Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

Post Reply
BigAppleSkies
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 21, 2017 12:38 pm

Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

#1

Post by BigAppleSkies »

I just ordered one of these which everyone is raving about over on CN. Just wondering if it will work with Sharpcap? If not what do we need to get it to work?

Al
User avatar
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 13177
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:52 pm
Location: Vale of the White Horse, UK
Contact:

Re: Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

#2

Post by admin »

The Altair cameras (while they are made in China - isn't everything these days?) have been considerably customized and specified by Altair - this is quite a common way that companies work with Chinese OEMs - specifying product modifications, QC targets, etc. It applies to things like scopes, focusers, mirrors, lenses, eyepieces, etc as well. You can buy two eyepieces that look identical from two different vendors and they come out of the same factory in China and you think it doesn't matter which you buy, but one vendor can have specified a higher QC target which means that their rejects get sold by the other brand, so be careful!

Anyway, while the camera shapes are similar I don't expect that these cameras will work with SharpCap by appearing as Altair Cameras - I have no idea if the camera manufacturer is the same (there are a lot of Chinese OEMs copying each other - there were a bunch of very near perfect clones of QHY cameras being sold not long ago), but even if it was the customizations I have mentioned above would make them incompatible.

You will likely find that the camera will work in SharpCap if it has a DirectShow driver, but that's probably it. Unfortunately that's the deal when buying these cameras at rock bottom prices direct from the manufacturers - they don't have the investment or contacts in the Astro community to work with software developers like me or Torsten (who writes FireCapture). The dedicated Astro suppliers (Altair, QHY, ZWO, Celestron, etc) have swallowed the cost of providing sample cameras to get their products supported in programs like SharpCap and FireCapture.

cheers,

Robin
galljj
Posts: 80
Joined: Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:14 pm

Re: Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

#3

Post by galljj »

Robin - I have one of these RT cameras. Since you may be getting some more questions on these cameras (they appear to be popular in Australia of late) - here's some information.

While they use the same sensor as one of the Altair cameras, they are not the same as the Altair. Or, at least I can report that they do not like the Altair direct show drivers ! Or, the ALtair drivers do not like them. Which is not surprising.

I suspect they are pretty much rebranded ToupTek cameras, - but with (or without) modifications. We simply don't know.

They do come with their own Direct show drivers (toupcamastro), which works with sharpcap (more about this later), as well as LX Modified DirectShow drivers (toupcam Astro LX mode) - but which sharpcap seems not to like ( there's a message on the bottom of the page that says "LX configuration is incorrect"). It also comes with an ASCOM driver, which I have not used, but which appears to be SharpCap compatible.

They come with their own software, which is a rebranded version of ToupSky, or something like that. Very much similar in funcionality to SharpCap, but with differences/limitations.

The "more about this later" issue I mentioned above

In reading your description of the Beta release of version 2.10, I noticed that you mention that webcam/direct show cameras have not (up through 2.9) been able to do dark frame subtraction. Would this mean that using 2.9 with this camera, I couldn't subtract a dark frame ? Which might explain why my stacks looked much noisier than in the risingsky SW !

In case you are keeping track, virtually everyone on cloudy nights who has heard of the possibility of an annual fee for the use of sharpcap supports it without reservation. So, don't hesitate.

john
User avatar
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 13177
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 3:52 pm
Location: Vale of the White Horse, UK
Contact:

Re: Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

#4

Post by admin »

Hi John,

yes, in 2.10 the webcam implementation is changed so that it gets many of the features like dark subtraction that have previously been only available to astro cam users. There is a downside to this for those using real webcams - all saves are in RGB rather than YUY/i420/MJPG or whatever the camera produces, meaning save files will be larger, but there is a switch in the settings to go back to the old way.

The 'LX' option is unfortunately a red herring - what has happened is that you have at some point found and clicked a menu item in SharpCap that said 'Enable LX mode on this camera'. That's actually only relevant to SPC900 style cameras that have been hardware modified to have an exposure control line that is set over the serial port - for all other cameras it does nothing useful. It's really there for people who have modified cameras like the SPC850, Philips Toucam, etc and it means that if someone has one of these modified cameras that they can use it without me having to have an exhaustive list of every possibly modifiable camera name inside SharpCap. I will have to put a confirmation message box in when using this option to cut down on confusion.

I don't get across to CN much as it is just too big to keep up with (although I am following the SharpCap Polar Alignment thread there), but it's good to hear that the idea of charging is going down well.

cheers,

Robin
jimmyscotts
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:06 am
Location: Upper Coomera, Queensland, Australia
Contact:

Re: Rising Tech cameras -- same as Altair?

#5

Post by jimmyscotts »

What is the brand of the camera?
Post Reply