milk2ds9

A simple utility to send images from the MILK shared memory structure to the ds9 image viewer.

NOTE: You are on the master branch, which currently works for the old MILK. Use git checkout new_milk if you are using the new MILK.

Dependencies

You need:

• ds9 (http://ds9.si.edu/site/Home.html)

• cfitsio (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html)

• MILK (https://github.com/milk-org/milk-package).

• XPA (http://hea-www.harvard.edu/RD/xpa/)

  Note: you need the header installed which may not be provided by packages. I recommend just compiling it yourself instead of using the package manager.

Building

Just use

g++ -Ofast -o milk2ds9 milk2ds9.cpp -lxpa  -lpthread -lImageStreamIO

which assumes you have make install-ed the ImageStreamIO library.

Note that we don't link against cfitsio, that is in the dependencies just for some definitions in the headers.

Usage:

Usage: `./milk2ds9 [-h] [-f frameno] [-p pauseTime] [-s semaphoreNumber] [-t ds9Title] [-w waitTime] image_name

Required Argument:

 image_name   the name of the image, which will be used to generate the path to the share memory file

Options:

 -h                 print help message and exit.  
 -f frameNo         specify the frame in which to display.
                    Default is 1.
 -p pauseTime       specify the time, in usec, to pause
                    before re-checking the semaphore.
                    Default is 100 usec.
 -s semaphoreNumber specify the semaphore number to monitor
 -t ds9Title        specify the title of the DS9 window to
                    use.  Default is the filename.
 -w waitTime        specify the time, in usec, to wait
                    after sending an image to DS9.  Default
                    is 1000 usec.

It's likely that pauseTime and waitTime will need to be tuned for very high frame rate applications to avoid bogging down and control CPU time used for display.