ZWO ASI1174 up and connected - check my frame rates please?

[kirkster501]

Hi all,

Getting set for solar and lunar AP and just pluigged in this lovely camera.  Very solid and well built so getting ready to go

Can you check my frame rates  please?   At 1/250 sec exposure, bin 1x1, on my i7 computer, at 1920x1200 I get 18 FPS, dropping the resolution to 1600x1200, I get 21 fps.  Set it to 1280x1024 I get 32 FPS and drop it to 800x600 I get 44 FPS

Any thoughts please guys?  Sound about right?

What resolutions do you use typically on solar and lunar?

Thanks, Steve

[Gina]

I'd be interested to know that too having just bought said camera for Ha solar imaging.

[vlaiv]

Hm, looks like you are either using USB 2.0, 12bit mode, or have USB speed setting wrong.

According to specs for ASI174 (128fps in 12bit mode, 164fps in 10bit mode) I would expect at least 100fps on i7, that would be of course with usb 3.0 and appropriate usb speed setting.

[kirkster501]

Also they appear to have shipped the wrong 1.25 adapter in the box...  The thread on the camera body is T2 male.  But so is the adapter they supply.... Both male threaded.... Doh.... I'd ideally want a 2" adapter as well.

[kirkster501]

26 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Hm, looks like you are either using USB 2.0, 12bit mode, or have USB speed setting wrong.

According to specs for ASI174 (128fps in 12bit mode, 164fps in 10bit mode) I would expect at least 100fps on i7, that would be of course with usb 3.0 and appropriate usb speed setting.

Thanks, I am definitely using USB3 for sure.  Not sure I saw the option to change how many bits or setting USB speed? 

[Gina]

3 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

Also they appear to have shipped the wrong 1.25 adapter in the box...  The thread on the camera body is T2 male.  But so is the adapter they supply.... Both male threaded.... Doh.... I'd ideally want a 2" adapter as well.

Mine came with an 11mm thick F-F gender changer ring - yours should have done too.  Check with your supplier.

[kirkster501]

Mine didn't Gina.  I will check with them.

[gnomus]

Are you using Firecapture Steve?.  There is a setting in there for accelerating the frame rate.  It's been a while though, so maybe someone else could chip in.

[Freddie]

Those rates are well down on what you should be getting.

With std settings in FireCapture I achieve the rates specified by ZWO.

[kirkster501]

No I am using Sharpcap guys.

 

[Freddie]

Sorry, to answer your other question, I use it on my 152mm scope with quark at full resolution. I'm typically at 12ms exposure give or take a bit so my rate is exposure limited at ~85fps

[Freddie]

Sorry, I don't use sharpcap as I find Firecapture so good so can't help there. Maybe there is an issue in sharpcap? FireCapture definately delivers the expected frame rates and has some very good features so may be worth giving it a go.

[kirkster501]

OK, I tried on two computers as well.  I need to look further into it as to why the frame rate is so low.  I do get about 80 FPS after some tinkering when at 1200x1024.  But I rather hoped to be using a higher resolution that that, 1900x1200 at at least 60fps.  Thanks for confirming that this is not an unrealistic expectation.

 

[Freddie]

I see you are using i7 but is it SSD or a hard drive? I use SSD and at the full resolution and high frame rates SSD is probably required to achieve the highest frame rates.

If it is hard drive, FireCapture buffers the images if it can't keep up saving the files which is a nice feature, so you get the high frame rates, it just takes a bit longer to save them.

[vlaiv]

1 hour ago, kirkster501 said:

OK, I tried on two computers as well.  I need to look further into it as to why the frame rate is so low.  I do get about 80 FPS after some tinkering when at 1200x1024.  But I rather hoped to be using a higher resolution that that, 1900x1200 at at least 60fps.  Thanks for confirming that this is not an unrealistic expectation.

