QHY5-II / Sharpcap Frame Rate

[David Smith]

I have been using my QHY5-II mono for solar imaging for some time now. Initially on EZPlanetary as it was reasonably intuitive and gave me best part of 30 fps. I then tried both Firecapture and Sharpcap and decided I quite liked Shaprcap and I managed to get it to run at similar frame rate to EZPlanetary (move the Speed and USB Traffic sliders all the way across and back again and fps jumped from 15 to high 20's). All was well for months (I've been using Sharpcap since around April) and then suddenly I stopped getting 30 fps and am down to 15 no matter what I do I can't for the life of me think what has changed, first session I thought maybe just an anomaly but the last 2 or 3 sessions have had the same issue.

I am using Windows 10 and the latest version of Sharpcap (2.8 I believe). There is a possibility that Windows has snuck an update in that has caused this I suppose. Might plugging another device into the same USB socket cause this? I sometimes use the laptop for streaming music via an external DAC and it is quite likely that I used the same USB socket. I have read a lot about issues with ports but have no idea how to check if this is the problem.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

[xtreemchaos]

hi Dave, i was using win 10 upto a week ago, and i found i had no choice about the updates, when starting the lappy i found id be waiting for it to install update before i could do anything, in the end i restore win8.1 pro back on it so i have more control, im sorry this dont help as i didnt try Sharpcap with win10 but maybe the update is using cpu power and slowing Sharpcap, just a thought.  charl 

[David Smith]

Thanks Charl. I generally keep my laptop in "Airplane Mode" that way I can choose when to allow updates to download. Generally at least once a week the lappy will get used for something other than imaging so updates will download and install then. Otherwise you end up missing a gap in the clouds while Microsoft take over your computer for hours