Moravian Instruments C1x/C3-61000 and 26000

[s2a]

Super, thank you very much! Looking forward to testing the GPS.

"pretty much working": I can imagine. It is absolutely impressive how many manufacturers and models are supported by SharpCap and how quickly the adaptations are made.

Thank you for that!
Best regards, R

[admin]

Hi,

I made some changes to hopefully support reading the GPS data in 4.1.10790. Currently there is no feedback in the UI, but if the GPS is present and has a good lock then you should see some new GPS related header fields in saved FITS images.

I think the next improvement would be to include some GPS status in the UI to allow you to see the lock status of the GPS.

cheers,

Robin

[s2a]

Hi Robin,
Thank you very much! Unfortunately I can't test it because I can't start the camera with version 4.1. There's still the following error message:

error41.png (157.43 KiB) Viewed 51877 times

With version 4.0 the camera runs fine.

Best regards, R

[admin]

Ok, no problem - I found your uploaded bug report and I think I see what is causing this problem.

Bug fix coming up next week.

cheers,

Robin

[s2a]

Great, thx!

[s2a]

Hi Robin,

I finally found some time to test the beta version (4.1.10872.0). I'ts still not possible to start the Moravian gps camera. But this time I got a different error message:

SCError.png (205.39 KiB) Viewed 51803 times

I made two tests, one with cxUsb.dll 4.14.0.0 (found in sharpcap) and one with cxUsb.dll 4.15.0.0 (from the current Moravian SDK) and have submitted the error message.

Best regards, Roger

[admin]

Hi Roger,

that looks like a silly mistake on my part - I must have been busy writing the GPS code and got distracted as I forgot to add the one critical line that *should* make it work.

Watch out for the next update!

cheers,

Robin

[s2a]

Hi Robin,

Thank you very much for the adjustment. I was able to test the new version in the meantime.
The GPS data is now stored in the .fits header.

The coordinates can be seen under GPS_LAT / GPS_LONG / GPS_ALT.

The times are stored as follows:

DATE-OBS= '2023-08-10T00:29:04.5101514' / GPS:Start Exposure
DATE-OB2= '2023-08-10T00:29:05.5101514' / GPS:End Exposure
DATE-AVG= '2023-08-10T00:29:05.0101514' / GPS:Mid Exposure

The GPS specific keywords in the header therefore remain empty, this is implemented this way on purpose, right?

GPS_SFLG= 0 / StartFlag
GPS_ST = '0001-01-01T00:00:00.0000000' / StartShutterTime
GPS_SU = 0 / StartShutterMicroSeconds
GPS_EFLG= 0 / EndFlag
GPS_ET = '0001-01-01T00:00:00.0000000' / EndShutterTime
GPS_EU = 0 / EndShutterMicroSeconds
GPS_NU = 0 / NowShutterMicroSeconds
GPS_NT = '0001-01-01T00:00:00.0000000' / NowShutterTime
GPS_H = 0 / Height
GPS_PPSC= 0 / PPSCounter
GPS_EXPU= 0 / Exposure (microseconds)
GPS_DSYS= 0 / System clock - GPS clock offset (s)
GPS_DSTB= 0 / Time offset stable for (s)
GPS_NFLG= 0 / NowFlag
GPS_W = 0 / Width

Best regards,
Roger

[s2a]

and because it is so nice to work with the new SharpCap version, here are a few questions in connection with the Moravian cameras.

Gain:
Moravian gives the gain in values from 10 to 4030: https://www.gxccd.com/art?id=653&lang=409
In SharpCap I can choose from 0 - 36. Is there a conversion key for this?

Sensor Temperature:
Is there a possibility in a future version to output the actual sensor temperature? Currently you can only enter the desired temperature and you can see the fan load, but no actual temperature.

Amplification:
If I understood correctly in an old post, due to the Moravian firmware there is no possibility to digitally amplify the signal, respectively set offset and gamma. Is that correct?

Thanks for your feedback and best regards
Roger

[admin]

Hi Roger,

about the GPS headers - the new code I have written puts the GPS data into a structure designed originally for the QHY GPS cameras. Some of the data that the QHY camera produces are not available for the Moravian cameras, so they end up being left at defaults, but are currently being written to the fits headers. For now please ignore those fields - I will look at some point to see if it is easy to disable writing them in this situation.

Lets see, as for the others...

Gain : SharpCap exposes the gain values for Moravian cameras in dB, rather than the raw gain numbers that are in the range 10 to 4030 for your camera (and probably other ranges for other models). The advantage is that the dB numbers *mean* something - increasing the gain in dB by 20 will brighten the image by a factor of 10, increasing by 10 brightens by a factor of SQRT(10)=3.16, etc. Quite a number of features in SharpCap are enabled by having a gain value that is calibrated in dB (or relative brightness) rather than just being a number, so I try to get gains measured in real figures when possible. I'm afraid I don't have a data table to convert from the published values to the dB values - that is built into the Moravian SDK and SharpCap uses it internally, but doesn't store it anywhere.

Sensor temperature readout : just an oversight on my part - I have code to read it when the camera is uncooled and forgot to put similar code into the bit that deals with the cooled camera (unfortunately I don't have a cooled Moravian camera, so I don't get to spot this sort of thing). I will fix that for the next update.

I don't see any way to control the offset via the SDK (maybe I have missed something), so there is no offset slider for these cameras. The SDK also does not provide a digital gain, and I don't add one in the SharpCap code. However, you can use the display stretch functionality built into the SharpCap mini-histogram to brighten the image on screen without affecting data saved to file, so getting the the advantage of seeing faint stuff without the disadvantage of reduced dynamic range that would come with a digital gain.

cheers,

Robin