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Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)

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Offline fudgey

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #20 on: 12 / July / 2009, 17:03:47 »
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and isn't CHDK derived from that firmware by reverse engineering it?

No, CHDK is not derived from Canon firmware. CHDK is software that parasitically runs in the same computer Canon firmware does. Time for a bad analogy:

The camera a lot like some fancy new car you've just bought. The factory won't give you service manuals, schematics or mechanical drawings but still you manage to dig in deep enough to understand how it works using a set of screw drivers, a logic analyzer and other wickedly funky tools you may have in your garage/electronics lab.

For example, you could figure out how to dismantle the dashboard, and after a few nights you'll figure out how the car's annoyingly stupid and featureless radio system works and how those steering wheel buttons communicate with it. This enables you install your own audio player yet maintaining control from the steering wheel volume buttons.

And it's still very much your audio player, you just didn't get any help from the car's manufacturer to install it.

Some of CHDK is like that audio player. Some of CHDK is like a little black box you made that you installed between the steering wheel and the original radio to make the volume button press 'vol+' twice instead of once because you think volume doesn't go up fast enough when you hit the button (and the original radio didn't let you configure this).

This little black box would be very much yours too.

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Offline Hacki

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #21 on: 12 / July / 2009, 17:25:12 »
@fvdk:

Youre still completely missing the point. Whether david or someone else makes money with SDM is not the issue. That he's even turning down donations with said reason may be honorable, but again, not the point.

Its: "taking ideas but failing to contribute."

Open source software is all about taking and giving, making a fork is nice, but making it impossible to backport good features or even lack of reporting bugs wich apply both to the fork as well as the main project is just bad manners.

david failed to release the source at all in the beginning, then only in dirty zip files with all comments stripped. Meanwhile the zipfiles are clean then comments are there, but still - just throwing some zipfiles with the sourcecode on a webspace once in a while, with no changelog or versioning system whatsoever, makes above problematic.

All he contributes to this community is how great his fork is. I never saw any bug report or advice concerning chdk, only how nice this and that works in SDM, or what will be available in the next SDM release.

Forking a project is fine. Making money out of it too. Being a dick is not.

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Offline fvdk

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #22 on: 12 / July / 2009, 17:58:58 »
and isn't CHDK derived from that firmware by reverse engineering it?

No, CHDK is not derived from Canon firmware. CHDK is software that parasitically runs in the same computer Canon firmware does. Time for a bad analogy:

The camera a lot like some fancy new car you've just bought. The factory won't give you service manuals, schematics or mechanical drawings but still you manage to dig in deep enough to understand how it works using a set of screw drivers, a logic analyzer and other wickedly funky tools you may have in your garage/electronics lab.

For example, you could figure out how to dismantle the dashboard, and after a few nights you'll figure out how the car's annoyingly stupid and featureless radio system works and how those steering wheel buttons communicate with it. This enables you install your own audio player yet maintaining control from the steering wheel volume buttons.

And it's still very much your audio player, you just didn't get any help from the car's manufacturer to install it.

Some of CHDK is like that audio player. Some of CHDK is like a little black box you made that you installed between the steering wheel and the original radio to make the volume button press 'vol+' twice instead of once because you think volume doesn't go up fast enough when you hit the button (and the original radio didn't let you configure this).

This little black box would be very much yours too.


Fudgey,

Nice analogy which explains it very well so that now even I understand it  :D

Regards,
Frans

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Offline zeno

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #23 on: 12 / July / 2009, 18:14:41 »
Hacki - with respect, I think you are missing the point. I write as someone who uses both SDM and CHDK and who has made (small) contributions to both. CHDK is a great team effort. Because it's a team effort it needs changelogs, a versioning system etc (the comments in the code are in my view not important at all - few of them help you understand what the code does or why it is the way it is - the easiest way to get answers to those questions is to ask here).

SDM by contrast is not a team effort. It is the work of one person (building, it is true, on the work of others). David decides what goes in. What makes SDM so useful for me (a kite aerial photographer) is that he is prepared to listen to suggestions from users and to incorporate them.

