Altair Hypercam 183C Pro

[Bran0c5sky]

Hi I have a Hypercam 183C Pro, which I have been using in Sharpcap Pro for the last 2 years, without any issues. Recently I have been unable to set the camera, all I get is flickering or scrolling. I have renewed the usb cable, I have updated the Altair driver to the latest issue, and I can get the camera to work using the ASCOM driver.
I would like to get an answer to this, as my licence runs out next week, and I want to know everything is working ok before renewing. The camera works perfectly well in Altaircapture.
I hope that someone can help, many thanks in advance.

[admin]

Hi,

sorry to hear you are having problems - given the description I would try the following

1) Make sure you have the latest version of SharpCap from our downloads page

2) Remove any USB extensions or hubs in the connection between the PC and the camera for testing - use only a single USB cable (no longer than about 2m).

3) Turn down the USB speed setting in SharpCap to see if that helps - given that the camera works in AltairCapture without issues, I think this may be the most likely to succeed, as SharpCap defaults to a mid range USB speed and I think AltairCapture may default to minimum.

If none of that works, please feel free to post a screenshot showing the effect you see.

cheers,

Robin

[Bran0c5sky]

Hi there sorry for the delay. the unfortunate side of working last weekend.
Firstly thank you for your reply, I tried everything you suggested with no improvement. I was still getting the flickering, this disappeared after I got to about 200ms.

Sharp 1.jpg (803.1 KiB) Viewed 562 times

I made sure that the setting were similar to the ones in my other software.
I have installed the latest version, as I mentioned the USB cables used were the manufacturers original cable and also my new USB-C, and I also checked to make sure I have updated my Windows drivers.
I then decided to switch from the 12 Bit to the 8 Bit setting, to check all settings and the flickering stopped, I was then able to run the camera at low Gain and exposure times.
So the issue seems to be with the 12 Bit setting, This raises the question. Do I have to run the the camera at 8 bit if I want to do Moon/ Solar or Planetary, and 12 bit for Deep Space. I ask this because I normally get a warning that for long exposures I should run at 12 Bit.
I have also attached an image of the camera running on Altaircapture as a comparison.

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for posting back with the screenshots - in the broken image it does look like the colour channels are misaligned or partially missing, which is odd.

The first additional thing I would suggest trying is to open the camera in SharpCap with the <CTRL> key pressed down - that prevents SharpCap from re-loading any previous camera settings and puts things back to default - might be worth a try just in case some odd setting value may be helping cause the issue.

If that doesn't help, then it becomes quite hard to work out what is going wrong - I have tested here with an Altair 183C (TEC version) and I am not seeing any problems, so it seems likely to be an issue somehow specific to your camera or setup.

However, if everything works with longer exposures in 12 bit then you can probably just work around the issue - there is no benefit in most cases to using the 12 bit mode for solar system imaging, since you will usually be capturing at relatively high gain, and therefore have noisy individual images. Using 12 bit in those circumstances just doubles the saved file size and records the noise in more detail (all the actual image detail is adequately recorded in 8 bit data). For deep sky imaging, you would want to use 12 bit mode, but would be working at exposures of more than 200ms.

cheers,

Robin

[Bran0c5sky]

Thanks for that admin,
I can say I have learnt something today. Although I have had this equipment for a few years, I cam to astronomy and photography a little later in life so I am still learning. Your help has been invaluable.

[Bran0c5sky]

Hi again,
Quick update, I decided to try attaching my laptop to telescope, and see if things improved. And as I hoped I had no issues with either 8 or 12 bit, I even managed a Sensor analysis. So I decided to reset my mini pc for the telescope, and lo and behold the problem seems to have gone away. So it is probably some software I installed as a trial, had a conflict with Sharpcap. Thank you for your advice and hopefully I can resist tinkering with the pc

[admin]

Hi,

good to hear that you got it sorted and that it was a software rather than hardware issue!

clear skies!

Robin