Feature Tracking Tool

[wachtel100]

Hi Robin,

yes, that I wanted to ask with my last sentence "The other possibility would be to buy a new camera, f.e. a QHY533 MM and use the ST-4 port from this camera, right?"

At the moment my TIS camera is doing a very good job with sharpcap. I store short 5sec video´s from the sun with 5 sec delay. In this case I can create 1 picture from the sun each 10sec with Autostakkert to build a video from f.e. 1 hour. Therefore I will give the box a chance.

If the box is not working, I plan to buy the ZwoASI 533MM which has an ST-4 output.

Thank you very much for your support

Konrad

[dannyj01]

Hi all,

I have downloaded the most recent version of sharpcap and I've been trying to play around with the feature tracking tool so I can get some decent images of the moon.

Since using the tool, have managed to get through calibration only once and guide sucessfully out of around 4 or 5 nights (I think it was a fluke)

I'm using a skywatch 72ed on an iexos-100 mount, is there anything I should be specifically looking for when adjusting the settings in the calibration screen.

Thanks in advance for any help at all

[admin]

Hi,

while it is calibrating, switch to the 'Scatter' graph view which shows how the image is moving for each direction the mount moves. It should come out as something a bit like a cross as shown here - https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#!2!Calibration (down about half a page). One thing that can throw this off is if the mount stops tracking during the calibration movements (this is mount specific behaviour - some do, some don't). You can often deal with that by choosing a higher movement speed so that the calibration movements take less time, although in turn that may require setting a larger total movement distance for calibration.

If that doesn't get you anywhere, then please post some more detailed info on what failure messages you get and show a screenshot of the calibration scatter graph after the failure and I will try to advise further.

cheers,

Robin

[cairomike]

Hi Robin.

Spring is here and the Sun is now visible most of the day in my garden, so I'm starting to use SharpCap once again to do Time-Lapse imaging of the Sun in Ha. There appears to be a new bug with the Feature Tracking tool, every now and then the cross hairs of feature tracking gets superimposed onto the output image, see the attached frame which was captured 156 mins into the session today.

I'm using SharpCap V4.1.11947 64 bit with a QHY268C camera on Windows 10 Pro, capturing a fits frame every 15 seconds.

Regards
Mike

Sun East_00626.jpg (212.4 KiB) Viewed 614 times

[admin]

Hi Mike,

can I ask how you set up and run the timelapse? Since it's clearly an intermittent problem, I'd like to get the setup as similar as possible to yours so that I have a decent chance of making the same thing happen here.

cheers,

Robin

[cairomike]

Hi Robin. Sorry for the delay.

First an apology, the camera is a ALTAIR178M3, the QHY is my deep sky and solar white light imager.

The scope is a Coronado PST.

I set up as follows:

Colour space - MONO8
Capture area - 3040 x 2048
Output format - fits
Exposure - Usually around 300ms depending on conditions
Gain - 100
Black level - 1
USB Speed - 1

Capture
Single frame
Perform a sequence of captures - Checked
Sequence length - 3000
Interval between captures - 00:00:15

It happened again today, this time about 112 mins into the session.

If you need more let me know.

Regards
Mike

[cairomike]

Hi Robin

A quick update.

I found a further 2 instances in today's session at about 142 mins and 152 mins.

As you say and intermittent issue, which I know from bitter experience could be tricky to track down

I compile the frames into a video using PiPP and VirtualDub, so it's easy to cut out the rogue frames but I'm sure you'd prefer it didn't happen.

Regards
Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

thanks - I will try to get that to break at my end and track down why it is happening.

cheers,

Robin