I had much better success at automated focusing last night by switching to the new beta version of SharpCap (v4.1.10872). I made an initial focus using <Tools> <Focus Assistant> <Automatic Refocus>, then I redid that process a number of times without fail. After that, I switched back to v4.0.9556, and while it worked the first time, it seemed to get lost after that and I had some troubles with it that I couldn’t understand, so I switched back to the beta version and used it the rest of the night. On the second try, I think the 4.0 version tried finding a focus starting with the current position and searching inward, rather than starting at some number of steps out from the current position and working inward. Why that happened, I don’t know, but I have a question about that below concerning both v4.0 and v4.1.
After going back to the beta version, I then implemented automatic focusing into a 5-hour imaging session, automatically refocusing every hour, and that worked well. I had it scan from +300/-300 steps around the current position using 9 steps and a backlash of 150. Here is a screenshot showing the end of one of the focus attempts:
- goodfocus070423.JPG (773.15 KiB) Viewed 11332 times
So, I am happy with the beta version, but I have one issue with the Automatic Focus tool I’d like to address. Maybe I’m just missing something, and this is already in SharpCap, but I have not been able to find an option like I would like to see. When I invoke <Tools> <Focus Assistant> <Automatic Refocus>, the tool starts working immediately without giving me any chance to set the options I want for this tool, as one can do in the <Sequencer> as I did in my Sequencer run last night. I think it would be better that when asking for a one-time automatic refocus through <Tools> <Focus Assistant> <Automatic Refocus>, that the user first be presented with a menu for setting the parameters for the tool before it starts, these parameters being: the range of steps to scan through, the step size, the backlash, the direction of the scan, and the option for starting the scan at a specific step number or have it start at the current step number. It just starts up with whatever values it has stored for them, and I don’t seem to have any ability to change them upon start-up, and I’m not sure where they even come from. I think some of them may come from the settings in the Focuser section under <File> <SharpCap Settings> <Hardware>, but I’m not sure of that, but certainly not all of them are there. There is an “Options” button on the screen once the focuser starts, but there’s no way to invoke that before the focuser starts. If I want to change those, I first must hit “Cancel”, then reset the current step number on the focuser since it has probably been changed by this point, then go to the “Options”. That seems very clumsy, and I think that has led to at least some of the problems I’ve had.
I hope what I’ve said here is at least a little clearer than mud. Essentially, I’d like to see a menu pop up as soon as <Tools> <Focus Assistant> <Automatic Refocus> is invoked, a menu that lets the user either choose the defaults in it or specify the ones the user would like to try before SharpCap starts on the focusing process. I think it would be great if all the options were on this one menu.
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