SharpCap Forums

Hi Robin,
I have finally received my ASI533MCP and have tried it in SharpCap with the temperature control. All is excellent.
There are two suggestions for this feature I think would make things more intuitive to read at a glance.
1. The ordering, top to bottom, of the temperature parameters could be as follows:
- Set Temp
- Measured Temp
- Cooler Power
2. Could the Measured Temp and Set Temp have the same scaling so that one can see easily if the two are equal (or other words how far out they are). At the moment they seem to be different, so when measured is at set-point, vertically they do not line up.

Also one thing I am curious about, do you use your own control algorithm, or do you use one built into the camera?
Also is it possible to set a cool down time and warm up time? I have heard its best to do these actions over 5 or 10 mins - so limit the rate of change of these.
Cheers
Phil

Hi Phil,

thanks for the suggestions – it certainly makes sense to have the same scale for the two set temperature/actual temperature sliders and I think that the ordering change is probably a good one too.

SharpCap does have its own thermal control algorithm – all of that is passed on to the camera itself (or at least the camera driver/SDK software written by the camera manufacturers). I would suspect that they have some sort of PI or PID control loop, but I can't really be sure of that.

SharpCap 4.0 has an imaging sequencer tool which includes the ability to gradually cool down or warm up the camera as part of a longer sequence of automated imaging. The way that works is to simply gradually reduce (or gradually increase) the setpoint temperature and let the camera SDK/driver/hardware deal with setting the cooler power to achieve the target temperature.

Cheers, Robin

Hi,
I think an option to change the cooler power is a must. It's certainly not there in the 3.2 version. I have been using SharpCap 4.0 beta version but I couldn't figure out as to where is this option?
Cheers
Suhaib

Hi Robin.
Thanks for the feedback.
Yep, I saw in the advanced seq editor that there is a cool down and warm up profile after I posted this topic. I shall investigate that.
Regards
Phil

Hi Robin,
It looks like you have made the change in the latest beta, this is great - thanks.
Phil