The other night, I was imaging with the STF-8300m. I have been getting an occasional blank frame (maybe 1 in 50), but that night I got a bunch of them. It was below zero, and I thought may be that was impacting it. Last night, I setup for a run of calibration frames, and the ADU values seemed to be all over the place. My bias values were between 1007 and 1060, and my 30m darks were between 1007 and 1077. There were also some frames that came in well below 1000ADU, but only a few. The 1007 ADU frames appeared to be blanks. That means my typical bias frame is around 1040ADU. That seems higher then it used to be. The most odd thing is that many of the bias's ADU values were below the darks values. I'm taking this to mean there is an issue. I did replace the USB and I don't appear to be getting the blank frames, but my bias ADU is consistantly above my dark ADU. It seems like that's an issue to me. Firmware SBIGUDrv.dll ver 4.76 build 42 and sbigu32.sys ver 2.41.0.1338 This is a very odd issue. Any help would be appreciated. Should I try updating that firmware while having an issue like this? Update: OK. The CCD is back to giving me what I'd expect in ADU values. I cycled the power, but nothing else. This is after cycling it a few times. I'm going to try and stress test it for the next few hours. Any ideas what could cause this or things to avoid? Should I update my firmware? Also, I've noticed my Gain is at .43 rather then .37. It's been that way since I got it. IS that normal? I see most are at .37. Thanks, Adam Jaffe
OK. I replaced the USB cable last night and I did an imaging run for half the night and captured calibration frames for the other half. The imaging run seemed to go fine for 4 hours. The calibration run started out fine, I got 100 bias and they all stayed in the mean ADU range I was expecting. 1039 to 1055. Then, I started acquiring 30m darks. The first 7 or so came in fine. The ADU counts were 1110~ and that's right where I expected them. After the first 7, the ADU slowly dropped to below my bias level. I think they were actually blank, but I'm not sure. I've been unable to create my calibration library with this issue. Here is my calibration run... Look at the first and the last for comparison. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cczn2j5mc9cnvh6/AABWARMlgyCoc7c1NLo_OYd3a?dl=0 I am using an old firmware. I'm not sure if I should update it while having an issue. As well, I installed the new update utility; and it gives me a warning that the Microsoft files are newer then the ones required. Or something like that. Probably calling SBIG today. Adam
Adam, Your driver (not firmware) is really old one and I would download and install the newest one from sbig web page. Once again, I am talking about the sbigudrv.dll driver which is inside your PC, not about the firmware which is inside the camera's EEPROM. So, there is no problem to install this driver, just download and run SetupDriverChecker64.exe . See also our FAQ on the main forum page, where you can find information how to tune offset and gain values on your camera. But be carefull and DO NOT install firmware inside your camera, there is no new one! You could only rewrite one in your camera with the same version..., so when you run your SbigDriverChecker64, do not use Firmware tab there. Jan
Uh oh... I updated both the drivers and the firmware. Hopefully that's not a bad thing. The driver updater did say my firmware needed to be updated. Do I need to undo something? Either way, I spoke to both Tim and Bill, and have started a test run of calibration frames. I'm on my 7th 30m dark. This is when it went bad last night. I plan on letting it run through the night to stress test it. Thanks for the response, Adam Jaffe
Please let it like it is and do not uninstall your firmware, of course. Because your camera communicates with imaging software, the firmware was installed successfully. Jan
OK. I spent last night acquiring darks. My first 15-20 30m darks were fine and then the ADU's started dropping. Eventually it dropped to below 1000. As well, the timestamps on many of the files were wrong. Half were stamped 7:13 am and half 7:12am. Any clues to what this could be? Thanks, Adam
I used Sequence Generator Pro, but I'm also trying CCDOps now. How do I autosave the files in CCDOps?
