Orion Starshoot AutoGuider

[GaryCurran]

I'm using the Orion SSAG, and while you a warning that it doesn't work, it's worked flawlessly for me. I think I'm using the standard Orion driver for the camera, I don't recall that I downloaded an ASCOM driver for it. I get 1280x1024 resolution, monochrome of course, and frame rates up to about 5 seconds or so. I use a 22ms exposure time and it seems to work well.

I'm including a .ser file and log file from my last test.

[admin]

Hi Gary,

good to see that you've got the camera working - it looks like you are using the ASCOM driver for the camera (I can tell this from the name given to the camera and the values in the settings file). The bug reports I get mostly relate to people trying to use the camera options dialog - the crash happens when they press OK on the options dialog after showing it. Maybe you could test that and see if you see the problem or not.

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Depending on your results I may be able to remove the warning (or make it more accurate) in 3.0.

cheers,

Robin

[GaryCurran]

I'll see what I can do for you, Robin. Right now, here in the Pacific Northwest, we're still in the rainy season, so all of my testing is done indoors. I'm sorry I can't get out, but with clouds and rain, it just doesn't work well!

[GaryCurran]

Robin,
You are correct that the Options menu fails with the ASCOM drivers. However, there are only two options there, one is Camera Gain and the other is Noise Reduction. I've tried three times and it's failed all three times. I'm using 1/1000th of a second exposure times for daylight, and it's still too bright. I'm not sure how you would adjust the gain at nighttime, but this may be an Ascom issue and not a SSAG issue. I don't know.

Anyway, I'm including two of the three failures, and I hope that it will help you to solve this issue.

The rain and the cloudy overcast continue here in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., so I'm afraid I won't be getting out anytime soon to try this under the stars. I REALLY want to try the Polar Alignment feature in this version!

[admin]

Hi Gary,

yes, it looks like the SSAG driver is trying to save its settings and making a mess of it. I will see if I can work out a way not to crash when that happens and just ignore the error - maybe that will allow you to set the gain correctly even if it doesn't get saved for next time.

I'll let you know if there is a new build that might fix this and would be very grateful if you could test it.

cheers,

Robin

PS. I had heard of the Pacific Northwest's rain - I went to Seattle about 5 years ago - they were having a bit of a dry spell - and in every TV news bulletin it was like 'It's now been 22 days without rain which is the longest dry period since....'. Round here in England the rain isn't so much the problem as the cloud - that's why I have a variety of different lenses (C and CS mount and camera lenses) that I can use with astro cameras for indoor testing.

[admin]

Please try the new beta build (3.0.3830) - if I've got it right then SharpCap should no longer crash but just give you a warning message when you close the setup dialog. I have a suspicion that the dialog will not actually close, but maybe there is a cancel button or close box you can use?

What I don't know is if the changes that you make in the dialog will actually be applied or not - it just depends on whether the SSAG code has already applied the changes when it gets to the line of code that causes the error or not.

cheers,

Robin

[GaryCurran]

Robin,
I apologize for taking so long to get to this, I've had other things going on. I'll download the new beta tomorrow and attempt to see what I can do with it.

Gary

[AstroDude]

Hi Robin, i also use the OSSAG, for polar align, i installed the ASCOM driver from the site and it works great, better the my new ZWO120MC (seems i may have a faulty unit), any way i wanted to report it , and even though i need to use 4 sec, for the plate solve, it still works well ( u just need to go slower and take a bit longer to move the star).
this software is a Godsend, and it is giving PoleMaster a run for its money (something none of us have).
Humbly
AstroDude (Mitch)

PS: keep up the good work.

[admin]

Hi Mitch,

glad to hear it's working for you. Saw your post over on the Altair google group about the ZWO too - the horizontal bands there look like an artifact of the hot pixel removal when using dark subtraction in SharpCap - that tends to happen if the dark being used doesn't match the camera settings currently in use (particularly if the dark is longer exposure or higher gain).

The colour sensor versions of the AR0130 sensor tend to show quite a lot of hot pixels when you ramp up the gain and exposure, so I'm not sure that what you are seeing is unusual for that sensor. I expect the mono sensors probably are just as bad, but for some reason the red/green/blue dots look worse than the little white hot pixels for a mono sensor.

cheers,

Robin

[GaryCurran]

Remind me not to buy a ZWO 120 then!

Robin, the Beta seems to work well. With the Options button selected, the ASCOM Gain setting comes up, and I can adjust the gain. Your warning dialog opens, click okay, and then it takes me back to the screen where the gain changes.

The gain is not saved on shut down and restart, but for me, I don't really care, it's easy enough to adjust it. Since I'm stuck in a long term overcast and rain, I can't get it out to test it under the stars . . . are there even stars left in the sky? I have no clue! LOL So, I'm doing all of this indoors in the daytime. Under those conditions, I'm getting over 5 fps at 1ms exposure, which should be more than enough for polar alignment.

I may be able to get the telescope out before this weekend, but no promises.

Thanks for creating such a great product.