Sofradir Atom 640 Core

[DaJMasta]

I got this core mis/unidentified but a match as best I could tell, it's marked on the exterior with only ATS100020 and a serial number.  I got it in hand, powered it up over USB, didn't see any analog video output, but was able to get digital video over Camera Link through a Bitflow Karbon CL4-SP and modifying an Atom 1024 configuration file that the SDK ships with.  The trouble is, it also seems to be in fixed gain mode, so while the image looks crisp and 60Hz, it is very low contrast.  From the Atom 1024's manual, I should be able to issue commands to the core over the Camera Link connection's serial link, but I have been unable to get the core to respond so far.  Sofradir (now Lynred) also seems to never had its AtomGUI control software available for download, and at least so far my requests for the configuration utility have been left unanswered.  I've also seen the "D*STAR" software mentioned as their go-to analysis software, but google seems to ignore the special character even when searching with quotes, so I've come across nothing really to try and get a hold of that (though undoubtedly an expensive bit of software), so if anyone has an idea of where to find control software or commands/formats to try over a serial terminal I'm all ears.  In the meantime, how about a bit of a teardown:





The microbolometer appears to be a Pico640 by ULIS, unknown whether it's the newer Gen2 or the S version (S version please!), but presumably there was also an original base version.  The core has an Artix-7 FPGA and the IO on the rear panel are all handled by what seems like a switchable add on board - I know there are LVTTL variants of a lot of their cores, so this is probably the equivalent of the VPC on FLIR cores.  The case shape and IO configuration doesn't match the higher resolution Atom 1024 or their older PV640 based cores (but man it would be awesome if it had a PV640BB sensor.... 2-20um sensitivity is crazy!)

[DaJMasta]

I don't really know how the image embedding works, apparently.

Anyway, I contacted Lynred support and after some helpful and prompt back and fourth, they declared the product too old to be supportable and didn't actually offer much of anything.  So if anyone's got a copy of the Atom GUI they can pass along (I believe the Atom 1024 control software is identical), or any documentation or information on the serial command protocol used, it would be appreciated.  Otherwise, I've got another serial protocol guessing project on the list somehow.