Atik Horizon not stretching to 16 bits

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jcwillis4
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:49 pm

Atik Horizon not stretching to 16 bits

#1

Post by jcwillis4 »

Hello,

I have an Atik Horizon camera which uses a 12 bit CMOS sensor. When taking images in Sharpcap, my histogram is always showing the data as if it was 12 bit on a 16 bit histogram. Meaning that the histogram shows all the way to 65k ADU on the graph, but a maxed out image stops at the 4K of a 12 bit image. In the Artemis capture software that comes with the Atik horizon, there is an option to "pad data" which outputs the data into the correct 16bit depth. I can't find anything like that in Sharpcap, and I only ever get Mono16bit as the color space option.

This data mismatch keeps me from being able to run the sensor wizard and other tools that I was interested in in Sharpcap. Anything I can do here?

Thanks,

John
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Re: Atik Horizon not stretching to 16 bits

#2

Post by admin »

Hi John,

ah, this is likely a bug in the ASCOM driver for the Atik camera - there is a property on the ASCOM driver called MaxADU (https://ascom-standards.org/Help/Platfo ... MaxADU.htm) that is supposed to report the maximum readout value of the camera. I am guessing that for your camera the driver is giving 12 bit values (0..4095), but the MaxADU is still reporting 65535. If the MaxADU reported 4095 then SharpCap would scale the values up automatically.

In the first instance I'd suggest approaching Atik to see if my suspicion about MaxADU in the ASCOM driver might be correct and if they can fix it.

cheers,

Robin
jcwillis4
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Sep 10, 2018 3:49 pm

Re: Atik Horizon not stretching to 16 bits

#3

Post by jcwillis4 »

Diving into ASCOM a bit, I think I figured it out. If you open the camera in ASCOM directly, you can find the “pad data” option. Once you set that for “Atik Camera 1”, it will then readout at 16bit next time you connect the camera in SharpCap. Looks to be the same for settings like even illumination and gain as well. Any chance of having more control of those options in SharpCap?
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Re: Atik Horizon not stretching to 16 bits

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

sadly ASCOM is very limited in what controls you can adjust via a program like SharpCap - Exposure, Gain, Cooler and ROI are about it - anything else can only be done by showing the setup dialog for the camera :( Hopefully the Atik camera driver will remember the setting change you have made so you only need to make it once.

Anyway, good to hear you found the fix.

cheers,

Robin
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