IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go? - General Discussion and Assistance

EidolWays

4

IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« on: 02 / March / 2012, 16:35:54 »

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Looking around the compatibility and porting threads, I didn't see any mention of the ELPH510HS/IXUS1100. A forum search also turned up nada. The 500 is listed, the 510 is not. Anyone tried their hand at this camera? If not, I might have to see what I can do. I just picked one up, and the 10-minute video limit is highly aggravating.

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waterwingz

12138

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #1 on: 02 / March / 2012, 16:47:11 »

Quote from: EidolWays on 02 / March / 2012, 16:35:54

Looking around the compatibility and porting threads, I didn't see any mention of the ELPH510HS/IXUS1100. A forum search also turned up nada. The 500 is listed, the 510 is not. Anyone tried their hand at this camera? If not, I might have to see what I can do. I just picked one up, and the 10-minute video limit is highly aggravating.

Welcome !

Lots of good information about porting chdk to be found here :

link> For Developer

And the standard responses to your questions are here :

link> CHDK FAQ : My camera isn't ported yet

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EidolWays

4

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #2 on: 02 / March / 2012, 17:09:02 »

Yup, I read up on the Wiki. I'm not volunteering to be a tester. I just wanted to double check and make sure I wasn't going to be duplicating someone else's work before I started looking at what it would take to perform a port.

Thanks for the welcome!

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waterwingz

12138

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #3 on: 02 / March / 2012, 17:21:03 »

Quote from: EidolWays on 02 / March / 2012, 17:09:02

I just wanted to double check and make sure I wasn't going to be duplicating someone else's work before I started looking at what it would take to perform a port.

I know where you are coming from. When I started on the SD940, CHDK development was a bit more primitive than it is today. And there were less people providing help on IRC and this forum (or so it seemed at the time). So my biggest worry was "Oh krap, I really hope that the hundreds of hours I have spent do not turn out to be a waste of time when somebody else posts a completed port."

These days, a port can take about 12-16 hours once you know what you are doing and maybe 24-36 if you don't and are willing to ask for help. (Assuming you have some software skills and the camera available).

So, stay in touch here if you decide to take the plunge. You'll get lots of help and useful advice and only the occasional snarky reply.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

EidolWays

4

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #4 on: 02 / March / 2012, 18:02:52 »

Snarky replies? Feels like home.

On that note, my apologies if my previous reply had some snark to it.

Good to hear the port work isn't too bad. I work in the hardware verification field, while hardware designs are still in the code phase, so I can do coding. I also spent some time in web dev doing object-oriented PHP and MySQL. The trick is doing software development. I'm not used to SVN, development environments, and the like. I do VIM on a Unix command line and that's about it. So we'll see how long it takes me to ramp up.

Frankly, I either learn or take a loss on purchasing a Canon camera that doesn't quite do what I want it to. There's a fair bit of chromatic aberration on contrasting spots in the shot, but that's acceptable for a point-and-shoot, and shooting in RAW would let me clean a lot of that up if I care about the shot. So... the video length limit is the only real holdout.

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waterwingz

12138

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #5 on: 02 / March / 2012, 18:15:17 »

Quote from: EidolWays on 02 / March / 2012, 18:02:52

Snarky replies? Feels like home. On that note, my apologies if my previous reply had some snark to it.

I was thinking about my reply. Some time ago I took the liberty of making the wiki page about "My camera isn't ported." a little more friendly. But its still a bit dismissive.

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Good to hear the port work isn't too bad. I work in the hardware verification field, while hardware designs are still in the code phase, so I can do coding. I also spent some time in web dev doing object-oriented PHP and MySQL. The trick is doing software development. I'm not used to SVN, development environments, and the like. I do VIM on a Unix command line and that's about it. So we'll see how long it takes me to ramp up.

If you can handle VIM, you are probably already in the elite of of CHDK developers. But seriously, a little knowledge of C and assembler (preferrable ARM) makes a huge difference. There have been a couple of ports recently by people who claimed to have no software experience but it was not pretty.

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Frankly, I either learn or take a loss on purchasing a Canon camera that doesn't quite do what I want it to. There's a fair bit of chromatic aberration on contrasting spots in the shot, but that's acceptable for a point-and-shoot, and shooting in RAW would let me clean a lot of that up if I care about the shot. So... the video length limit is the only real holdout.

Well, depending on your hourly rate expectations, you can probably buy a couple of top of the line P&S cameras or a great DSLR for what this project will cost you in time. Unless you are like the other crazy people around here who actually enjoy this stuff.

Also, the video time limit solutions so far are not great. Mostly you use a script to restart the video just before it has times out. You end up with multiple files with a brief gap between them.

RAW is another subject of hot debate. The RAW images are not like those you get from a good DSLR. They are messy and need a lot of cleanup - which is what the P&S camera does before saving the image as a JPG. There was a challenge posted recently on the forum for a RAW image that looked better than the associated full resolution JPG after post-processing. Not sure anyone was able to show that.

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Ported : A1200 SD940 G10 Powershot N G16

EidolWays

4

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #6 on: 02 / March / 2012, 18:49:26 »

I did a quick search, but it looks like the discussions are buried in threads that stretch for uh... quite a few pages. Is it an intrinsic limitation of the hardware? Something that can only be overcome with said scripting?

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waterwingz

12138

Re: IXUS1100 / ELPH510HS - Anyone given it a go?

« Reply #7 on: 02 / March / 2012, 19:01:59 »

Quote from: EidolWays on 02 / March / 2012, 18:49:26

I did a quick search, but it looks like the discussions are buried in threads that stretch for uh... quite a few pages. Is it an intrinsic limitation of the hardware? Something that can only be overcome with said scripting?

I think the limit came about when SD cards were formatted FAT16 and there was a file size limit ? AFAIK there is a file size limit in FAT32 as well. So Canon set up video recording so that it saved files before the limit was exceeded.

Fixing that in CHDK would require a TON of work moving the video recording firmware into CHDK files and rewriting it. Technically possible but so far nobody with the necessary skills has had the time or motivation to do it. So that leaves us with a simple scripting hack to restart video each time it expires - not perfect but better than watching your camera like a hawk and doing it manually each time !

On an unrelated note, use the "Print" button at the top of each forum thread to trick the forum into putting all posts on a single web page. Much easier to scroll through or search.

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