Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

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mAnKiNd
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Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#1

Post by mAnKiNd »

Dear Robin,

During Live Stacking, I employ aggressive dithers that when coupled with my badly backlashed mount, some dithers can require longer than 60 seconds (the limit) to settle to acceptable, non-trailing thresholds. This means that sometimes the subsequent individual saved frame has a chance of trailing, as it settles correctly during an exposure, not before it stars. Whilst I can utilize the FWHM filter to reject that frame, that might contribute to wasted imaging time (depending on the duration of said exposure). I understand I should probably perform gear meshing surgery on my EQM-35, or sell a kidney and buy me a super mount with no backlash, but in the meantime - it wouldn't hurt to double the limit to say, 120 seconds?

This would help with fine-tuning the settle time if the need arises for it to go beyond the current limit.

Kind regards,
Minos
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admin
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

No problem, I like nice easy requests like that one :-)

Cheers, Robin
mAnKiNd
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#3

Post by mAnKiNd »

Thanks, much obliged! :)

I hope 120 seconds is sufficient, I'll give you feedback as I suspect there might be mounts that need even longer. Might be worth giving it a much higher ceiling, but I'll report back on how I get on with it.

Best,
Minos
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Stub Mandrel
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#4

Post by Stub Mandrel »

Sharpcap dithers? :o :o :o

How do I enable this?
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#5

Post by admin »

Hi,

Make sure you have an up-to-date version, turn on live stacking and go to the guiding tab. If you're not interested in actually doing live stacking then the trick is to turn off alignment, turn on the option to save individual frames and change the options so that you view the individual frames instead of the stack. Life stacking is still theoretically active, but actually you're just capturing frames that you can process later.

Don't forget to check the box in the guiding tab that reduces the exposure to 1 second while the dealer is in progress.

Cheers, Robin
Ginger
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#6

Post by Ginger »

Hi Robin et al,

Can you please post a picture of the screens for these instructions as your words are not aligned to the menus and opions.
Sorry I know this me being a bit think, but I am really ne to this.

Thank you ! :)
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#7

Post by admin »

Hi,

hopefully this will help
Capture.PNG
Capture.PNG (175.3 KiB) Viewed 1011 times
cheers,

Robin
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#8

Post by Ginger »

Thank you :)
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#9

Post by SkyShed Admin »

Hi Robin!

Question if you don't mind. I'm running the latest SC version. I Live Stack and process the raw subs later in PI. I don't have the time to develop scripts right now, even though it's a great feature, thx! I'm running "down and dirty", point-and-shoot, for now. ;)

I'm dithering after every 2 subs. I started with the Settings - Guiding - Settle Time at default. First night out I noticed that the SC didn't seem to wait at all after dithering and started capturing again right away. I went flipped the screen back and forth with SC and PHD2 as dither ended and there didn't seem to be any settle time added at all. As opposed to last season with a beta version of 4 when it did add settle time and that was apparent when watching SC and PHD2 interfacing at the end of a dither.

Almost every one of my 1st shots after dither was a throw away. Elongated stars, even double stars, one larger one smaller.

2nd night out I left settle settings at default except I changed Min. settle time from 15 -20 seconds. To see if adding 5 seconds would help. But the process was the same. The moment dithering ended SC started capturing a new sub, and the sub was ruined. Not in all cases, but I threw out 25 of 90, 120 second subs away today from last nights session.

I'm thinking maybe it's the default min px size setting at fault? Guessing. I assumed that Min settle time would override Min px size?

Thanks for great software (love it!) and your thoughts on this!

CS!
Wayne
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Re: Increase Dither Maximum Settle Time

#10

Post by admin »

Hi Wayne,

this one has me puzzled... My first thought was 'how can that go wrong, it's PHD that does the minimum dither time, SharpCap just passes on the message to it of how long the minimum is'. Next I was thinking - maybe SharpCap isn't sending the right message to PHD, so I looked at that and discovered that PHD *have* changed their API specification since I implemented dithering, but it still looks like it works OK with the old API messages too.

I have PHD2.6.11 at the moment and when SharpCap sends the dither message to PHD I then get the status showing as below
Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (17.92 KiB) Viewed 529 times
You can see the 'Settle Status' line - that text comes from PHD and you can see that PHD is clearly aware of the 20s minimum that I have set up for testing. I get that both with existing SharpCap versions and also with new code having tweaked the messages sent to PHD to align with their new API specification.

Can you check to see if your 'Settle Status' is showing the correct value that you have set for the minimum settle time and that it is counting up to that value before stacking resumes. That's what I'm seeing at the moment, which all looks pretty much as it should.

cheers,

Robin
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