Although for older versions of Windows they will still compile and work well under
Windows 10. A link and some compiling instructions for this SDK are given in the section
on AmCap below. There is a newer alternative API for Windows called Windows Media
Foundation which in theory should also be able to run the camera but I have no practical
experience of using this at the time of writing this manual. The open source program
‘Webcamoid’ described below has a Windows Media Foundation option and this appears
to work well.
I have no practical experience of macOS programming but an analogous SDK API for
video devices on Apple computers is the ‘AVFoundation’ API. The Webcamoid software
described below uses AVFoundation for its macOS support.
For those who are not into programming their own control software I present a selection of
four ready-to-use software packages below. These not only let you use the AF51 but are
also open source programs so they can serve as a guide and example to using the
various APIs discussed above if you do intend to start writing your own programs
eventually.
PARD Capture for Linux
I developed the free and open source
PARD Capture
software and optimised it to work
with OptArc cameras including the AF51. It is released under the terms of the GNU GPL
v.3
PARD Capture will be described in more detail in a separate chapter. It is designed
primarily for scientific still image capture (including time lapse sequences and low light
level work) and real-time video previewing but it is
not
suitable for real-time video capture.
PARD Capture allows full control of all the AF51 features described in the previous
chapter as well as providing additional functionality like real-time frame integrating
preview for low light applications, dark field and flat field correction, the ability to save
images as raw doubles or floating point FITS files, multi-frame averaging, the ability to
read out just the Y component from the YUYV stream, etc.
At the time of writing this manual, PARD Capture is only available for Linux and is only
available as source code that you will need to compile. For those using other operating
systems or those who do not wish to compile source code, a small selection of other free
software packages that you may find useful is listed below but bear in mind that there are
many others which are not mentioned below but which may be even better for your use
case so some research on your part is advised. The main qualification that any software
package must have to be able to work with the AF51 camera is that the software must be
able to interface with UVC-compliant video devices.
The project page link is:
https://github.com/TadPath/PARDUS/tree/main/PARD_Capture
OptArc AF51 Camera Page 44 of 99 User Guide v1.02