Camera woes ASI120 MC setup, help req

[oldpink]

yesterday afternoon I set up my scope (200p) used a 25mm lens to focus on in on a TV mast in the distance
set up the camera and a bit of focusing and I could see the target on my laptop screen using Firecapture and SharpCap 2

then the clouds came in and killed the night

tonight I was blessed with clear skies out of the blue so set the scope up and got jupiter dead centre with the 25mm then the 10mm

tracking was sweet with very little drift so decided to try the camera

laptop set up I plug in the camera open sharpcap on default settings but preview was just a blur of light so I tried moving the focus in

it took 10 seconds to update to a slightly less blur of light and my frame rate was reading -8fps so I gave it a minute and moved the focus a bit more

not a lot happened and FPS was still -8

I turned the focus to full in only to get a very noisy black screen waited then started turning focus out in stages and allowing updates to load

but it was hopeless

so I tried firecapture only to have the same issues it was like I was getting no feed or at best a frame every 20 - 30 sec's
even dropping down to 600 x 420 I just couldn't get any data stream from the camera

my laptop is dual core with 4gb of ram and 1.5gb free HD space USB2 on all ports so capable of 480mb transfer

the camera was mounted directly into the eyepiece mount using the supplied 1.25" adapter that came with the camera

is it possible this is the reverse of my original issue of having the camera adapter mounted then adding the eyepiece holder
should I be using the camera adapter then the eyepiece holder to mount the camera to get it into focal range

I can also mount the camera into the 2" camera adapter without the 1.25 mount but didn't have time to try that option
though I doubt it would change the distance from the sensor by that much

personally I think it was the data feed from the camera causing the problem

but any help appreciated
I can add pictures of the setup if that helps

[jambouk]

Try reading this thread for potential answers:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/200442-philips-spc900nc-webcam-help/?fromsearch=1

Frame rate achieved will depend on:

Amount of sensor used; if 1280x980 (or whatever full frame for that sensor is) then there is more data to send to the laptop so that will slow the frame rate down; 120x120 will mean there's much less data so faster frame rate, but a much small field to try and get your target on.

Exposure: this is now long each frame is exposed for; it's like shutter speed; if you go for 1 second exposure, then the maximum frame rate you could achieve would be 1 frame per second; if you go for 100ms then the maximum frame rate would be 10frames per second (but other things will slow the frame rate down). The shorter the exposure, the darker the image and the higher you'll have to have the gain which i think of as ISO/noise.

Lead: if its the lead that came with the camera, i doubt that is the limiting factor in this scenario.

Laptop: i read the other day someone said have a dedicated laptop for imaging free from all other bloat ware so the processor and ram (i don't understand computers) cAn just concentrate on the task in hand. I don't do this. Firecapture and sharpcap seem to be intermittently temperamental on my set up, but sharpcap2 did an update the other day and now seems more stable with my laptop and zwo.

But i suspect your main issue is not having the target bang on the sensor and in focus. Easy to resolve, just takes time.

Good luck.

Jd

[oldpink]

finally ironed out the issues with the camera
it was down to focus and software settings and finally got some fuzzy video of Jupiter to play with
though its quite windy and the scope was getting buffeted a bit

was quite impressed with the moon on the camera and surprised it was so big with no magnification

I thought I could have got the full moon in the scope but I could only fit in part of the edge
again I got video but its very jumpy due to the wind

off to get some more while the weather lasts