Using the Prop to display New Horizons Pluto Lorri images in 64 level greyscale
Tubular
Posts: 4,621
Some of you will have heard New Horizons passes Pluto in just under 4 days.
The folks at Johns Hopkins have been good at releasing the Lorri greyscale images a day or two after they're taken. Because of the distance the disc is still only something like 70 pixels across, which is "our kind of data", and we can display it easily enough on the prop (sorry for the screenshot quality)
While the Prop in VGA mode is usually used with 64 colors, it can also do 64 greys by modifying the resistors driving the vga monitor as per this thread. There's a couple of ways to achieve this using 6 special value (E96 series) resistors, or 12 common E12 resistors, or 2 resistor values in R2R formation, as per that thread.
Kye's 160x120 VGA driver is great for this, and it should be a couple of days before the pluto images get too high to fully fit inside the prop viewport. This image is from 7th July, I'll post some updates as they release new images over here
There's a good summary of the expected image sizes vs time from Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society over here
I'll post some updates as JHU release new images, maybe even an animation if hub ram permits
Don't forget to change the xtal setting from 6.25MHz to 5 or other as applicable
The folks at Johns Hopkins have been good at releasing the Lorri greyscale images a day or two after they're taken. Because of the distance the disc is still only something like 70 pixels across, which is "our kind of data", and we can display it easily enough on the prop (sorry for the screenshot quality)
While the Prop in VGA mode is usually used with 64 colors, it can also do 64 greys by modifying the resistors driving the vga monitor as per this thread. There's a couple of ways to achieve this using 6 special value (E96 series) resistors, or 12 common E12 resistors, or 2 resistor values in R2R formation, as per that thread.
Kye's 160x120 VGA driver is great for this, and it should be a couple of days before the pluto images get too high to fully fit inside the prop viewport. This image is from 7th July, I'll post some updates as they release new images over here
There's a good summary of the expected image sizes vs time from Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society over here
I'll post some updates as JHU release new images, maybe even an animation if hub ram permits
Don't forget to change the xtal setting from 6.25MHz to 5 or other as applicable
Comments
Thanks for posting this.
I'm still miffed at them taking away Pluto's planetary status!
Rick I'm right there with you. Such an outrage. But Pluto's doing its best to make its case for inclusion - internet meme worthy shapes like whales, donuts, hearts. What more could a planetoid do?
Perhaps the follow up Kuiper belt object visited by New Horizons in 2019 will look just like an emoticon, and we won't be able to resist adopting them all as planets
It's not about "status" it's about classification. Pluto is so different from the other planets, it's orbit is very different. It is more similar to other recently discovered objects Eris, Makemake and whatever else they may have discovered recently. Clearly they form a class of their own, apart from planets.
Now, emotionally, Pluto should be very honoured. The first in it's class to be discovered and the class is named after him, the "plutoids". I believe Pluto is much happier being with his other little plutoid friends than being thrown in with the big planets.
Meanwhile those Pluto images are now a bit big for Kye's 160x120 driver, but I've got one image that's spot on 120x120px.