tomato
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Everything posted by tomato
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I agree, I wouldn't make any claim against RC if the replacement board didn't fix the camera, after all it's me (or rather Tomatobro) doing the repair, not them. But RC hold all the cards (or PCBs, to be more precise), so if they won't ship one and I can't source one from anywhere else, it looks like I'll be exploring the joys of returning the camera to China...
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Unfortunately Rising Cam won't sell me a new power PCB on the grounds that it may not itself fix the problem, they want me to ship the camera back to them. I'm awaiting a cost estimate and of course it is Chinese New Year in Feb so I wont be shipping the camera until after the holiday. In the meantime I have contacted Teleskop Express in Germany as they are a big Touptek dealer to see if they might be more forthcoming with a replacement PCB.
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Well, there was some indication of heat and degradation around components C39 and L2 on the power PCB, see photo: However, the capacitor was removed from the board and appears to be OK. I have contacted Eddie at RisingCam, first response is that it will need to go back to China, but I'm trying to see if they would be willing to sell me a new power PCB. That would be my preferred option from a shipping and logistics standpoint, especially if the cost is reasonable.
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Although it was only a moment, there must have been some energy involved to generate the smoke and the odour. Plugging in while powered down is definitely good practice, I have plugged in devices while powered up many times without incident but not this time. -
Thanks for your thoughts, the supply came from a regulated mains powered supply: The damaged camera will be inspected this morning, I’m keen to find out what happened.
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Here is another seldom imaged galaxy, NGC 4051 in Ursa Major, it doesn't even make the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies for some unknown reason. I got just over 10 hrs from the recent couple of clear but cold nights. I was planning on double that but when I checked on the rig around midnight the apex of the dome was heavily frosted and that is where all of my shutter motor and gear box resides so I didn't want to risk something being frozen solid and breaking when it was due to auto close around 3 a.m. But, looking through my archives I found 7 hrs of data on this galaxy with the Esprit150/ASI178 set up so this this has been combined with the 10 hrs of Esprit150/QHY268LRGB, using APP, then processed in PI and AP. Thanks for looking.
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+1 for using a printing service. I have used MyPicture for prints on aluminium and photo albums, but there are a lot to choose from.
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This is somewhat after the event but as far as I can see it has not yet been reported in this section: On 4 Jan. 2024, Koichi Itagaki, one of the most prolific supernova discoverers of our times, has found a new transient in NGC 4216, quickly confirmed to be a type Ia supernova. It’s at the South East tip of Leo so is visible from the UK from around 23:30 or so, definitely an imaging target with two other galaxies close by.
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Great SN capture. I really should set up some sort of notification alert for these events, this one certainly passed me by.
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If your imaging software records stats like the star count and mean FWHM for each image, you can look at these to see how the quality of the subs is going. Generally my targets start lower in the sky and move up towards the meridian, so the star count increases and usually the FWHM value decreases, but conditions can alter. In NINA I request a refocus if the FWHM degrades by more than 10% of the initial value.
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No I have a dedicated mains powered 12v supply with distribution modules on each scope for the power to the camera, focuser, FW etc. @Tomatobrodoesn’t have the camera yet but he has studied photos of the Touptek circuit boards and they appear to have a polarity protection diode on there. Needless to say I have plugged power into cameras many, many times and never had an event like this, hopefully we can establish exactly what happened.
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Being retired and having a permanent setup I should be relaxed and I usually am, but when something forces a change from my planned session, that’s when I get stressed. The other night I was planning to get some NB data on a galaxy, but I couldn’t find a guide star low down with the NB filter. So I decided to change the filter which on the current set up meant removing the camera. When attempting to plug the power back in I managed to short something out in the camera and fried the darn thing. Then I was stressed. Still managed to put another camera on and complete the session though.
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I’ve looked on the QHY website there is a specific procedure to update the firmware, and you don’t want a power interruption while you are doing it. Thinking back I’m sure there was a big cooling power spike on this camera during a routine cool down and it has displayed this behaviour ever since. It reminds me of the early days of video recorders, on the problem page of one of the magazines a reader said his timer on the VCR had stopped working, the magazine’s tech guru said it had probably been hit by a stray neutrino.☺️
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The other action could be to reinstall the firmware, anybody done this?
