Guiding Altair camera

[petevasey]

Hi, guys,

I've been experimenting with my recently acquired Altair 294C.   At the moment I'm controlling it with MaximDL which also runs my Lodestar guider and is able to dither between individual subs.  But binning, (I'm using the ASCOM driver) is only averaging, not additive, so binned frames although much smaller file sizes are no brighter than unbinned.  Binning in Sharpcap likewise.  BUT it's possible in Altair Capture to set binning to additive.  That works, giving much brighter images without destroying the colour data.  In other words true useable binning.  Nevertheless, Altair Capture does not appear to work in conjunction with for example PHD2, or have it's own built in guiding system using a second camera.  Obviously I could guide with PHD2 on its own, but then no option to dither between subs.

Any ideas how this might be accomplished?  I should mention that I'm running under Windows XP, and don't want to have to spend £100s more on new computers for my Obsy and star parties laptop.

Cheers,

Peter

[Same old newbie alert]

A friend had issues with using his Altair camera for guiding within maxim, don't think he could get the drivers to work, their solution was to use a different software and not to rely on out of date ancient capture software, they suggested sharpcap as Robin either wrote the driver software or made it usable because of ascom.. now my mate loves maxim, and isn't a lover of sharpcap, so I think he ditched the Altair camera and just used his lodestar that works perfectly happy with it..

[petevasey]

Thanks for responding.

But of course I'm not trying to use the Altair 294C Pro TEC for guiding - it's the main camera.  Using the Lodestar to guide, and the Altair ASCOM driver for the 294C all is well with Maxim, including dithering.  Indeed I can (if I wish) use my GPCAM to guide with Maxim.  The problem is that Maxim won't bin the 294 additively, probably to do with the ASCOM driver.  Although Altair Capture can be set to bin 'additively' and at the same time preserve the colour data, presumably using the native driver, I can't find a way of linking it to a guide program to again allow dithering.  As I mentioned above, SharpCap doesn't appear to bin this camera additively, although to be fair I've only tried version 3.2, not Sharpcap Pro which I believe will not run under Windows XP.  You may scorn 'out of date ancient capture software', but my system has worked faultlessly for years.  If it ain't broke.....

Cheers,

Peter

[michael8554]

Maybe I'm confused by the description of the problem.

Guide with PHD2 and the Lodestar.

Dither PHD2 with Maxim.

Capture images with Altair Capture.

You don't Dither the Altair 294C Pro, you Dither the mount.

Michael

[petevasey]

Hi, Michael,

Now you're confusing me 😉  At the moment I capture and guide with Maxim.  So the dither is directly controlled and takes place automatically between each main image capture. But if I'm guiding either with Maxim or PHD, as far as I know they can't 'talk' to Altair Capture, so don't know when to dither.  Dithering must take place between main image captures, with time allowed for the mount to settle again, so if the guide program doesn't know when each image is downloaded, and the capture program doesn't know when to wait,  it simply won't work.

Cheers,

Peter

[michael8554]

I'm with you now.

You want something like DitherMaster or PHD2Max, that tells PHD2 to Dither when it detects an image being downloaded into a named folder in your PC.

Michael

Edited March 8, 2022 by michael8554

[Same old newbie alert]

7 hours ago, petevasey said:

Thanks for responding.

But of course I'm not trying to use the Altair 294C Pro TEC for guiding - it's the main camera.  Using the Lodestar to guide, and the Altair ASCOM driver for the 294C all is well with Maxim, including dithering.  Indeed I can (if I wish) use my GPCAM to guide with Maxim.  The problem is that Maxim won't bin the 294 additively, probably to do with the ASCOM driver.  Although Altair Capture can be set to bin 'additively' and at the same time preserve the colour data, presumably using the native driver, I can't find a way of linking it to a guide program to again allow dithering.  As I mentioned above, SharpCap doesn't appear to bin this camera additively, although to be fair I've only tried version 3.2, not Sharpcap Pro which I believe will not run under Windows XP.  You may scorn 'out of date ancient capture software', but my system has worked faultlessly for years.  If it ain't broke.....

Cheers,

Peter

I'm not the one to scorn, maxim was far more advanced for its age, many software options now have the same sort of facilities and yes if it works carry on using it... Software drives me nuts, where people that should know how their software runs can't supply answers to why it doesn't... Seems to be a shift on blame... "Nothing to do with our program"

Maxim won't bin as it's designed in the ccd era, so it bins during capture... But with CMOS you can with some cameras you can bin in software after capture... You need to imagine that you have more of a problem because it's a colour cam and if you merge say a rggb matrix to a single pixel what colour should it be?

Stacking in maxim is pretty awesome..