Some questions about an ST402ME : The SBIG drivers are up to date as is the Windows 10 system. When trying to update firmware via the DriverUpdate utility it finds the camera but says "camera detected does not have firmware". Does the firmware get loaded by the driver at startup? The images appear to have a large offset. For example, a dark frame at -20C, at 0.002 second exp has a average BL of 1100. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Pm0_TBWnqDGFRCwG0XQZFCfiPNYE46Pl Also, every 21 rows has some hot pixels. Camera Info: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1co4O9MXTGUN5uIoTgIhNV8NC9X9hHIn6 Is this device performing within specs? Tim
Yes this vintage of camera loads the firmware at startup. This sort of line artefact might be caused by delays on the computer side. If the download has to pause extra dark current builds up in the readout register. Please try running the camera in CCDOPS and see if it does the same thing.
Hi Doug Thanks for your expert advise. Turns out it was the USB link at the laptop. The laptop should handle the transfer speed no problem so something is wrong in their (Lenova) driver or perhaps a hardware problem. Using a different PC, the image data looks good. Going a step further and using a dark frame, the result is an image as expected. FYI: I tried a Raspberry Pi 4 using VirtualHere USB s/w (optimized for the Pi) and the laptop still caused the artifacts. The desktop PC works well with VirtualHere and the ST402ME as well as the SLT-11000. The Pi4 is mounted on the scope so wiring to the focuser and camera is greatly reduced. The scope/camera/Pi combo can be setup./torn down quickly. Many Thanks! Tim
Tim - tips that might help you get it going on your laptop: Make sure there is no USB Power Management - Selective Suspend going on. Windows and some other OSes put the USB hubs, USB root hubs, some PCIe devices, and some FTDIchip or other USB to RS232 adapters to sleep - even when they are actually in use. Make sure Windows is NOT going to turn things off: There are variations on each USB device's power management tab. Also, USBView is a handy MSFT utility that will show you which devices are on which USB bus. For the STL, make sure it is on as dedicated a port as possible; you don't want multiple devices running at different speeds or interrupting the camera, as it doesnt have a frame buffer - it has to blast all the data in without interruptions from things like a mouse, mount, or other things.
Hi Collin Thanks for the tips and the great details on what to check. Beg to report it didn't help although USB was set in the sleep/power save mode. There is something messed up in the laptop link as it takes about 4x longer to download an image Vs. the laptop. I thought that was the camera side but it's not. I have an SDR radio that drops the network connection when using a USB to ethernet dongle and I suspect your tips will sure this. It's great to be at the scope with laptop running imaging, guiding and listening to distant AM radio stations via a bluetooth headset. For now, the workstation + Pi4 setup is working well so will go that route. The workstation is a 20 core Intel with 128GB Ram with 64GB dedicated to the OS (disk swap turned off) and 64 GB of RAM simulating a disk. Should any "real" disk activity be required ot goes to SSDs. Maxim DL 6 is a great program and works well in that environment. Thanks Again.... Tim
== S-0-L-V-E-D == In case someone has a similar problem as the subject of this thread, turns out the problem was not in the USB. A post on some other thread (by Collin) mentioned to be sure the debug flags were off. Going to the DriverChecker, there were several flags set. With these off, the transfer speed goes from several seconds to a fraction of a second. The image artifacts are gone.
