Saturn March 14th

[Ewan]

Just an idea Stu, USB2 on netbook (i know it's a daft question) ? not sure if HD has to be 7200rpm capable i'll see if i can find out anything for you though.

[Ewan]

There is quite a bit of info floating about regarding that camera Stuart, if it's ok with you i can post it as i find it (just don't want to spam your post), just located this, its a little old but you never know & it sort of explains a bit as well.

Quote

' When first use EZPlanetary with QHY5-II/QHY5L-II. It do not know how fast the computer can get. It is best to let the EZPlanetary start at the default settings. Default settings will use the slowest speed to start the QHY5-II and QHY5L-II. How to start the EZPlanetary with the default settings? The answer is just delete *.ini files in the folder of EZPlanetary.

After EZPlanetary started. With the slowest speed. The FPS is only 7-8FPS@1280*1024. Now check the Menu->Camera Setting->High Speed Readout. The FPS will get 15FPS@1280*1024. Then check the advanced setting->Limit USB bandwidth. The default value is 30. Decrese it. The FPS will increase again.

In a very good computer, you can set the value to zero. The FPS will get 30FPS. But in some slow computer. when decrease this value and the fps will increase, but at some value, fps will drop suddenly. It means the USB traffic has reach the limitation at this value .

Since the max reslution take more USB bandwidth than other ROI resilution. So once the value is set success in max resolution. Other ROI resolution will have no problem.

BTW: The early EZPV3.3 has a bug cause very low FPS in some of WIN7 computer(not all WIN7 computer). Now we solved this here http://qhyccd.com/ccdbbs/index.php?topic=3507.0 '

Don't give up yet Stuart i'm sure you will sort it.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks again for your help Ewan it is much appreciated! Its fine with me if you post up any info. The EZ Planetary is version 3.44 but I will try that other solution.

[nytecam]

Nice image and as said pretty low in UK skies for awhile. I'd forgo the current size and rescale downwards a little

[nytecam]

Maybe like this + a tweak - can see the Encke Division at anse

[Space Cowboy]

Ok, tried the new instruction Ewan and it was not relevant but I've made a break through by selecting "High priority disk write" in EZ Planetary which has boosted the frame rate to almost max. Getting mid to high 20s at full resolution and over 90fps at 640x480 so thats a lot better!

Thanks Nytecam. Yes a smaller image does help but alas a little noisy for my taste. Thats the problem with using such high gain as soon as you sharpen the noise kicks in.

[Ewan]

90fps is awesome Stuart, glad you sorted it out, i always keep checking back with the makers of tech as updates are all too frequent these days but the performance gained can sometimes be considerable.

Stuart you do realise you have no excuses now to not do Saturn again , can't wait to see how it goes mate so good luck.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Ewan! Yep the fast frame rate will come in handy for Lunar, Solar and Martian work though low and dim Saturn will need a slower rate unless this cam is super sonic sensitive.

I've been in touch with Torsten over firecapture not detecting the cam on my netbook and I need to install a couple of updates so hopefully that will do the trick.

[Ewan]

All good news Stuart & i hope that cam produces the goods.

I was going to give Fire a go instead of IC but to be honest IC works fine for me.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks again Ewan. Finally got firecapture working with the qhy cam after copying a missing winusb.dll file from the EZ Planetary folder into system 32 folder. Fcapture does not produce as fast a frame rate because of its extra demand on the netbook's resources with CPU maxing out. Torsten has said my netbook is not quite powerful enough. My DFK uses much less CPU power only 40-50% in firecapture interestingly.