I just received a shipping advice from Bintel, and my credit card has been charged the exact amount of the ASI1600MM-Cool, looks like it is on its way to my door. And the pre-order price is what I was charged.
I know the ZWO shipment arrived on Thursday so they must be getting them out asap, and there seem to be enough in the shipment that I can get mine.
In other good news, the Fedex tracking on the QHY filter wheel shows it has arrived in Australia. I already have any T-thread spacers I might need.
Looks like I might be ready to put this camera to a test by middle of next week! Exciting. Just in time for the June new moon period.
In other news re this camera, there is a new thread on CN looking at Sub exposure durations for the ASI1600:
for interest, there has been a lot of consternation from people visually inspecting the darks from some of the cooled ZWO CMOS cameras and deciding that the relatively high levels of signal = high dark current. An explanation of the mechanism that introduces a pedestal (not dark current and no shot noise) in these cameras has been posted on the ZWO user group forum. http://zwoug.org/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=6204&start=30
" it turns out the effect you have finally identified looks like what is called clock feedthrough: when you retrieve your data from each pixel read transistor swithes and a parasitic charge is transferred from gate to drain which offset the ouput voltage, and it has no shot noise and is about the same over the chip. the way to make sure it is true is to measure the evolution of the shot noise with exposure time. You can infer the dark current from the shot noise as well to know the real dark current. Pierre"
Seems that the pedestal level has some dependence on the integration time, but it appears to be repeatable, so can calibrate out. Not sure how applicable this is to the 1600, but worth keeping in mind, since dark scaling may be a problem.
My ASI1600MM-Cool arrived today an hour after the QHY CFW2-S filter wheel. Now to put them together and start doing some testing. First I have to reconfigure the filter wheel for USB operation, and sort out the thread connections.
Photos attached.
My ASI1600MM-Cool arrived today an hour after the QHY CFW2-S filter wheel. Now to put them together and start doing some testing. First I have to reconfigure the filter wheel for USB operation, and sort out the thread connections.
Photos attached.
If you need some information on doing this (configuring to USB) just let me know and I'll forward you a document
Thanks guys. Colin they (Cyclops Optics in Hong Kong) have already configured it for usb for me. When i was chatting to their helpline about the order they asked me about the camera i would be using and how i would control. When i opened the plastic housing this afternoon to change the jumper for usb, i found it was already setup by them. Pretty good sevice i think. I have a copy of the manual as well. Those little spacers and screws are confusing but it turned out all i needed was the 2mm screws and its spacer for my Baader filters.
I have the camera and filter wheel joined up now. The distance from the rear of the T-adaptor to the sensor is under 55mm, so my scope focuser setup for the old DSLR will still work perfectly. I don't particularly like the long screws that they supplied with the filter wheel for the clamp but they will do for now. At least with that setup I can separate them easily. I might power it up tonight, or at least see if I can get the wheel to operate.
I have to admit, I am not a huge fan of those screw things either but at this stage, that is how I have my QHY22 connected to it. I did really like that I could connect the QHY9 directly to the CFW, they would be bolted together to be flexure free, cannot say the same about the QHY22 sadly :/
Looking forward to seeing how that camera performs!
Well yes Dunk it is a wonderful clear night with the Full Moon just rising! I don't think I am ready for imaging just yet, I have not even powered it up yet. I need to work out the drivers, and the wheel operation. Probably do some darks first so I can get a handle on controlling it.
BTW, I have torn the wheel apart to remove the universal camera adaptor QHY put on the camera side, and now have the ASI screwed directly to the wheel (yes there is just enough M42 thread to do that). I have a spacer on the scope side to prevent the T-Adaptor from getting near the filter lock screws, its tight but seems ok. Filters are loaded, test soon.
New config photos below. The new distance from the back of the T-Adaptor t the sensor is under 30mm. I have plenty of backfocus range on all my scopes so its not a problem, and if it was I could stick a t-thread spacer behind the scope adaptor. I prefer the filter to be as close to the sensor as possible, but really vignetting is not a problem with 36mm filters in front of this sensor. The guys on CN running small filters will have to watch it.
New Config below.
Thanks Greg. I have installed all the drivers (I think). Powered the camera up, using my trusty 12V 6AH AC adaptor that I have been using to run my DSLR cooling system. The ASI only needs 2amps but it should not hurt to have more available, it will use what it can handle. I think I had seen a post on CN by Jon Rista claiming that he thought it might need more amps (than 2) in a warm climate to hold a delta T of -40C.
Started up Sharpcap and it raced away stacking AVI frames before I knew what was going on, how do you stop this thing. I finally slowed it down to one every 30 seconds. Turned the cooling controls on and can report that from an ambient room of +21C, it managed to get down to -22C actual sensor temp reported, so a Delta T of -41C which I think is pretty good. It did take awhile to get the last five degrees but that's ok.
Then I tried to get the filter wheel to work, but that's a problem. ASCOM shows it, and I seem to be able to configure it. I have the USB driver, and the wheel comes to life and does what looks like a start up spin cycle. Sharpcap doesn't seem to control wheels, so I tried APT which I have as well, and it says it connects but doesn't do anything.
Anyone have a simple wheel control app that they can recommend - one I don't have to spend money on?
When you connect to the ASCOM Driver you need to set it up, connect to the filter wheel via a COM link, choose the CFW-2 and then set up the filter positions.
Hmmm... The moment the filter wheel gets power it does its spin thing to get to filter position 1. I have two different ASCOM Drivers that work, one is the USB and the other is a RS-232 Serial that also works. Both appear stable, you could give the other one a shot.
Glen, I don't a usb filter wheel (yet) but I think in APT you can set the filter type for it to shoot when create a plan. You also need to assign the filter labels to the positions in APT Settings.
I have both those drivers Colin. Dunk APT never gets that far, it fails to connect to the wheel. I might try deleting the QHY drivers and reinstalling. I would be happy with simple Audrino control, i saw an example online and the code is free.
I have everything working now. I decided to go with the recommended control app (from CN) and have installed SGP. Lo and behold it had no problems at all with the filter wheel, which is all setup and cycles through all the filters. I like that fact that the colours displayed by the wheel when I select a NB filter match what I would normally assign to those narrowband filters. So I have been running desk top darks and playing around with temperature control in SGP. I prefer the Temp Control in Sharpcap but can't have everything I suppose, SGP temp control works but a bit confusing compared to the sliders in Sharpcap. But it does have cool down and warm up periods. SGP does it all but in a different way to what I am used to, but I will pick it all up.
Guess I will have to pay for SGP in 45 days but it is not that costly at $99 (USD).
It's ashame that there is not a single app that provides the necessary planetary and DSO capture processing. So Sharpcap for planetary and SGP for DSOs. Just about ready to put this gear on a scope.
been hoping a really low read noise camera would become available before I expired - and it has woohoo!! - just made it. Now to see if the theory works.