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Here is QHY’s response to the above info: Hello，Yes, judging from your latest test, the temperature control is normal, but outdoors, it may be that the heat dissipation effect is too good, causing the temperature inside the sealed camera compartment to be lower than the ambient temperature, which leads to this difference. Not quite sure where this leaves me, the camera cooling is definitely not operating correctly, as it used to operate OK at low temperatures and my QHY268mono still does. Not sure I want the faff and expense of returning it to QHY over this issue though, but last night it said the sensor was at -38 deg C with no cooling, maybe I’ll wait for the weather to warm up and see how it controls then.
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My 268mono behaved as it should last night, keeping it -10 deg C with the external temp at -5 deg C using around 4% cooling power. Not so the 268c, -38 deg C with 0% cooling! Yet if you put in a room temp environment the cooler controls as you would expect…
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The general view is it would be almost impossible to reverse the polarity when trying to plug in the power. However, I managed to do something to cause the damage, the camera will be on @Tomatobro’s work bench on Friday and we will see what we find. To all you camera owners out there, if possible, plug in first then switch on the power.
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Back on the QHY 268c cooling topic, QHY have asked what happens when the camera is allowed to warm up indoors (ambient temp ~15 deg C) and outdoors (ambient temp ~ 0 deg C). Indoors I cooled the sensor to -10 deg C, cooler power at 13% to maintain this temperature. With the cooler off, the sensor temp rose uniformly back up to 0 deg C, at this point I terminated the test: Outdoors I cooled to -10 deg C, the camera reached this temperature and continued to cool but with 0% cooler power displayed. When it reached -14 deg C I switched to manual and turn the cooler off. The camera cooled a bit quicker to -20 deg C and then slowly warmed up but seemed to stabilise at -19 deg 😄 I'll send this info to QHY, to see what they make of it.
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When discussing if the money saved buying a cheap camera from China is worth it, the issue of what happens when it goes wrong is rightly raised as a concern. Well, I could be in that boat now as I somehow applied a short to my RCIMX571 when plugging in the power, resulting in a burning odour and a whiff of smoke. Looking on CN the general view is don’t bother trying to send it back, and my view was if it lasted a few years it won’t owe me anything, although I’m obviously a bit miffed that my actions have broke it. I’m just wondering if anybody has sent one back for repair and what were your experiences.
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Thanks, I’m still not sure what I did to cause a short when plugging in the power, TBH I can’t really see how the plug could have put reverse polarity into the socket on the camera, but something has happened, that’s for sure.
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Astro pixel processor weird final stacked image.
tomato replied to LaurenceT's topic in Getting Started With Imaging
APP LP removal tool works well when you have 'clear' background sky surrounding your target, not so good when the nebulosity fills the entire FOV as in your image. -
I used a short cable direct to the laptop in the dome, this made no difference. It’s almost as if the camera cooling set pt is being offset by the ambient temperature. I understand on start up the camera auto cools to 0 deg C but what if the camera is already at this temperature, does the camera cool down further by the same amount? QHY might be thinking along the same lines as they are asking me to check what happens when the cooler is turned off both indoors and outdoors. Oh, and it looks like last night I managed to fry my Rising Cam IMX571 camera, I was a bit shaky plugging the power lead in at it looks like I somehow momentarily put a reverse polarity 12v into the camera!😱An odour of burning and a whiff of smoke followed, and it won’t connect anymore. Lesson learned, plug in then switch on. At this rate I’ll have to dig out my G2-8300.😊
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Thanks for the tip. Since installation in 2019, I have had to replace one of the long run USB cables, although this failed totally, thankfully it didn’t slowly degrade. The problem camera is currently connected via the other old, original cable.🤔
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I used the same laptop and hence NINA version for the bench test as I use in dome, so no change there. I did however use a different USB cable to plug the camera directly into the laptop for the test, when in use the cable goes through a powered hub and a 5 metre powered USB lead before connecting to the laptop. Could a deterioration in the USB connectivity cause the kind of issues I have been experiencing? Easy to test by plugging the laptop directly into camera in the dome, the promised clear skies have not yet appeared in my location so I could give this a try.
