Scripting WDM driver settings for different capture condition

[pterodyne]

Hello,

I have lurked here a bit, and looked through the sample scripts and haven't really found something similar. I have an allsky camera that us used for viewing weather conditions at a remote observatory. This camera has a Direct Show/WDM driver interface to change settings like exposure time, gain, etc. The problem needing a solution is the camera settings for daytime are not suitable for nightime. So I need to be able to script a series of changes to the driver interface at a specific time of day. I have found a script that uses lat/long to calculate when it is day or night using complex math. (User JustinTime from the mp3car forums and is called "isitdark"). This works as expected, executing a different script based on the conditions day or night.

For the next part I am completely clueless. I have used autoIT some in the past for some really basic automation. My first thought was to use autoIT recorder to record the sequences. This sort of worked, but since this is a computer I use even if this did work, I wouldn't want a bunch of dialogs popping up and so forth. Ideally this would run in the background somehow. Herein lies my real question. Should I be using autoIT for this?

Essentially the logic would go something like this:

interval poll to see if day or night

wait until it is night, run night script once.

wait until it is day, run the day script once.

Again I don't really know if these scripts will work in the background seamlessly. I would probably pay someone to just solve it for me as my primary task is astronomy with this equipment not programming.

Thanks for advice, and sorry for the dumb noob questions. Im still trying to consider if I should use VB or powershell or something else.

Bryan

[PsaltyDS]

Do you have a link to the driver interface documentation? Is it accessible via an API that AutoIt can use, like a DLL, COM, or WMI? Do you have working examples in another language, i.e. VBScript?

[pterodyne]

I believe this is the SDK:

http://www.imagingcontrol.com/en_US/

There are even examples of VB script for accessing the property dialogs here:

http://www.imagingcontrol.com/en_US/library/vb6/use-built-in-property-dialogs/

Im just to much of a noob to bridge the gap here. Seems like it could entirely be done with simple VB scripts and in my case called the "isitdark" autoit script.

Thanks for looking!

[PsaltyDS]

Those are not VBScript examples, they are VB (just Visual Basic, without the "script" part). The difference is that VB code is compiled with libraries containing helper code specific to the app (camera, in this case). AutoIt can't make use of those libraries.

I don't see any reference to DLLs, but there is a reference to ActiveX: IC Imaging Control ActiveX returns!

Try their request link on that page.