SharpCap 4.1 Beta Update - 28th December 2022

[admin]

Hi folks,

hope that everyone had a good Christmas and received lots of Astro loot under the Christmas tree!

A bit of a late present for those who like trying out SharpCap Beta versions... A new update to SharpCap 4.1 Beta

https://d.sharpcap.co.uk/download.html? ... 0&arch=x64

What's new this time around?

* A new pre-processing control to mask over-exposed pixels to black - this affects both the display and the saved file. This is in response to a feature request for the ability to mask out the solar disk when imaging the corona.

* Prompt for confirming overwrite when saving with display stretch or 'as seen' in live stacking would overwrite a previous file of the same name

* Add a horizontal zoom option to the main histogram to allow closer inspection

* Updates to Winjupos file naming to more closely conform to standards expected by Winjupos and try to avoid situations where Winjupos will misinterpret the time

* Sequencer autofocus steps will return to starting position on failure

* Add reconnection handling for PlayerOne, QHY and DirectShow cameras

* Add an option in 'Goto Co-ordinates' to refine pointing using plate solving

* Change order of calibration for feature tracking to do declination calibration first to avoid possibility of RA drift due to backlash during the dec calibration

* Lots of bug fixes

cheers,

Robin

[donboy]

Hi Robin,

Hope you had a nice Christmas.

Thanks for all the changes and new features.

Got to try the mask over-exposed pixels. Worked well, tnx. Would it be possible to allow solar colorization to be used with this function, so we can have colorized proms with and without the black mask.

Will try some of the other changes tonight if the clouds stay away.

Tnx,

Don

[admin]

Hi Don,

Christmas was good thanks - looking forward to 2023 now Hope yours was good too!

You can definitely use the solar colorization with the overexposed mask (I just tested). Remember though that the solar colorization only affects the display, whereas the overexposed mask affects both display and saved images.

Hope you get some more clear skies soon

cheers,

Robin

[donboy]

V.4.1.9899 - Dithering not working.

Also how does one use the new flip (after dark/flat)?

Don

[MarMax]

Attempting to take darks with an ASI2600MC-Pro and the frames were being dropped.
Log is attached.

EDITED to say thank you for the histogram zoom!

[admin]

@MarMax,

thanks for the log - it looks like everything works OK as you work up through the different exposure lengths, then you get to 30s exposures and the first 3 or so exposures work and then they all fail. This looks like the camera/SDK has glitched, since SharpCap is still doing the same thing (requesting a 30s frame, waiting for ~51s - ie 30s for exposure + 21 extra - for it to arrive).

It would be interesting to know if the camera recovers if you do the following

1) Choose 'Close Camera' from the cameras menu and then re-open. This would require you to cancel/restart the dark capture

or

2) Unplug then reconnect the camera - SharpCap 4.1 now supports automatic reconnection for ZWO cameras if they disconnect from USB and are reconnected. In this case, in theory, everything should just carry on from where it was...

One of the two above may be enough to reset the camera/SDK out of whatever glitch state it was in.


@Don,

just checked with PHD2 in Live stacking and all seems fine with dithering. Were you using live stacking or dithering in the sequencer? I will need to see your log to work out what is going on.

cheers,

Robin

[donboy]

Hi Robin,

1. Dithering didn't work with Live Stacking.

Log_2022-12-29T22_47_42-15552.log

(98.15 KiB) Downloaded 29 times

Log_2022-12-29T19_11_32-3796.zip

(205.26 KiB) Downloaded 31 times

2. The new flip feature works with individual frames but not with Live Stacking.
Would it be better to have the flip functions work with the display?

3. Would adding disconnect guiding in PHD2 as a first step in Goto - Co-ordinates be possible?

Don

[admin]

Hi Don,

thanks for the logs - the bigger one shows interaction with PHD2 but no attempts to dither. I would expect to see entries like this in the log showing SharpCap starting dither operations

Code: Select all

Info    14:23:51.073310 #3  Requesting dither from PHD2 10, False, 1.5, 20, 60                                                                      in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.Phd2Api.Dither(float pixels, bool ra_only, float settlePixels, float settleMin, float settleMax)
Info    14:23:51.073582 #3  Guiding SettleState changed to Dithering                                                                                in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.GuidingBase.set_SettleState(SettleState value)
Debug   14:23:51.074080 #1  Notification (Status=OK): Live stacking paused to allow dithering to take place                                         in void SharpCap.UI.NotificationViewModel.DisplayMessage(NotificationMessage message)
Info    14:23:51.074400 #21 Event received from PHD2 : LockPositionSet                                                                              in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.Phd2Api.ProcessNotification(EventBase typedEvent)
Info    14:23:51.076010 #21 Event received from PHD2 : GuidingDithered                                                                              in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.Phd2Api.ProcessNotification(EventBase typedEvent)
Info    14:23:51.076200 #21 Event received from PHD2 : SettleBegin                                                                                  in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.Phd2Api.ProcessNotification(EventBase typedEvent)
Info    14:23:51.076339 #21 Guiding SettleState changed to Settling                                                                                 in void SharpCap.Base.Guiding.GuidingBase.set_SettleState(SettleState value)
Info    14:23:51.099106 #37 Pausing stacking to ignore frame : Frame captured while dithering                                                       in BufferFrame SharpCap.FrameTransforms.LiveStacking.LiveStackTransform.HandleFrame(BufferFrame frame)

Can you check your dithering settings in the live stack guiding tab? I would expect something like this

Capture.JPG (38.73 KiB) Viewed 607 times

On the flip feature I will check to see if somehow the live stacking code is bypassing the process of the flip. I did look into just flipping the display image, but the complexities were horrible - everything that draws on top of the display or interacts with it (deep sky annotation, polar align, focus, etc) would need to be aware of the possibility of the display being flipped and deal with it. Too many places to end up making mistakes to try that approach.

Just to understand the guiding thing properly... Are you doing the GOTO co-ordinates while live stacking is active and guiding, or is it just that you have PHD2 running separately and would like SharpCap to co-operate with it over the GOTO?

cheers,

Robin

[donboy]

Hi Robin,

The guiding settings are the same as shown except I never use "Only stack when guiding is active"

Dithering works just fine if I reinstall the latest non beta SC.

My usual imaging session goes as follows:
1. Stop stacking
2. Stop PHD
3. Goto new target and enter target name
4. Plate solve
5. Check framing
6. Reorient if necessary
7. Start PHD to guide
8. Start Live Stack
9. Clear stack 10sec before first frame is complete

I would like to have Goto-Co-ordinates handle most of this.

Most of the time I forget to stop guiding and PHD sounds an alarm. While broadcasting I leave the previous stacked image up for people to have something to look at while the first new image completes, but sometimes I forget to clear the stack and have to wait for the next frame.

Happy New Year,

Don

[admin]

Hi Don,

Happy New Year to you too!

I am going to add some code to put all the live stack guiding settings into the capturesettings file when you save. I am guessing that some setting is not being applied correctly, but I am not sure what or how... Maybe the re-write of the settings to get them written to the output file might even fix the problem.

Thanks for the detail on the goto procedure that you use - I will see what can be added - perhaps some additional checkboxes can show if you are stacking when you choose 'Goto Co-ordinates' to pause live stacking, guiding, etc.

cheers,

Robin