Let me take one example. For kite aerial photographers, the ability to switch between still and movie modes in a script is very useful. Following work by jeff666 I produced CHDK builds for a handful of cameras (see http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/kapstuff/zchdk.html). I posted my code in the CHDK bugtracker (see 0000118) hoping that someone would find a way to extend the set of cameras - something I could not do. Seven months later nothing has happened despite the occasional prod from other CHDK users. However David Sykes volunteered to add the facility to SDM - and did so for ALL the cameras that SDM supports. For another example - for Kite aerial photographers the ND filter on Ixus cameras is a real problem. David has done a great deal of work on SDM to try to make that filter properly controllable in scripts. Take a look at his frequent appends in the KAP forum (http://steel.ced.berkeley.edu/cris/kap/discuss/) to see how helpful he has been.

While it's possible that CHDK could incorporate both of these 'fixes' the very fact that it's a team-built, 'open' system actually doesn't help much.

Those who complain about SDM (many of whom seem proud of the fact that they've never used it) may be fortunate that CHDK fills all their needs, but for some of us the responsiveness of David Sykes makes SDM something of great value. Calling him a 'dick' just means you have little understanding of that.
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Author of ASSIST, STICK, WASP, ACID, SDMInst, LICKS, WICKS, MacBoot, UBDB, CFGEdit


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Offline fvdk

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #24 on: 12 / July / 2009, 18:15:15 »
@fvdk:

Youre still completely missing the point. Whether david or someone else makes money with SDM is not the issue. That he's even turning down donations with said reason may be honorable, but again, not the point.

Its: "taking ideas but failing to contribute."

I get your point, I just don't agree with you. I think the wise thing to do is agreeing to disagree.

Quote
Open source software is all about taking and giving, making a fork is nice, but making it impossible to backport good features or even lack of reporting bugs wich apply both to the fork as well as the main project is just bad manners.

I think there is NO REQUIREMENT to be part of any group or to create a 'fork' from the original code but I can see that it would be nice if it were available. However, I don't believe that David makes it impossible to backport good features. Yes, it probably is problematic.

Quote
Forking a project is fine. Making money out of it too. Being a dick is not.

Remarks like that are probably the reason why David is not all that eager to collaborate with certain people.

Just my opinion and yes, I have an ***hole too  :)

Frans

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Offline reyalp

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #25 on: 12 / July / 2009, 18:38:20 »
Let me take one example. For kite aerial photographers, the ability to switch between still and movie modes in a script is very useful. Following work by jeff666 I produced CHDK builds for a handful of cameras (see http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/kapstuff/zchdk.html). I posted my code in the CHDK bugtracker (see 0000118) hoping that someone would find a way to extend the set of cameras - something I could not do. Seven months later nothing has happened despite the occasional prod from other CHDK users. However David Sykes volunteered to add the facility to SDM - and did so for ALL the cameras that SDM supports. For another example - for Kite aerial photographers the ND filter on Ixus cameras is a real problem. David has done a great deal of work on SDM to try to make that filter properly controllable in scripts. Take a look at his frequent appends in the KAP forum (http://steel.ced.berkeley.edu/cris/kap/discuss/) to see how helpful he has been.
And if David would actually contribute back, or not deliberately make it hard to backport stuff, all that stuff could be in CHDK too.  Calling him a "dick" may be rude and unproductive, but I'd say what he does is far ruder than a rude word.

Quote from: fvdk
However, I don't believe that David makes it impossible to backport good features. Yes, it probably is problematic.
No, but he appears to deliberately make it more difficult. Again, that's a lot ruder than a flame on a forum.

I realize there's a long history of personality conflict here, that started well before I got involved. I see a lot of what appears to be knee jerk flaming on both sides. But my impression from the start has been that David just takes my hard work and promotes his without making the slightest effort to contribute back.
Don't forget what the H stands for.

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Offline fvdk

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #26 on: 12 / July / 2009, 19:58:52 »

And if David would actually contribute back, or not deliberately make it hard to backport stuff, all that stuff could be in CHDK too.  Calling him a "dick" may be rude and unproductive, but I'd say what he does is far ruder than a rude word.

