SharpCap Forums

Hey All,

I searched for Dither topics but all I found were from 2021.

I'm attempting to incorporate dithering in my sequence using the advanced sequencer. I first tried just adding the "Dither every 3 frames" statement into my imaging loop and it didn't dither every 3 but just failed at sub 31 for whatever reason so I'm trying to understand how I use these functions.

Do I add the statement in at the beginning of the loop where I image for say 20 subs and then refocus, add it earlier right I start guiding or is the best approach to create my own loop when every X frames I - Pause Guiding, Dither once, Enable Guiding, Wait X seconds for settle, resume imaging, etc, etc?

Just trying to understand the best way to implement dithering.

Hi,

To use the dither option in the sequencer you need to do two things

1) Have a 'Monitor guiding application' step earlier in the sequence - that causes SharpCap to connect to PHD2 and therefore makes the dithering available.

2) Use the 'Capture still frames' step to actually do the capturing rather than (for instance) using the 'Start Capture'/'Stop Capture' steps.

A good way to get started with this sort of thing is to build a sequence that does roughly what you want in the 'Deep Sky Sequence Planner' - ie one to connect to guiding, turn on dithering, capture 10 frames or so. Then press the 'Advanced Edit' button in the deep sky planner, which will transfer the options you have chosen in the planner to an equivalent sequence editor sequence. That will show you a working sequence that does the dithering (or whatever other planner feature you are interested it) to tweak or just to learn from.

You can also read up on the dithering/guiding related steps in the sequencer here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#!2!Guiding

cheers,

Robin

Thanks Robin. Currently using the "Capture X Frames" command so I will experiment with that. Currently have a fairly elaborate sequence that includes connecting to PHD2, capturing, refocusing, etc, etc ... and parking and shutting down. Currently finalizing the flip and, once I have dithering, I should be good.

Thanks for the info. I'll see if I can get that going.

Rod