Weird sensor analysis on touptek ATR585C

[Epsonia]

Hello

I wanted to do a sensor analysis on my new camera.
But i get some weird results. With latest sharpcap 4.1, latest touptek firmware and native driver (same results with ascom)

HCG :

Sensor analysis HCG2-2.png

HDR :

Sensor analysis HDR_2.png

Is it a bug or something wrong on my side ?

Thank you

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for posting - I have a ToupTek 585C camera (although it shows up with a different model name), so I gave that a quick test. It looks like the HDR mode is doing weird things on that camera in the latest version of SharpCap, giving invalid results in the sensor analysis (and really bad images when the brightness level is low). Going back to an older version of SharpCap (4.1.12711), everything is fine. I will have to check whether the issue has been introduced by changes I have made in SharpCap or if it is a bug in the latest ToupTek SDK. Either way, I will try to get it fixed.

thanks,

Robin

[Epsonia]

Thank you for your fast reply at least i know that my camera is not defective or something is wrong on my side.

Did a quick test on 4.1.12711, here are the results

HCG :

HCG.png

HDR :

HDR.png

Surprisingly the HDR full well on gain 100 is higher than touptek documentation (30k vs 13k)
The read noise i a bit higher though

[admin]

Hi,

I just checked out the ToupTek product page for this model, and the HDR graphs are odd - the e/ADU graph gives 0.2 for minimum gain, which would imply a FWD of ~13,000, but the graph a bit lower down of FWD implies a value well over 100,000. Maybe there are different ways that the HDR can be set up on the camera and that has varied with SDK versions? To be honest, I don't understand quite how the HDR mode on these cameras works, which is a shame - I'd be more inclined to use it for imaging if the operation was well understood.

cheers,

Robin

[Epsonia]

Yes the graphs are not up to date, they released the mono version of the imx585 yesterday and the graphs are almost similar to the sharpcap results of the color camera.

ATR585M on HDR :

585M.png

585M2.png

source : https://www.touptek-astro.com/dl_manual ... MA)_en.pdf

[admin]

Hi,

I had a chat with ToupTek about this issue - apparently with the latest versions of the SDK, a new firmware for the camera is needed for correct HDR mode operation.

This download link provided by ToupTek should give you an updated firmware along with the update version and a 'howto' video : https://we.tl/t-g6fOwoKsco

I should mention that I haven't been able to test this myself, as my 585 is a slightly different model, which needs a different firmware update that I'm still waiting for.

cheers,

Robin

[Epsonia]

Hi Robin thank you for sending this to touptek

With this update the hdr seems fixed but i will have to wait for good weather to do real tests.

Updated the camera and sharpcap to the last version (4.1.1.12854) and here are the results :

HDR_FW4.43.png

Weird that the last update on touptek download section is still on firmware 4.36
But now in sharpcap the read mode drop down menu is only showing "normal" or "HDR"

[admin]

Hi,

Good to hear that the firmware update fixed things for you - I guess that they haven't quite managed to sync up the firmware updates online with the SDK updates yet, hence the older versions online...

The change in read mode is because I have made SharpCap recognize the sensor in the ATR585C, so that it handles the LCG/HCG switchover automatically at the correct gain point in 'Normal' mode. This is the intended behaviour and mirrors a number of other camera brands which have the same behaviour. However, that relies on SharpCap knowing what type of sensor is in the camera, and that has to be done based on the model name, as there is no 'list' of sensors or way to ask the SDK the sensor type. SharpCap now recognizes ATR???(C|M) as an IMX??? sensor and then knows what point to start using HCG (if the sensor supports LCG/HCG).

cheers,

Robin