ASI178 - First Light

[David Smith]

Very quick first test this morning. I had about 40 minutes total to setup, fiddle, capture, packup and leave for work but I managed to get a couple of captures. I stuck with Sharpcap for this session as this is what I am used to using with my QHY for the last 4 years but I am keen to try using OACapture in the future. First impressions:-

1. Detail on screen was clearly a step up even with what looked like at-best-average seeing

2. Exposure settings are much shorter with the ASI. Where I was using gain in the 50s and exposures of 5 or 6ms with the QHY, with the ASI I need virtually no gain and 1.4ms!

3. Need to sort out capture rates! At times I was getting 1.4fps, painful! I need some more time to work out what's going on here. When I check windows task manager it showed CPU at 100% and disk usage at just 44% and it was dropping 3 times as many frames as it was recording!

4. Processing on my Celeron R lappy is also rather slow. AS!3 was taking 3+ minutes to do initial image alignment. This is not the end of the world but may get tiresome.

Anyway, as I said I managed to grab a couple of captures as below (apologies for the orientation, rush job). I have a couple more SER's to play with but may not get to them for a few days as we are away now until Tuesday. Hopefully then I can get some more scope-time and figure out what I need to do to improve the capture rates.

 

[johnfosteruk]

Nice first light, I'm sure you'll iron out the snags.

[Ibbo!]

nice first light.

It might be a case of "going to need a bigger hard dive"

[David Smith]

12 minutes ago, Ibbo! said:

nice first light.

It might be a case of "going to need a bigger hard dive"

I think a trade to an SSD is probably on the cards for a start.

[Lowjiber]

Thank you for the first light report, Dave.  As I mentioned in another post, I've got my eye on one of those too.

Regarding the slow capture rate, I use an ASI174MM-cooled and have a very fast computer with an SSD... no  problems. 

Those are very nice images.  I think you're on your way to liking that cam.

Thanks again.

Clear Skies

[Ewan]

Still a good first light, well done matey. A few tweaks capture wise, as you say, may see speeds increase.

[Freddie]

Nice to see the images from your new cam. That frame rate looks even too low for a standard hard drive so more investigation needed there. Hope you get it sorted.

[Ewan]

First rate result for 1st light with the upgrade.

Are you using FC Dave ?

Yep we all end up upgrading in the end, it' inevitable Mr Smith ?.

You don' need a particularly fast processor but a SSD is a must for fast cameras.

The Samsung EVO'S are the fastest ones I know of, hit a TV remote button & laptop button at the same time & the laptop is in windows before pic on screen.

Worth saving for a 1TB as well as it will give you room to save & keep ser files for a while giving you time to process.

Hope you figure the speed issue out & looking forward to seeing more.

Atb

[Pete Presland]

A fine first light.

[David Smith]

On 28/04/2018 at 08:28, Ewan said:

First rate result for 1st light with the upgrade.

Are you using FC Dave ?

Yep we all end up upgrading in the end, it' inevitable Mr Smith ?.

You don' need a particularly fast processor but a SSD is a must for fast cameras.

The Samsung EVO'S are the fastest ones I know of, hit a TV remote button & laptop button at the same time & the laptop is in windows before pic on screen.

Worth saving for a 1TB as well as it will give you room to save & keep ser files for a while giving you time to process.

Hope you figure the speed issue out & looking forward to seeing more.

Atb

I was using Sharpcap Ewan. I already have a 1TB usb3 external drive for archiving so I think I will start by adding an SSD to my existing laptop. I want to get another session in before I make a final decision, just in case I missed something! Just need the clouds to clear now.