Good morning, I'm part of a team setting up my community college's first telescope (Televue refractor on a Celestron AVX mount, run by an HP laptop running Windows10 32-bit, STT 8300 camera and I *think* an FW8-8300 filter wheel, not yet installed), gearing up for the eclipse. We were bench-testing our gear in a lab this weekend, hoping for first-light Saturday or Sunday night, but have been unable to get anything from the camera. Correction: We got our two images out of the camera, and after that, nada. Now we get nothing but black using CCDOPS, whether we try using the 'grab' function or 'focus mode.' Since we were in a lit lab, exposure time shouldn't have been a factor. Still black, even at the default 1-second. 'Dark frame' is turned off, and since the filter wheel isn't yet installed, that can't be an issue. The SBIG shows up in our Device Manager, CCDOPS shows a connection, and the Driver Checker shows a connection. I was about to update the camera firmware when I saw the warning, and backed off, not sure if that would solve our problem or not and unwilling to brick the device if I was wrong. We downloaded a trial for Sequence Generator Pro, instead, to try and decide if it was a hardware issue or a software issue (or a 'dumb user' issue!), and it gives us the precise opposite problem--pure white, even after reducing the exposure time. I'm guessing that the CCD is too sensitive to operate in normal light conditions like in a lab, even with the reduced exposure time, but confirmation on that would be helpful. It also doesn't solve our issue with CCDOPS. I don't have access to the hardware or the laptop we're running it with at this moment, but is there something I can try when I get to the lab tomorrow morning? We're all kinda making this up as we go, none of us have any experience with this kind of rig and my Dobsonian experience is, needless to say, mostly useless here! Any help would be great!
Steven, If you are trying to test it in lighted room conditions its probably over saturated. Try covering the scope and cut off the lights in the room. You should get proper results. If you still have issues you can call me.
