Hi Everyone!

I have ASI 1600 with Ekos and indi over 100Mb ethernet I am getting 8.2 seconds frame download time. the real download time over usb takes 0.8s for USB2 and 0.2s for USB3. in theory it should take 3.2s with 100Mb network. however it has some overhead (TCP/ethernet let us say 20%) so the download time should be something like:
3.2*1.2+0.8 = 4.64s
but it takes 8.2s.

So I came to the conclusion that this is because of the base64 encoding (~1s encoding + ~1s decoding + ~40% overhead):
3.2*1.2*1.4 + 1 +1+0.8 = 8.2s
which is what I get.

Is my assumption correct? Is there a way to enable binary transfer and reduce frame download time?

Thanks!
Rumen

hi again everybody!
My calculations seems to be correct. All of a sudden the image transfer became binary and the download time is ~4.5sec.

But the mystery deepens how it just changed from base64 to BLOB just like that...
Please anyone where is that BLOB set in Ekos?

Hi Rumen.

Which version of the 1600 ? is it cooled, BW, color ?
I am considering buying one, so I'd more than welcome any feedback
on its behavior and particularly indi support.

Thank you in advance...
Clear and dark skies.
--
François Meyer

Hi,
you are hijacking my topic
I am waiting for an answer to this or at least a clue for more than a week and I did not get a single one.

Anyway ASI1600 is a good camera but it has its problems especially under Linux. Idni driver is as good as the sdk and the camera itself. it works ok with 1600 but the most serious problem is the timing sensitivity of the camera. If the computer fails to read the frame fast enough the frame fails. For that reason 1600 can hardly coexist with the guiding camera on the same host, there are reports there is no such problem under windows and macos.

And please if anyone knows how do I turn on and off BLOB transfer in Ekos?

Rumen

Yes Rumen there is always base64 overhead since the protocol transmits all messages, including BLOBs, in XML. You can turn off BLOB transfer in the INDI Control Panel. You'll find a check next to "Image Data" property in "Image Info" tab.

Sorry about the hijacking... I saw the specific topic about the 1600 afterwards...
Thanks for the info.
--
François Meyer

I understand.. So Base64 is unavoidable. What is blob then? I thought blob is a technique to avoid base64.
What do you think about something like a binary true binary transfer for image data?
This will speed up the transfer hugely especially on ARMs with Gigabit Ethernet...
According to my calculations by a factor of 2.5 in some cases.

I understand the performance gains but the INDI implementation has to conform to the INDI Wire Protocol (v1.7) so base64 is a must.

I understand the INDI Wire Protocol (v1.7) requires base64 but what about INDI Wire Protocol (v1.8 or whatever number one cane come up with) that extends v1.7 that allows true binary transfer for BLOB data and does not break the backward compatibility?

You sure can discuss this with Elwood Downey (the protocol author) and see what happens.

Were there such discussions in the past? If there were I would not waste my time on that if not I may give it a try

No it was not discussed before.