Zwo asi 294 is now 8340*5644 Pixels

[Andycayman]

I did update the driver. but i cannot see anywhere i can use the original camera settings. it just shoots 43megbites now instead of 11megapixel  i contacted ZWO to explain what is going on and all i got back was  "You can change bin1 to bin2 in the app."   No explanation about if anything has changed in the new driver.  It gives me more flexibility with the cam. But it is also concerning that the fault maybe in cam ( my new cam ) and if so then what else is going wrong..

[Andycayman]

16 hours ago, Taman said:

I spotted this yesterday, ZWO have just released a new driver update that unlocks the binning on this camera.

Have you just downloaded the latest update? If so, you should be able to now choose between the two modes. I have the same camera, but not updated it yet.

Tony.

Where did you see the info about the driver update?

[vlaiv]

19 minutes ago, Andycayman said:

I did update the driver. but i cannot see anywhere i can use the original camera settings. it just shoots 43megbites now instead of 11megapixel  i contacted ZWO to explain what is going on and all i got back was  "You can change bin1 to bin2 in the app."   No explanation about if anything has changed in the new driver.  It gives me more flexibility with the cam. But it is also concerning that the fault maybe in cam ( my new cam ) and if so then what else is going wrong..

Don't worry about camera being faulty - this is actually feature of the sensor used in this camera.

Only drawback of shooting at high resolution is amount of data you have to store prior to calibration, but once you calibrate your data - you can easily bin your subs x2 increasing pixel size and reduce amount of data stored.

[Andycayman]

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Don't worry about camera being faulty - this is actually feature of the sensor used in this camera.

Only drawback of shooting at high resolution is amount of data you have to store prior to calibration, but once you calibrate your data - you can easily bin your subs x2 increasing pixel size and reduce amount of data stored.

I just find it strange that all of a sudden with no notice from ZWO that they go ahead and change this. i cant find anything about the change. its a big thing not to give some explanation.. It is a feature of the qhy294 but zwo said they wouldn't unlock this full pixel mode. but the qhy cams enable you the switch between modes, i cant see any way to switch modes in the ascom driver  

[tooth_dr]

7 minutes ago, Andycayman said:

I just find it strange that all of a sudden with no notice from ZWO that they go ahead and change this. i cant find anything about the change. its a big thing not to give some explanation.. It is a feature of the qhy294 but zwo said they wouldn't unlock this full pixel mode. but the qhy cams enable you the switch between modes, i cant see any way to switch modes in the ascom driver  

It is on the website, but not clearly explained without looking for the changes.  I would tend to read the changes before doing an update though just as a matter of habit.

 

Driver update change log: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/change_log/ZWO_ASCOM_driver.txt

Then refer to SDK 1.16: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/change_log/change_ASISDK.txt

 

The change log shows update for 1.16 on 20/11/20: "ASI294MM camera support 44M reslution. Fixed some bugs."

 

 

[Andycayman]

2 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

It is on the website, but not clearly explained without looking for the changes.  I would tend to read the changes before doing an update though just as a matter of habit.

 

Driver update change log: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/change_log/ZWO_ASCOM_driver.txt

Then refer to SDK 1.16: https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/change_log/change_ASISDK.txt

 

The change log shows update for 1.16 on 20/11/20: "ASI294MM camera support 44M reslution. Fixed some bugs."

 

 

Okay thanks for that  it certainly explains some stuff.

[wimvb]

I don’t know about ascom, but in indi, if you set 2*2 bin mode in the control panel, it will bin in the camera firmware, afaIk. The files are then the original, smaller size. I would think that ascom behaves the same. Anyhow, I see no reason to update my drivers.

[Taman]

1 hour ago, Andycayman said:

Where did you see the info about the driver update?

Just did a Google search  and found announcements on ZWO's Facebook and Twitter accounts, but no further info. Also been following a big thread on Cloudynights. From what I make out, just bin 2x2 to go back to the original resolution and pixel size. Have a look at 

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/726990-zwo-asi-294-mm-pro-first-impressions-and-test-images/page-23

Tony.

[Andycayman]

1 hour ago, Taman said:

Just did a Google search  and found announcements on ZWO's Facebook and Twitter accounts, but no further info. Also been following a big thread on Cloudynights. From what I make out, just bin 2x2 to go back to the original resolution and pixel size. Have a look at 

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/726990-zwo-asi-294-mm-pro-first-impressions-and-test-images/page-23

Tony.

