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Video Sentinel Users Manual

J C Chavez

Sandia National Laboratories

jochave@sandia.gov

December 12, 2003

Introduction

This manual provides installation instructions and operating instructions for the Video

Sentinel system, which is used to detect, record, and display meteor events using an

ordinary video camera and a PC. The system includes a video camera, the Video

Sentinel box, which takes the video signal from the camera, a PC, which talks to the

Video Sentinel box through a cable connected to the printer port, and several software

applications that control the works.

PC Requirements

The PC used in the Video Sentinel system should meet the following minimum

requirements:

• Pentium class

• 200 MHz or greater

• 64 MB RAM or greater

• 4 GB Hard Drive or greater

• CDROM Drive

• Printer Port supporting EPP mode

The Video Sentinel system requires RTLinux, which is a real-time version of the Linux

operating system. Installing RTLinux will require patching the kernel and adding

modules to an existing Linux setup (such as Red Hat 8 or 9). This should probably be

attempted only by someone with good Linux experience.

Summary of content (15 pages)

PAGE 1
Video Sentinel Users Manual J C Chavez Sandia National Laboratories jochave@sandia.gov December 12, 2003 Introduction This manual provides installation instructions and operating instructions for the Video Sentinel system, which is used to detect, record, and display meteor events using an ordinary video camera and a PC.
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Video Sentinel Hardware Installation Instructions All hardware connections should be made with the PC turned off. Printer Port: The current Sentinel software release contains two programs (sentuser and sentuser2) that can operate up to two Sentinel boxes connected to different printer ports on the same PC. The first program uses the printer port at address 0x278 and also uses IRQ 9. The second program uses printer port 0x378 and IRQ 7. Printer ports should be set up in EPP mode.
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Installing RTLinux Installing RTLinux involves first installing a recent version of Linux on your PC and then patching and rebuilding your kernel. Links for the software patches and instructions can be found at: http://www.opentech.at/howtos/multiboot-howto/html/index.html In particular, I used the instructions at: http://www.opentech.at/howtos/multiboot-howto/html/install_en_2.
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2.6 LILO Configuration My RH installation uses the grub loader instead of lilo. Therefore, all I did was modify the grub configuration file at /etc/grub.conf by adding the following lines: title=RTLINUX (2.4.20-rtl3.2-pre2) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-rtl3.2-pre2 ro root=/dev/hda6 (hd0,0) corresponds to the first (hd0) physical disk drive's first (0) partition. It should be the partition where the boot file system (/boot) resides. It may be different on your machine.
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Video Sentinel Software Installation Instructions The following assumes that RTLinux is installed on your PC. The Sentinel software is contained in a compressed tar file that is available at: ftp://ftp.sandia.gov/outgoing/meteors/sentinel_source2.tar.gz or, by e-mailing me at: jochave@sandia.gov Copy the sentinel_source2.tar.gz file to your home directory on the Sentinel computer. On the Sentinel computer, become root (requires root password): su Issue these commands: tar -xzvf sentinel_source2.tar.
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Video Sentinel Checkout and Test Every time the computer reboots, the RTLinux modules should be re-installed, by first becoming root: su and then typing: cd sentinel_source2 make rtlinux exit cd To start the Sentinel control program, type the following: ./sentuser (This assumes you are using parallel port 0x278 and IRQ 9. If you are using parallel port 0x378 and IRQ 7, you can type instead: ./sentuser2) After a few seconds you should see a "Command:" prompt where you can issue commands.
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You should now be able to view image.bmp with a viewing application, like Gimp or GQView. Making an Image Mask For its video processing, the Video Sentinel box uses an image mask to control which parts of the input image are noticed and which parts are ignored. The image mask is just a 640 (horizontal) by 480 (vertical) byte array that define a threshold for each pixel of the incoming video image.
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Given that you have captured a gray-scale image called "image.dat", convert this to a bmp file by typing the following in a terminal window: convert -size 640x480+0 -depth 8 gray:image.dat image.bmp You can now open "image.bmp" with Gimp and manipulate it to form a mask. This typically involves painting areas with the draw tools and perhaps using other image processing tools like the threshold tool and the invert function.
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Using the sentuser program Every time the computer reboots, the RTLinux modules should be re-installed, by first becoming root: su and then typing: cd sentinel_source2 make rtlinux exit cd The sentuser program is used to interface with the Video Sentinel box. To start the Sentinel control program, type the following: ./sentuser (This assumes you are using parallel port 0x278 and IRQ 9. If you are using parallel port 0x378 and IRQ 7, you can type instead: .
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sentuser Command Reference The following section describes the commands available within the sentuser (or sentuser2) application. reset This sends a reset pulse to the Video Sentinel Box. The response should be "Reset sent", followed by the command prompt. init This initializes and loads control codes into the video circuitry. After several seconds, the response should be "Video initialized", followed by the command prompt. capture image.dat This captures a single gray-scale image to the file "image.
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change and when changing to or from Daylight Savings Time. The response is "Time Off: 05:30:00" followed by the command prompt. trigger This causes trigger to be enabled. The response is the command prompt. (However, if the command is issued during the "Off" duration, the response is "Turn Off: , where is the current time, followed by the command prompt.
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pixel+ This command increments the number of pixels above threshold that are required to indicate an event. The default is 12. pixelThis command decrements the number of pixels above threshold that are required to indicate an event. The default is 12. clock This command prints the current sentuser clock time. The sentuser clock time is based on the PC’s system time but also uses a time correction value in a file named “TimeOffset” in the current directory (if it exists).
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Using the sdisplay Program The sdisplay program is used to view video files generated by the Video Sentinel box and the sentuser program. These files have file names that indicate when the file was created. They look like this: v20020115_034512.45 The format is vYYYYMMDD_hhmmss.ss, where v is just v, YYYY is the year, MM is the month, DD is the day of the month, hh is the hour, mm is the minute, and ss.ss is the second (to a resolution of 0.01 seconds).
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Load and play the first file that begins with "v2" in the current directory. Load and play the last file that begins with "v2" in the current directory. ~~or k If the current video file is not the last, move the current file to the Trash directory, then load and play the next video file. This is how you can remove uninteresting files.~~
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Using the sclock program The sclock program is used with an Ultra-Link Model 325 WWVB Receiver/Decoder to provide accurate time to the sentuser and sentuser2 programs. The Ultra-Link unit monitors WWVB transmissions that allow it to maintain accurate time. The sclock application talks to the Ultra-Link through a serial interface and periodically updates a time correction value in the file “TimeOffset” that indicates the number of seconds that must be added to the PC system time to produce an accurate time.