QHY183m Driver misbehaves in Sharpcap Pro

[cbweb]

Hello,

My QHY183 with latest driver responds fine in Open Nebulosity Ver 1.

In Sharpcap Pro it misbehaves, thermal cooling does not work and framerate does not respond to changes eg ROI, its stuck at approx 1FPS.

Usual software/hardware efforts to make it work, don't.

Best

Colm

[admin]

Hi,

first thing I would suggest is that SharpCap might be re-loading previously used camera control values when you re-open the camera. If you open the camera with the <CTRL> key pressed and held down then SharpCap will skip that step and put the camera settings back to default. It's obviously worth checking that SharpCap has the camera set at an exposure well below 1s if you are hoping to see higher frame rates than 1fps.

cheers,

Robin

[cbweb]

Hi Robin,

Thanks for reply.

Holding down CTRL and opening the camera best sweet spot I could find was using the following settings:

Mono 16
Capture Area 1280x1024
Binning 1x1
Exposure 25.6 fps (longer frame rate drops)
Gain, set to what you want
Offset, set to what you want
USB Traffic, nb set to 0 or 1, higher values drops FPS
Force Still Mode, Off
Thermal Controls(now working):
Cooler Power, Click Auto(you may have to click it a few times before Target Temperature is activated.
I've tested down to -20.0C works fine no effect on FPS

Thanks


Colm

[cbweb]

Mono 8
320X240
1X1
Ser
3.00 ms
FPS 186.0 fps

But if you do a speed test (1280x960) written in 18.75s (260.38 fps) Disk Write Speed 305.126 MB/s

Still FPS 186.0 fps is not bad ….

Colm

[admin]

Hi,

I don't have the QHY version of the 183, but I do have a 183 camera from another manufacturer. Just checked the maximum frame rates, which come out as follows

16 bit mode (RAW/MONO 16)
Full resolution : 9fps
1920x1200 : 52fps
800x600 : 98fps
320x240 : 208fps

8 bit:
Full resolution : ~17fps
Otherwise roughly the same at ROI

Note that you need to set a short exposure (ie 1ms) to test the true maximum frame rate - if you set for example 40ms exposure, you will never get above 25fps, since 25 * 40ms is equal to 1 second.

Also note that the numbers reported by the 'Speed Test' is purely a test of writing blank frames to disk, no testing of the camera rate happens during that test.

cheers,

Robin

[cbweb]

Hi,

Re Hi,

I don't have the QHY version of the 183, but I do have a 183 camera from another manufacturer. Just checked the maximum frame rates, which come out as follows

16 bit mode (RAW/MONO 16)
Full resolution : 9fps
1920x1200 : 52fps
800x600 : 98fps
320x240 : 208fps

8 bit:
Full resolution : ~17fps
Otherwise roughly the same at ROI

Note that you need to set a short exposure (ie 1ms) to test the true maximum frame rate - if you set for example 40ms exposure, you will never get above 25fps, since 25 * 40ms is equal to 1 second.

Also note that the numbers reported by the 'Speed Test' is purely a test of writing blank frames to disk, no testing of the camera rate happens during that test.

cheers,

Robin

================================================================================================================

Well that might explain a possible bug I'm having using the QHY183m. On the one hand, indoors I've tested the camera using the amazing sensor analysis functionality of the Smart Histogram. This completed its testing and stored result for later use happy days. I've also tested indoors with the output I've already given earlier.

However, this has happened before and now has happened again, though I've started SP with ctrl to load defaults, I try to connect to SP during a session outdoors connection fails with SP crashing sending off a bug report. I've latest QHY drivers/latest SP. Note again Sensor Analysis completed successfully I was hoping to use Smart Histogram with it until this happened. Unknown USB Device (Device Descriptor Failed) I see some of these msgs when I click View/show Hidden Devices in Device Manager. I'm monitoring the problem but this put me off using the camera in current good spell of clear sky. Perhaps something in the bus speed of the laptop causing a blockage no idea.

BTW using another Player One camera it generally worked very well apart from one error msg I should have taken a screenshot of. It was a popup prior to taking a .ser 2000 frames file on a galaxy target. It warned me if I recall correctly that I was choosing to capture frames that were previously stretched that this might lead to a darker version of the frames than I was expecting. True enough when I open that .ser file all the frames are blank.

I did get .ser files later that turned out fine but I'm still wondering re that error message? Perhaps it was that I was choosing 16bit rather than 8 bit for that .ser. For the format .ser is there a set of specific settings that .ser needs to save files in raw format. Or can you inadvertently, by setting gain values, or other, generate an error popup of the kind vaguely mentioned above.

Thanks,

Colm

[admin]

Hi,

let's start with the warning you got with the Player One camera - that warning happens if you have used the display stretch tool in SharpCap to brighten the image on screen (https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#Display%20Stretch). If you leave the display stretch active and start to capture a video, SharpCap shows that warning. Basically it is trying to warn you that you have probably left the stretch turned on accidentally, the stretch is brightening the image on screen considerably, so what looks great on screen is actually really going to be too dark in the saved video. The brightening of the image on screen can fool you into underexposing the camera...

For the QHY, it does sound as though it is not happy working with your laptop. Do you use different/longer USB cables when imaging outside (or hubs/extensions) - those can be the cause of this sort of problem.

cheers,

Robin