Using multiple cameras

[Bletherer]

I am using a ZWO ASI120MM with a ZWO 30mm miniscope on sharpcap for alignment and plate solving. This works fine for most purposes.

In some cases however, I want to use my ZWO ASI482 for planetary photography.

The problem I am having is that the two cameras are not resolving in exactly the same place and the FOV of the guidecam is obviously much bigger.

So, when the guidecam has the target in the centre of the image and I switch to the ZWO ASI482 in sharpcap, the planet often isn't in the FOV at all. I can solve this by hunting around a bit manually (since the two cameras aren't usually off by a major amount) but I would prefer to avoid repeating it every time I want to image a planet. I cannot easily plate solve with the planetary camera itself as it isn't set up to detect stars and of course has a small FOV.

Does anyone know of a solution to this? If I could highlight and save a region in the guidecam FOV where I expect the planetary camera FOV to be that would do it, but I can't find anything in the documentation on this issue.

[admin]

Hi,

the feature does exist, but there is no documentation for it as it has only existed for a couple of weeks

The trick is to use the new 'Offset Plate Solve and Resync Target' tool. When activated, this shows a crosshair on the screen which you can move around. Place that crosshair in the *guide camera* image at the point the main telescope/camera has in view - you need to do the hunting around once to get something recognizable in view of the planetary camera in order to do this.

Once you have the position set, any time that you use the 'plate solve and resync' operation with the 'offset' tool active, SharpCap will try to place the target on the crosshair point, not in the center of the image, and that *should* place the target in the view of your planetary camera.

cheers,

Robin

[Bletherer]

Has been very poor conditions here, but tonight I managed to get out and try this feature. Worked perfectly!

[admin]

Hi,

thanks for reporting back - glad it turned out to be helpful

clear skies!

Robin

[Ronbo]

how do you get sharpcap to run multiple cameras at the same time?
can I use the test cameras to try it out?
thanks!

[admin]

Hi,

if you want to use two cameras at the same time, you have to run SharpCap twice and open each camera in one of the two copies of SharpCap. There is no way to open two different cameras at the same time in one copy of SharpCap.

cheers,

Robin

[Ronbo]

What I'm trying to figure out is how to use the offset plate solve tool.

So the poster above is simply flipping back an forth between his main scope camera and his guide camera?
So once you find a feature that is visible in both you simply go to the guide camera and place the crosshairs on that feature and platsolve and resynch.
It doesn't matter where the feature is only that it is visible to both cameras? The sharpcap will compute the offset and it's good until you turn off sharpcap or you close the tool.

Is that correct?

Thanks Dr Glover

ron

[admin]

Hi Ron,

that should be fairly simple...

First time setup up:

* Run SharpCap twice - connect one to the guide camera and one to the main camera
* Get something identifiable centered in view in the main camera SharpCap
* Switch to the guide camera SharpCap, turn on the 'Offset Plate Solve' tool and click on the image on the same object that is centered in the main camera - this gets the alignment crosshairs set in the right place for the offset tool

In future, to use this set up

* Run SharpCap, connect to the guide camera
* Use this SharpCap to command a GOTO to the desired target
* Enable the 'Offset plate solve tool' - it should remember the location of the crosshairs on the image
* Use the plate solve + sync menu or button - it should place the target on the crosshairs, which should, in turn, put it in the center of view of the main camera.

cheers,

Robin