Dithering

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Ginger
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Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:14 pm

Dithering

#1

Post by Ginger »

Why is dithering so badly laid out and explained for sharpcap. Now I know everyone who has figured it all out will say ‘oh just do this its easy’ - thanks in advance, I appreciate it and hopefully I can get cracking.

But my word how badly is this set up in sharpcap??!! By far the best capture program out there, but this function, SOOO badly done! I don’t want to stack, I just want to dither. All these settings, none of which I understand and all are really badly explained. Wow, so unnecessarily difficult.

Can we not just have a dithering tab on the right with the most common settings??!! Wow. Just wow.
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admin
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Re: Dithering

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

are you referring to dithering in live stacking (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Guiding%20Tab) or in the sequence planner (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Guiding) or perhaps both?

cheers,

Robin
Ginger
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:14 pm

Re: Dithering

#3

Post by Ginger »

Hi

I am referring to the only way I can see that one can invoke dithering by ‘fooling’ sharpcap to save each frame, instead of stacked. I’m not sure I’m even doing it right !

Sorry I know if you are an expect and you know these things, you know these things. But for a novice it’s so hard to understand. I feel it could be far better laid out and intuitive.
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Re: Dithering

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

so the trick you are referring to was a hack to get dithering to happen in SharpCap 3.2.

SharpCap 4 has a new way to enable dithering using a tool called the 'Deep Sky Sequence Planner' (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Dee ... %20Planner). It can do a lot more than just dithering, but if dithering is all you want then untick everything in the tabs at the top except the guiding tab (where you can configure your dithering) and then set up a count of frames to capture in the capture list and away you go. What's more, the planner will remember your choices for next time, meaning that the basic setup is a one time thing.

hope this helps, let me know if you are still stuck.

cheers,

Robin
Ginger
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Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:14 pm

Re: Dithering

#5

Post by Ginger »

Thank you Robin I’ll keep trying.
There’s a sharpcap 4 out ??!!
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Re: Dithering

#6

Post by admin »

Hi,

yes, SharpCap 4 is now out - I haven't made in an automatic update for SC3.2 users yet (making sure any new bugs are ironed out firest), but you will find it on the download page.

cheers,

Robin
Ginger
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:14 pm

Re: Dithering

#7

Post by Ginger »

Hi
I downloaded and tried it tonight. I’m getting the same issue I had before which is….

Run live stacking, but set up to save each frame
60s exposures
Tell sharpcap to dither every 3 frames

I get 3 frames, then it switches to dither mode, then goes back to guiding, but PHD now tries to continuously get back to where the original guide stars were, so all images are screwed.

I don’t know what I’m doing 🤷‍♂️
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Re: Dithering

#8

Post by admin »

Hi,

in your SharpCap guiding settings, is the guiding application set to PHD2? If you use the 'Dither only' option and you are also running PHD2 then you will see exactly what you describe, as PHD doesn't know that SharpCap has dithered and will try to go back. If you set the application to PHD2 and make sure PHD is running its server ('Enable Server' in Tools menu of PHD) then it should (fingers crossed) be fine.

cheers,

Robin
Ginger
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Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:14 pm

Re: Dithering

#9

Post by Ginger »

On options / guiding I have PHD/ selected. That’s all on that screen. It says the local host and port 4400. In PHD2 the sever is enabled.
Still no idea 🤷‍♂️
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Re: Dithering

#10

Post by admin »

Hi,

best to watch PHD2 closely when the dithering is happening to see what it gets up to. What *should* happen is that the green target cross should move slightly, the star should then get moved to the new cross position and a 'Dither' marker should show up in the trace at the bottom. Once that has all finished SharpCap should start imaging again...
Capture.JPG
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cheers,

Robin
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