Operating instructions

Video Sentinel Checkout and Test
Every time the computer reboots, the RTLinux modules should be re-installed, by first
becoming root:
su
and then typing:
cd sentinel_source2
make rtlinux
exit
cd
To start the Sentinel control program, type the following:
./sentuser
(This assumes you are using parallel port 0x278 and IRQ 9. If you are using parallel port
0x378 and IRQ 7, you can type instead: ./sentuser2)
After a few seconds you should see a "Command:" prompt where you can issue
commands. If you type "help" you can get a list of available commands.
To see if the Sentinel box is functional, type the following series of commands:
reset This sends a reset pulse to the Sentinel box.
init This loads control code into the Sentinel Video Decoder and Encoder.
This takes several seconds to complete.
test This runs a memory test in which 200 frames of pseudo-random data are
written to the Sentinel box, whereupon these 200 frames are read and
verified. This test takes several minutes to complete.
If you see zero errors at the end of the test, you have verified that the communication
interface, the Sentinel memory, and the Sentinel control electronics are in good working
order.
To see if the Video Decoder is functional, type the following:
capture image.dat
This captures a single 640 x 480 gray-scale image to the file image.dat, which can be
used to create an image mask (described in the next section). To view this image, first
open a new terminal window and convert the image to the BMP format with the
following command:
convert -size 640x480+0 -depth 8 gray:image.dat image.bmp