Thanks for the link. that pretty much explained everything

[Apriliax]

Just had it happen to my 294MM. The new ASI studio allows you to go back to bin2 and get back at the original resolution but SharpCap which I use doesn't so I have to remake my darks. No biggie really but it'd be nice to have a way to switch it back, Anyone found one? https://www.facebook.com/groups/zwoasiusers/permalink/1286565121702533/

 

[poblocki1982]

Hi all,

I'm quite new to astrophotography and I have ASI294MC Pro. I come across this chat about ASI2954MC being unlocked bin 1x1 to 44Mpx. Could you please tell me how to update SDK to unlock bin 1x1? 

I have downloaded newest SDK from ZWO website, but I don't really know what to do next. I have SharpCap, APT and ASIStudio, but all of them see 11Mpx. 

 

Thanks in advance for help!

Marcin

[scotty38]

It's the MM that has the feature and it's not available on the MC as far as I'm aware.

[wimvb]

5 hours ago, poblocki1982 said:

Hi all,

I'm quite new to astrophotography and I have ASI294MC Pro. I come across this chat about ASI2954MC being unlocked bin 1x1 to 44Mpx. Could you please tell me how to update SDK to unlock bin 1x1? 

I have downloaded newest SDK from ZWO website, but I don't really know what to do next. I have SharpCap, APT and ASIStudio, but all of them see 11Mpx. 

 

Thanks in advance for help!

Marcin

 

4 hours ago, scotty38 said:

It's the MM that has the feature and it's not available on the MC as far as I'm aware.

As far as I know, the 294MC has four pixels under each Bayer matrix superpixel. This means that the extended Bayer matrix is

RR GG

RR GG

GG BB

GG BB

As long as the camera is used in bin 2x2, this works just fine. But in bin 1x1, there is no program that I am aware of that can properly deBayer the image files. So even if you "unbin" it, there's no way you'd get a colour image out of it.

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, wimvb said:

So even if you "unbin" it, there's no way you'd get a colour image out of it.

Writing code that will debayer such matrix is trivial - but not much point in doing so as sampling rate achieved will be the same as binned / regular version.

[wimvb]

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Writing code that will debayer such matrix is trivial

For you perhaps, but certainly not for me 😁.

And yes, the colours are so far apart that there is no gain in resolution. Thanks for adding this, Vlaiv.

[dunc]

I have had an ASI294MC Pro for a few years and have just got a QHY294PROC. The QHY has no problem producing a 47m colour image (after debayering). NINA, PixInsight, ASTAP have no issues with opening the files. The FITS header says: 

READOUTM= '47M MODE'           / Sensor readout mode                            
BAYERPAT= 'RGGB'               / Sensor Bayer pattern 

so presumably the driver has done whatever to make standard debayering work based on the standard BAYERPAT keyword, there are no other directives relevant in the header. It would be nice to have the ASI294MC Pro unlocked, would have saved me E1000! (I live in France).

[matt_baker]

The 294mc and mm aren't actually the same sensor, just one mono and the other colour.

The MM is an IMX492 and is pretty much identical when binned 2x2 as the IMX294

[The Admiral]

On 01/12/2020 at 20:03, vlaiv said:

Because they used ASI294 name for it for some strange reason

Color camera uses IMX294 color sensor.

Mono camera uses different sensor all together - IMX492.

It looks like it all started with IMX294. This sensor has very strange structure - it has double bayer matrix and this is used in special mode:

It actually has four times more pixels - that you can't access as individual pixels. Sensor either does normal mode where it sums 2x2 groups of pixels or does HDR mode where there are pixels that do short integration and pixels that do long integration - and they are summed on camera to produce HDR image.

It looks like IMX492 kept pixel sizes but skipped on that HDR thing and you can access them in single and "double" mode (one that we would call normal mode).

I'm not sure what is better thing to do. I would say go for single pixels, but that will create massive files for storage and processing and I'm not sure if you'll get any benefit as pixels will be tiny at ~2.3µm.

 

I am not fully conversant with all of this, but could this be the cause of the difficulties folk have been having in calibrating this sensor, bad flats etc?

Ian

[vlaiv]

5 hours ago, The Admiral said:

I am not fully conversant with all of this, but could this be the cause of the difficulties folk have been having in calibrating this sensor, bad flats etc?

Ian

I don't think it should

Calibration does not really care if sensor is Mono or OSC - math and procedure is the same (except maybe flat normalization - but that can be skipped and it will still work).

Maybe it has something to do with issues reported with narrow band / duo band filters. I personally don't like using those on OSC cameras anyway, but yes, funny things with odd angles could be down to pixel matrix.