SharpCap Forums

Thanks Robin,
That seems to fix the problem. However, it seems a new problem has come up, similar to the original problems but related to the cooler. When it runs at a high percentage, the temperature drops fast and I can hear the fan slowing a bit. When I first select the camera in SC, it is fine and runs at my initial setting of 15%. When I load the profile. I can tell it is running at a high percentage, but is not showing. Yet, when I move the slider for cooler power a bit, it correctly runs at the 15% I set it at. I attached the log file for you.

Any idea if this is a similar problem?

Eric

Robin,
I am at my friends place now, testing his QHY163C. I select the camera and SC loads the previous settings when SC closed correctly. However, when loading a profile, the cooler runs on a high power setting and the gain is set much higher, even though the profiles settings are lower. Moving the two sliders (gain and cooler power) a little and back to the same settings seem to set the proper settings. When the gain is set high, there is significantly more noise in the image. When the cooler is set to high, the temperature drops rapidly and the fan slows a little, like with my QHY168C.
Thanks,
Eric

Hi,

I can see from that last log that when you load the profile with the cooling power in it, SharpCap is briefly sending a cooling power value of maximum to the camera before sending the correct value. I have a feeling that what is going on is that the camera is following the first instruction to set the power and then ignoring the second instruction that is sent soon afterwards, leaving the power set at maximum unintentionally.

The reason the maximum value is sent briefly is an attempt to deal with turning the 'auto' cooling mode off – when the user does that, SharpCap tries to apply the manual power level that the auto power control has been running at most recently. Unfortunately with recent SDK versions, asking for the current auto power level has become unreliable and often gives values of zero or 255. In actual fact, SharpCap should only do this when transitioning from auto mode to non-auto mode, whereas at the moment this is applied whenever the auto mode is requested to be off (even if it is already off). I will fix this in the next update release, which I hope will help resolve this particular situation.

As to the gain value, I can see that the camera initially starts with a gain value of 10 and then you load a capture profile with a gain value set to 150. As far as I can see the correct commands are sent to the camera to set the gain to 150 and then when the profile is reloaded later, SharpCap spots that the gain is already 150 and that it does not need to do anything. from the point of view are reading the log, everything looks to be working correctly with respect to the gain. I'm not entirely clear from your description, but it seems that you are observing the camera again going to an even higher level than 150 when the profile setting the gain to 150 is loaded – is that correct? If so, roughly what gain level would you say is being applied when SharpCap tries to apply the gain of 150?

Cheers, Robin

Robin,
Yes, that is what it looks like, however, when the gain is set to max, the preview images are grayish and noisy. Strangely the setting on SC shows 150. But when I move the slider just a little back and forth, the proper gain is actually being used. It is also clear from the histogram that the gain is set to max, regardless of what SC is showing.
Eric

Looks like they pushed out a new SDK and fixed incorrect gain setting. Will have to check to see if this fixes things.
https://www.qhyccd.com/index.php?m=cont ... 127&id=162

Robin,
I downloaded the latest SDK, and it seems that the cooler still changes to max after loading a profile. I hear the fan slowing down and the temp drops fast . If I movethe slider a little it fixes it.

Hi,

So as far as I can see from the logs you are loading up capture profile with a cooler power manually set to 40, which for you then sets the power to maximum.

After much digging I finally can see what is going on here – if the manual cooler power is already set to 40 before you load the profile then the code spots that it doesn't need to do anything because the setting seems to be unchanged. However it looks like qhy internally set the power back to maximum when the camera is restarted (which happens as part of loading capture profile), meaning that we end up in a situation where SharpCap thinks the powers 40 but the camera has in secret gone back to maximum power.

I have changed the code so that SharpCap is aware of this little peculiarity and now it seems to work for me. You can hear the fan slowdown very slightly for a second or so as first the qhy SDK sets the cooling to maximum and then SharpCap resets it back down to the target value a second or so later.

This change will be in the next SharpCap 3.2 update.

Cheers, Robin

Thanks again Robin. I do not know if these problems are related to the SDK or what. It seems we are nearing finding solutions to the problems.

Now, when I change the ROI, the cooler goes to max. Seems loading profiles is OK. I hate to bug you with all these problems, it does make it less stressful while imaging in the cold and dark, not have to think about all the work arounds with QHY/Sharpcap. There are so many things I have to think of already, and I all do it by memorizing and experience. Nevertheless, when things aren't working right, it is very distracting.

Now, when I change the ROI, the cooler goes to max. At least the slider is corresponding with the setting.

On a sidenote, The response from QHY I got regarding the exposure times being shorter than what I set sharpcap to:

Hi,
I reported this issue to Dr.Qiu,and we did a test with this.And we finally confirm this is normal,because we use a complex method to count expose time in SDK, and it has a little bit different compare to the expose time you setup,when expose time is over 700ms,it will be incremented in a step of 700ms,so its expose time actually is 700ms,1400ms,2100ms...
Best Regards,
QinXiaoXu

Interesting to see that it works with 700ms intervals. How does it work with shorter than 700ms exposures?

Thanks

Hi,

Just to be clear, when you say that you are changing the ROI, do you mean you are changing from say 102 4 x 768 to 800 x 600, or are you moving the ROI selection around without changing the size of the selection?

Cheers, Robin

I am not moving the ROI around. I just chance the resolution selection. I do that when focusing with the focus assist and bahtinov mask because the frames are large and it slows the laptop down.