 

If using Sharpcap - look at control panel on the right, just above resolution there is "color space" or similar named option - you should user RAW8 for high speed capture (like planetary and such). RAW16 is higher bit setting (so smaller max frame rate, but useful for flats or stuff like that, actually depending on your setup, and what you plan to shoot - how bright it is, you might benefit of using RAW16 mode - but you need to check if signal on single frame and your selected exposure exceeds value of around 500 after dividing it with 16 - so if you inspect your 16bit frame in some software and you get signal values higher than 8000, for unity gain than it is worth using RAW16 mode).

Somewhere down after gain setting there is turbo USB setting - try increasing that as long as capture is running smoothly and frames are not blank (if you get empty frames or capture stalls this means you pushed it to far for your computer, but I suspect that with i7 you should be able to push it all the way up). Also there is "High speed mode" (at least I think so, it's been a while since I last used it for planetary) set that to 1 / On. Make sure you haven't turned on "Frame rate limit" (also one of options) on - it should be set to Max possible.

HTH

[kirkster501]

Thanks for the replies guys,

Both computers have SSD and I am not even at the stage where I am actually capturing to disk yet - just looking at the frame rate in the indicator at the bottom left.

Since it is a mono camera, I do not have the option of setting RAW8 in Sharpcap - just MONO8 and MONO16 I think it was called from memory.  I have the turbo settings and high speed modes set to on and have played with them I only seem to be getting 19 fps with the maximum resolution.  One of my computers (the smaller performance one) will not capture at all above 1280x1024, even if I set the exposue to be half a second - it is a blank screen and the FPS indcator at bottom right is 0FPS.

What version driver do you guys have please?  Need to look into this further since i think the camera is OK.

[Davey-T]

1/250 is a bit slow as Freddie says 12ms is more like it, the slower the exposure speed the slower the frame rate I find, not got a ASI though.

Dave

[Freddie]

1/250 is 4ms so the exposure is not the issue in this test.

I downloaded the latest driver from the ZWO site.

[kirkster501]

I sorted out the issue with the adapter ring - it was in what i thought was the camera cover!

Struggling to get this camera going on my i7 computer with USB3 ports.  It is just a blank screen when on USB3 ports.  USB2 devices work fine in the USB3 ports and the camera is the only USB3 device I have to check.  When on USB2 I get the frame rates I detailed in the top post.  So something is amiss with this PC working with USB3.  I updated the drivers but no joy.  Need to look further into it.  Bizarrely the camera does work at USB3 on my lower spec observatory capture PC with USB3 although not at the maximum resolution.  At 1200x1000 I get 100FPS.  But as soon as I go higher the screen goes black and the FPS goes to 0.

Both machines are Windows 10 with plenty of memory an SSD drives.

I thought getting this camera up and working would be a piece of cake compared to long exposure AP with its guiding etc but it has been a PITA so far...!!!

[Gina]

Ah yes, I unscrewed what I thought was just the cover but then noticed it was the adapter ring as well 

It does look like a PC problem.  I haven't got round to trying mine yet and haven't actually bothered in view of the lack of sunshine but I can see I might have a problem with fast enough data capture.

[gnomus]

Are you still wedded to SharpCap?  Have you tried Firecapture, to rule out a software problem?

[kirkster501]

That's the next thing for me to try Steve.

I am pretty cool that the camera itself is fine and this is PC related.  Windows 10 has a generic USB3 driver rather than a specific chip set driver so need to check into that.

Steve

[kirkster501]

I eventually got this going, and at blinding speed - 150FPS at maximum resolution with no drops.

I had to trash the computer and reinstall the proper motherboard and USB3 drivers from the motherboard manufacture site.  The machiine is an i5 home build with Gigabyte motherbopard and onbaord graphics (built on motherboard).  I am using Firecapture software.

[Gina]

Good news   Well done

[gnomus]

35 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

I eventually got this going, and at blinding speed - 150FPS at maximum resolution with no drops.

I had to trash the computer and reinstall the proper motherboard and USB3 drivers from the motherboard manufacture site.  The machiine is an i5 home build with Gigabyte motherbopard and onbaord graphics (built on motherboard).  I am using Firecapture software.

Great stuff Steve.  Time now for you to post up some images.....