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Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2018 7:24 pm
by bwells
Thank you!

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:13 pm
by GregL
I have encountered the same anomalous behavior with my new 183c, somewhat relieved that it seems to be a bug rather than a feature. I was wondering why sensor analysis is not mentioned in the help file for Sharpcap? Does it need to be done only with the ascom driver? Or can it be done with the native driver as well?

And as an aside, the instability of the thermal control is a concern.

greg latiak

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 1:23 pm
by turfpit
Greg

Have a look at http://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/3.2/#!2!Sensor%20Analysis

An interesting exercise for you to do is try both drivers and report back your findings.

Dave

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 2:27 pm
by GregL
Thanks for that... I plan on doing that today as soon as I have downloaded and installed the 3.2 beta.

One question about this process.. does Sharpcap retain the camera association so one could have multiple analysis available?

And one small point... I notice that when I make a change to certain configuration settings -- like selection of colour space, Sharpcap goes away for a long time and is completely unresponsive. Looks as though it has crashed or hung (sadly a not unusual issue with Win 10). A please wait, this will take a million years message might be helpful. Dots and pakman eating them is even cuter but other than user entertainment generally useless and a pain to code.

greg

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2018 10:23 pm
by bwells
Regarding thermal control, if I run EZCap_QT and let it do thermal control, everything works correctly. But you need to be careful that EZCap_QT has the rhermal control. I found for example if I touch the thermal control in SharpCap, it overrides EZCap_QT and goes back to being broken. So the last thing to do before taking a sequence is to adjust the slider in EZCap_QT to steal thermal control back so EZCap_QT has the last say. A brief look at the latest update to SharpCap looked like sensor analysis was different from before. But I didn't have time to do a full sensor analysis to see what is possible.

I would love to know what you find with your testing.

One last note on thermal control. I noticed EZCap_QT pushes the thermostat of my QHY to 100% and the temperature continues to drop. Whereas SharpCap at 100% causes the temperature to rise. So it does not look like the QHY SDK, but it seems to be something in SharpCap that is different.

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 6:28 am
by admin
Hi,

it really sounds to me as if the version of the SDK that I am using in SharpCap does not know about this camera and therefore is not controlling it properly - the trouble is that I am using the latest version of the SDK published by QHY (May 2018) :(

Is the version of EZCap you are using newer than that?

cheers,

Robin

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 3:00 pm
by GregL
Robyn,

I am a new user so have downloaded all the latest and greatest -- which includes a software patch specific to Sharpcap. Noticed access to parts of their website was going up and down while fishing for this... guess something is being updated. I routinely get 404s accessing their site, been like that for days. Or maybe someone is messing with their internet.

There is a utility available that checks for all the latest components compared to what one has. Only snag I have seen is it checks relative to the currently connected camera -- and does nothing otherwise.

greg latiak

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 6:14 pm
by admin
Hi Greg,

yes, they've sadly made an absolute mess of their website

* Old links haven't been maintained so search in google and you get a 404
* Images are too large for their slow connection
* No proper pages on the site - everything shows as 'www.qhyccd.com' in the browser title bar, so you can't even make a link to a particular part of the site
* Lots of download and other links just aren't there

I can go to Support->Developer->Windows SDK and see that the latest version listed is May 2018.
I can also (after digging around) find EZCAP_QT 0.1.51.8 again dated May
I can see a link for a EZCAP_QT version that might be dated August 2018, but no download link.

I think I will have to drop them an email and see if they have an updated SDK that they haven't released yet.

thanks,

Robin

Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 8:40 pm
by GregL
Robin,

Just finished running sensor analysis with my QHY183c using the 3.2.5762 beta, as compared with the current 3.1.5219 release. In both cases I applied the 'UpdateForSharpCapLatestEdition' patch as indicated on their web page - their binary is labeled 2.1.19 with a creation date of 9-22-2018. Did notice that the thermal management ran better with the beta. I set -10C and it stayed reasonably close. Not entirely sure what I am looking at with these values, but I would expect that two successive runs using the same sensor at the same temperature should be similar. Host is Win10Pro on HP mini and AMD processor.

greg
sharpcap_qhy183c_sensortest.txt
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Re: Sensor Analysis on QHY165C

Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2018 9:04 pm
by admin
Hi Greg,

the sensor analysis results look reasonable for that camera and indicate that the gain control is working as expected (the value is the gain in dB for that camera).

Where did you find the update download? I can't find it at all on their new site. I wonder if it contains a new SDK that they haven't released via the developer download yet?

cheers,

Robin