You are under the impression that he is deliberately making it hard but I think that he has already explained that he (unlike most of you) is not an experienced programmer. He started SDM as a stereo photography hobbyist with no previous programming experience who saw the possibility to synchronize two cameras. I think he has come a long way since than and has done a remarkable job. Knowing this, I think it is understandable that his approach differs from that of most of the developers.

As an outsider, It is not up to me to judge who is wright or wrong. As an SDM user who has had nothing but good contact with David, I feel the need to stand up for him.

From the same outsider perspective, I can understand why some of you would like him to better document SDM and I can only hope that this will one day be solved as I think the current approach is leading nowhere and will only drive you further apart.

Frans

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Offline reyalp

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #27 on: 12 / July / 2009, 20:32:48 »
You are under the impression that he is deliberately making it hard but I think that he has already explained that he (unlike most of you) is not an experienced programmer.
Uhm, stripping out all formatting*  and comments isn't a result of "not being an experienced programmer". If the point isn't deliberate obfuscation, I have no idea what is.

It also ignores the larger issue, that he never takes the time to give anything back. Not an "oh I fixed this bug and here's how I did it" or "here's a the patch for adding feature xyz". Sure, he's busy and wants to focus on his own project. That understandable, but NOTHING ? That's a profound lack of courtesy for someone who's taking advantage of the hundreds of hours of work other people put into CHDK.  Yeah, he's in a long term pissing contest with a few people, but neither I (up till now anyway) nor the vast majority of CHDK users and contributors are a part of that.

He says he doesn't use SVN because he isn't an experienced programmer. As an experienced programmer, I'd suggest that it would save him a lot of time and effort in the long run to use it. As a bonus, it would make it much easier to roll his work back into CHDK.

* the latest version seems to at least have some formatting, which I guess is a step forward... but removing comments is the worse of the two. You can ignore whitespace in a diff.
Don't forget what the H stands for.


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Offline fudgey

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #28 on: 13 / July / 2009, 14:52:03 »
Let me take one example. For kite aerial photographers, the ability to switch between still and movie modes in a script is very useful. Following work by jeff666 I produced CHDK builds for a handful of cameras (see http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/kapstuff/zchdk.html). I posted my code in the CHDK bugtracker (see 0000118) hoping that someone would find a way to extend the set of cameras - something I could not do. Seven months later nothing has happened despite the occasional prod from other CHDK users. However David Sykes volunteered to add the facility to SDM - and did so for ALL the cameras that SDM supports. For another example - for Kite aerial photographers the ND filter on Ixus cameras is a real problem. David has done a great deal of work on SDM to try to make that filter properly controllable in scripts. Take a look at his frequent appends in the KAP forum (http://steel.ced.berkeley.edu/cris/kap/discuss/) to see how helpful he has been.

I guess I'll have to comment this one since I actually once spent an entire day trying to get this in CHDK trunk a few months ago. Honest.

Before that day I already knew exactly how to modify CHDK to make this work beautifully for my a570 (no secrets here, it's on these forums...search for e.g. PostLogicalEventForNotPowerType), but the problem is that each camera is an individual (different button configurations, two different operating systems etc) and the same method only works for some models. There are about 3 different methods of switching between the modes, some cameras can use more than one with varying degrees of success, some only somewhat work with one of them.

David and his community have gone through a lot of work figuring out which method works for each camera. For most cameras, the results can only be found in the SDM source code. So that's what I would read. And late into that night I stopped to protect myself from an early case of heart disease or whatnot.

I'm not much of a coder, but really...the lack of version control and documentation added up with to fact that most of the added code for this feature is quite hasty in regard of variable and #define name choices and positioning in the code files (something CHDK itself suffers from greatly as well, which doesn't make this one bit easier) sums up to an uninviting package of code.

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Offline Hacki

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Re: Source for SDM (Stereo Data Maker)
« Reply #29 on: 13 / July / 2009, 17:35:55 »
Dear David,

I apologize for calling you a dick, that remark was way out of line - still, the remaining arguments stand.

I also recommend that you log out the next time you call someone german wankers on the thanks page.*

Regards.

see: http://chdk.wikia.com/index.php?title=Template:THANKS&curid=2340&diff=0&oldid=17508
« Last Edit: 13 / July / 2009, 17:39:04 by Hacki »

 

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