Diffraction, I am the proud owner of two SBIG STF-8300M cameras. I bought a second one, used, in case my primary one failed in the field or at a star party. Well, my primary one did fail! I was getting horizontal bands when imaging in Sequence Generator Pro (SGP) (image attached). It came from out of no where. The recommended solution online was to make sure the latest drivers and firmware are installed. I work in IT, so I have the guts to update the firmware. It appeared to work, but then I began to get intermittent Vertical Lines (image attached). Now, the Vertical Lines are permanent. I confirmed with CCDOps (image attached). One thing that might help trouble shoot is after I performed the upgrades, SGP took the camera temperature to -40 Degrees a few times without me noticing even when I had it set to -20. Troubleshooting Technicals: - Windows 10, 64 bit - CCDOps 5.66 Build 1-NT - SGP SGP v 3.0.3.169 - sbigudrv.dll 4.99 Build 6 - sbigu64.sys 2.41.0.1338 - stf-8300usb.bf2 2.63 - stf-8300ga.bf2 2.25 Images of screenshots and versions attached. I hope it isn't a brick! Please advise. Sincerely, John Sojka Jr.
Hi John, you'll need to connect with @Bill our service expert. You can email him: bill (at) sbig (dot) com
Could you post some FITS images showing the two phenomenon? It's hard to tell anything from a screen shot.
Gentlemen, Thank you for the prompt response! Attached are the .fits files (I should have known better). I zipped them because of their size. Just to help diagnose the problem; I began getting intermittent horizontal bands; 1/3 of my 7.5 min subs (lights and darks). I upgraded the drivers and firmware and began getting intermittent hard vertical lines. Now the vertical lines are permanent. The only other significant changes worth mentioning are I turned off "High Speed Download" in SGP, and after the updates, my temperature was often going to -40 instead of stopping at -20. I am prepared to send in my camera if this is not a software issue or simple fix. Thank you for your assistance.
The horizontal lines are weird. Not a normal symptom. Looks like an intermittent problem happening on-and-off during readout. The vertical bands suggest the CCD clock voltages are messed up. (That can also happen if the sensor is excessively oversaturated with light... but I doubt that is the case here.) My best guess is that one of the internal power supplies in the camera has failed. The horizontal lines were caused by it starting to fail intermittently, and then when it completely failed the vertical bands resulted. Please contact @Bill at SBIG Service & Repair. bill at sbig dot com
Thanks Gentlemen, I contacted Bill. After repair, I will post the solution in case someone else experiences the same thing. Respectfully, John
