SharpCap Forums

Hello,

I am a new SharpCap Pro user. I am using the 32-bit Windows v3.2 download. Last night I tried it in the field for the first time and I could not get it to take an image. The images always turned out like dark frames.

My camera is a Starlight Xpress SXVR-H18 which has a shutter. SharpCap recognizes the camera and it shows up as "H18" in the "Cameras" dropdown. When I select "H18" I hear the shutter click and then that's it. I never hear the shutter again.

My assumption is that the shutter is open at that point however when I take images they are dark.

Is there a trick to using SharpCap with the H18? Other applications click the shutter open at the beginning of a frame and click it closed at the end of the frame. For reference the H18 uses the KAF8300 CCD sensor.

Thank you. Please let me know if I need to provide more information or data to resolve this issue. I am willing to remove the camera from my telescope and observe the shutter behavior.

Hi,

I must admit that I have never tested on a StarlightXpress camera with the shutter (the only model I have is the lodestar which doesn't have a shutter). Looking back at the documentation, it does mention that the shutter only needs to be handled for H18 cameras, which probably explains why this hasn't come up before. It doesn't look too difficult to add code to open/close the shutter if necessary, so I will give that a try for the next update.

Cheers, Robin

Thank you.

I am installing ASCOM and will try controlling the camera through their driver. I will report back in a day or two if that works.

Good news. The ASCOM driver works. The H18 camera reports as "Starlight Express" under the Cameras->ASCOM Cameras dropdown menu.

As a side note, the ASCOM driver also provides a steady temperature feeedback reading. When I use the native H18 driver the temperature feedback reading is generally accurate but jitters once or twice a second to some random extreme value.

Hope this helps. Thank you again for your attention. I look forward to experimenting with SharpCap.

Hi,

Glad to hear that you have the Ascom driver working now. I will definitely still put in the change to try to activate the shutter – I've already written that. Harder to know what to do about the temperature readout as SharpCap just asks the camera for that so presumably it's being given incorrect readings from the camera software occasionally.

Cheers, Robin