SharpCap Forums

Hi
up front I'm using this for the first time a miniscope with qhy5-II-M. (is the name 5-ii-m or 5-11-m?)
It's daylight and I'm pointing the miniscope at the local trees.
In sharpcap I can see the trees using the following settings:
I usually see this error message
sharpcap frame rate too fast

live stack:
- individual frames
- no controls selected
capture format
- mono8
- 1280x960
- 1x1
- avi
camera controls:
- 0.44ms
- gain 55
- frame rate 1 every two seconds
- amp noise -- auto
- speed 0
usb traffic 30
image controls:
Gamma: 1.0
brightness: 0.0
Contrast: 0.0

in PHD2:
only static shows up, with all exposures.

Am I suppose to see an image in PHD2? In both programs, is there an auto detection setting that could put a usable picture on the screen, or does everyone setup focus, gain, etc.

Additional questions:
I noticed in previous postings about miniscope, cable issues came up. How does one check cable integrety in the field? Could one program have a cable issue and the other not?

Thanks for looking at this. Any help would be very helpful

Cheers

Mike

Hi,

You should be able to see an image in PHD2 if you get the right settings - I think there is a drop down in PHD2 to choose the exposure, so try adjusting that.

Unfortunately there is a bug in the current version of the QHY SDK that applies too much gain to the QHY5-II cameras, even when the gain control is set to minimum, so you may need a significantly longer exposure in PHD2 to account for the fact that it will be working at a lower gain. I think you may have to go back to SharpCap 2.8 or 2.9 to find a version that works with the QHY USB2 cameras without the gain bug.

One thing that PHD does is that it auto-stretches the image for you, so if the image is too dark (exposure too short) then it will get stretched by PHD2 and show noise - I think that is what is happening to you.

Finally, no need to worry about the 'frame rate too fast' message too much. Basically that is telling you that it is taking longer to perform the live stacking of each frame than the time between frames arriving, so some of the frames are not being stacked.

cheers,

Robin

Well, I tried a variety of settings under the brain icon. No change. Any other suggestions

cheers

Did you adjust the exposure - just to the right of the 'Stop' button?

cheers,

Robin

PHD2 - Zero, Sharpcap and EZplanetary can both produce images.

I just stepped through PHD the "camera exposure duration" no change from setting duration from .1 sec to 2.5 sec. Hmm any other ideas

Cheers

Not really I'm afraid - I haven't used PHD much recently since getting into non-guided short exposure stacking. There's a PHD2 mailing list and QHY forums which might be better places to ask PHD/QHY related questions.

cheers,

Robin