Atik ascom driver limitations!

[whipdry]

A little history... 

I built my first triple HOS imaging setup a few years ago using a SXVh9 & 2 QHYImg2pro cameras only to find 2 identical cameras came with driver issues! 

OK time for an upgrade... 

With my experience of driver issues in mind I contacted Atik who at the time assured there were no issues with using multiple One 9.0 cameras.

Over the next few years...

Built observatory, lots of equipment upgrade added including Atik cameras 2x One 9.0 and GP guider, oh no would you believe it... camera driver issues only 2 cameras supported!! 

Ironically I was guided by Atik. 

 

Peter 

 

[kirkster501]

It depends on what you are doing.  Usually with astronomy devices only two items of the same type are supported on the same PC.  I have gotten round this by using a Virtual Machine or a second PC as a slave capture device with the main PC doing all the control of the mount (as well as the first camera).  Excellent used laptop PC's can be had for a hundred quid or so off of the bay, or look into using a Raspberry Pi.

[whipdry]

38 minutes ago, kirkster501 said:

It depends on what you are doing.  Usually with astronomy devices only two items of the same type are supported on the same PC.  I have gotten round this by using a Virtual Machine or a second PC as a slave capture device with the main PC doing all the control of the mount (as well as the first camera).  Excellent used laptop PC's can be had for a hundred quid or so off of the bay, or look into using a Raspberry Pi.

Thanks. 

I'd hoped for an integrated (one on mount computer) salutation but Atik are reluctant to create a 3rd Ascom driver. 

After dropping QHY for Atik seems they now support 4 cameras. 

I've started using the 1st cooled camera I bought for guiding the very reliable SXVh9 but this is bigger than the GP meaning would hit the roll off roof if not removed when opening and closing! 

 

Peter

[kirkster501]

The other thing to consider is that the manufacturer creating the ability for multiple cameras to run under ASCOM simultaneously is one thing.  Image capture software that can take advantage and control so many cameras is another thing entirely.  For instance, the ever popular SGP can [still] only control one imaging camera at a time.  The solution, as I said above, is multiple iterations of the software running simultaneously, either as virtual machines/containers or on separate compute hardware.  And that can open up licensing issues with some software.