could help for the "epec" and "IntelyTrack" at the end. So in this case we would catch two birds with one song,...
I would suggest to forget the "EPEC" acronym for 2 reasons:
1. It's a nonsense as it should be not related to PEC... :D
2. I'd like to forget anything related to something that is definitely buggy.

I mean to make use of my LFEP by ignoring the missing/not working features.
I'll keep on the ASCOM development just to solve new bugs or to implement missing features.

Clear Skies!
Armando Beneduce

Offline the_lizardking

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Re: Firmware development
« Reply #3 on: Friday, 12.07.13 - 21:41:53 - CEST »
Hi Armando,

could be that some of us bought the Encoders,... but most even do not have the feature activated I think.
Thats why I put the names below "" digits, I totaly agree... however we call it, its time for something new - lets keep moving forward. I think the ASCOM driver made a good progress and seems to work so far - I got one bug report regarding the East/West feature in setup which seems to have a bug still, I will mal a note in the thread,...

We should maybe workout the spec in a new section developement and open a thread for this new Hardware Interface,... to discuss who does what.