ASI120MM Windows 7 Help please

[Fordos Moon]

I am the lucky owner of an ASI120MM camera courtesy of my better half at Christmas.

A while ago, I think on here, I read something about needing to "disable driver registration on boot up" before installing the driver disk on my laptop which operates on Windows 7.

Please can somebody tell me how to do this, step by step if possible. I am hoping it is straightforward!

Many thanks

Bob

[JamesF]

That might just be if you want to use PHD with the WDM driver for guiding.  I've never done it though, and I've had no problems.

James

[knobby]

I just downloaded the driver from the asi web site and installed it ...

Maybe I was wrong but it worked :-)

[Fordos Moon]

Many thanks guys, glad I checked with the masters - happy new year to you both!

[lensman57]

I am the lucky owner of an ASI120MM camera courtesy of my better half at Christmas.

A while ago, I think on here, I read something about needing to "disable driver registration on boot up" before installing the driver disk on my laptop which operates on Windows 7.

Please can somebody tell me how to do this, step by step if possible. I am hoping it is straightforward!

Many thanks

Bob

The latest driver just works out of the box, the earlier versions needed driver signature disabling, While you are at it install  the Ascom deivers as well you never know when you need them.

Regards,

A.G

[knobby]

Also don't forget that in sharpcap there will be two entries for the cam ... Use the top one , it has more options and will go up to 60 fps at 640 x 480

[Fordos Moon]

The latest driver just works out of the box, the earlier versions needed driver signature disabling, While you are at it install  the Ascom deivers as well you never know when you need them.

Regards,

A.G

Thanks A.G I will do just that :-)

[SnakeyJ]

Also don't forget that in sharpcap there will be two entries for the cam ... Use the top one , it has more options and will go up to 60 fps at 640 x 480

Surely it will give more than this? I getting 112fps from my qhy @ 8 bit 640x480 and sure the ASI's were pushing similar or even better?

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

[SnakeyJ]

Meant to add - nice one Fordos, are you intendong to use for planetary and guideing?

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

[knobby]

Surely it will give more than this? I getting 112fps from my qhy @ 8 bit 640x480 and sure the ASI's were pushing similar or even better?

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

Think it depends on my laptop ...

Just pointing out that one of the entries in sharpcap is very basic and only does about 30 fps whereas the other goes significantly higher .

Firecapture seems faster too

[SnakeyJ]

Think it depends on my laptop ...

Just pointing out that one of the entries in sharpcap is very basic and only does about 30 fps whereas the other goes significantly higher .

Firecapture seems faster too

Sorry Knobby not intended to be as abrupt as it reads - all my concentration on one finger on screen keybd. Disk io may definitely impose a limit on older laptops/netbooks - though a RAM disk can speed things up if the device and OS support.

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

[knobby]

Sorry Knobby not intended to be as abrupt as it reads - all my concentration on one finger on screen keybd. Disk io may definitely impose a limit on older laptops/netbooks - though a RAM disk can speed things up if the device and OS support.

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

No offence taken :-)

I'll look into RAM disk ...

[Fordos Moon]

Meant to add - nice one Fordos, are you intendong to use for planetary and guideing?

typed on my mobile with Tapatalk

Hi Jake, yep that is totally my plan!

[tekkydave]

The fps will be very dependent on the exposure time. Your maximum fps = 1000/exp_time_in_ms.

e.g. if your exposure time is 20ms the max fps is 50. If you can up the gain and reduce your exp time to 10ms you should be able to get fps around 100.

If you push the gain too far it gets noisy but that could be eliminated by stacking. It's a balancing act - you need to experiment with different settings to see what works best.

[JamesF]

Surely it will give more than this? I getting 112fps from my qhy @ 8 bit 640x480 and sure the ASI's were pushing similar or even better?

I don't think you can get much better than that with USB2.  Looking at the practical maximum data throughput (as opposed to the theoretical maximum) the link is saturated once you get much over 100fps at 640x480 unless you start compressing the frame.

James

[SnakeyJ]

You're certainly getting towards usb2 saturation at 100FPS 640x480x8bit, I think ZWO claim 113FPS as max frame rate for this resolution - which would need sub 9ms exposures.  I think I was capturing Luminance on Jupiter at 3800mm with a 75% histogram at around 5.6ms to give 6000 frames in 58 seconds.   The FPS figure returned by FC varies during the capture, but the rate at start of the capture is recorded in the log.    At smaller ROI's you should be able to sustain higher frame rates provided the target is bright enough.     

ZWO figures for this are here - http://www.zwoptical.com/Eng/cameras/ASI120/index.asp, though real world performance will depend on the device, usb chipset and contention on shared usb controllers.

I'm generally happy if I can keep the frame rate above 60FPS for blue channel with 50% gain (gain control is not truely linear with the QHY camera, there's a definite multiplier above 90%, so percentages should be taken with a pinch of salt) and 75-80% histogram - Saturn last year was a considerably harder target and my blue channel frame rates were frequently sub 30FPS even with max gain!