#621  
Old 25-02-2017, 08:14 AM
pat30 (Patrice)
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With the bad weather this evening I tested the average values according to the temperature, contrary to what I thought, the variation is not huge, the curve is even surprising, I let you judge for yourself !

I allow myself to put a test that I carried out on the cooling during the reading of the image.
The picture on the left shows a Bias,"cooling off" during playback and right "cooling on".

These are 2 Bias of 0.001 sec, the StdDev for the picture without is 14.86 and with 20.66.

It is recommended to turn off the TEC during playback, I will try to filter to see if this improves things.

http://www.webastro.net/upload/image...1487881187.jpg

Last edited by pat30; 25-02-2017 at 04:57 PM.
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  #622  
Old 25-02-2017, 06:41 PM
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Pat, I saw the two bias images with cooling off/on yesterday and I am not sure what to make out of it

The cooling stays on or off during the duration of the whole frame reading, it does not get switched. From that point of view there should be no noise.
Can you try using a different power supply? Perhaps when it is loaded (cooling on) it puts out more noise? Or can you ask someone else with a working cooling to do the same test and report.

Also there seems to be a pattern in the right image, which, again, I cannot explain The frames are read line by line but the pattern seems to follow in rows as well. This would indicate that the sensor itself was affected by whatever the source of "noise" is.

Interesting...
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  #623  
Old 25-02-2017, 07:16 PM
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ASCOM compliance:

Guys, I will need some opinions on this as this is potentially a change in the workflow. At the moment our driver is not ASCOM compliant. The settings window that opens when you connect to the camera (in APT for example) should not exist.

At the moment:
1. Saving of settings does not work. They have to be reentered every time the imaging software is started.
2. ASCOM says that the driver must open only one window for settings. That window can be reached via options when connecting to the camera. At the moment it looks like in the attachment and does nothing useful unless you are debugging the software (the "Trace on" option).
3. As far as I can see, in the normal operation of the camera the settings are set once and probably never changed. There is no need to have this window open at all times.


I want to move all settings to the correct window.
With the change:
1. Settings will be automatically saved and restored when the imaging program is opened
2. We will be ASCOM compliant
3. We can use the Cam86_view software to setup the gain/offset etc. I can modify this software as well if people have ideas how to improve it.
4. The new settings window will not open automatically and will require few mouse clicks to get to, but in reality we should almost never need to get to it.

If you have an opinion about this please post here and let me know.
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  #624  
Old 25-02-2017, 11:26 PM
N_DD
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Hi luka,

seems reasonable: usually you want to set the gain and offset once, then keep the settings for your camera. The only occasion one would need to change them is if bin 2x2 is used, but I am not sure if binning makes sense for a one-shoot color CCD.
BTW, what does "mono" means in your current ASCOM driver?

Nico
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  #625  
Old 26-02-2017, 12:14 AM
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Hi Nico,

Ticking the mono box makes the ASCOM driver report the camera sensor as mono to the imaging software. Few people have removed the Bayer matrix from their sensors so they are using a true mono camera. I have done this and have two cameras, one mono and one in colour.

However, I don't think the mono option does much at the moment:
1. All saved fits files contain raw data and have to be Debayered later for colour sensors. So it does not make any difference here.
2. In APT for image previews you can select if you want to use a mono sensor or not. So APT is not likely using the information from the driver anyway. However, the other imaging software may behave differently so the driver operation should be correct.
3. If the imaging software is using this information, it is likely to read it from the driver on startup. Ticking the box in the options after everything has started would likely not have any effect. Moving the options to where they belong, as I am proposing, would help with this.
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  #626  
Old 26-02-2017, 01:53 AM
pat30 (Patrice)
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After some research, it is my regulator for the TEC that is at the origin of the noise .

Luka, at home the parameters are well saved, I do not need to put them every time, still a strange thing
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  #627  
Old 27-02-2017, 09:24 PM
N_DD
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Hi luka,

thanks for the explanation.
I could not reproduce the issue even powering the camera with my field battery, so I assume it was either a temporary glitch, or something not camera related which I will need to investigate.
I have taken some test darks and biases, cooling my camera at 0 C, and the result can be found here.
Now if I just had some clear sky...
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  #628  
Old 27-02-2017, 09:43 PM
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Nico, as a possible explanation, I saw star trails after doing exposure straight after slewing which were caused by backlash in the RA drive. It was visible only after slewing east as the motor had to catch up to the backlash. It was not visible after slewing west. Keep in mind that my mount is not that great...

Any objections to removing the option to do bias-before-exposure from the driver? It is probably just adding about 2s to each exposure without any effect. The sensor clearing in the firmware seems to be doing adequate job.
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  #629  
Old 27-02-2017, 10:56 PM
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Hi luka,

maybe you are right, although I am pretty sure I was seeing some very long trails...
If you don't mind, could you leave the option in the ASCOM driver? If one does not need it should just be left unchecked, I think it is not bothering too much...

Thanks,

Nicola
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  #630  
Old 27-02-2017, 11:23 PM
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Will do Nico. I will change the default exposure time before the function is activated from 10s to something large so it does not triggered unless people intentionally switch it on.

Ryan, how are you going with parts for your camera?
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  #631  
Old 28-02-2017, 04:34 AM
pat30 (Patrice)
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Luka, have you seen the latest firmware from Rome, the cooling starts at 60%, not at 0 as now so the cooling will be faster, I think this is very good option + support for humidity sensor !

On this subject, it is possible to have a setting for the power maximum of the TEC ?

Last edited by pat30; 28-02-2017 at 06:43 AM.
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  #632  
Old 28-02-2017, 07:40 AM
gehelem (Gilles)
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Hi
I made a quick test with dht22 : it seems ok
Don't know for 60% threshold as my tec is directly plugged on my power supply to make tests
Gilles
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  #633  
Old 28-02-2017, 12:39 PM
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One thing to note, ASCOM does not support the humidity sensors inside cameras so the humidity can be read only from the cam86_view software. There is nothing we can do as it is not part of the standard.

I will need to get the source code updates from Grim to add them to our firmware...

I found several bugs in our ASCOM driver, working on them. Binning is actually completely broken but luckily APT is "smart enough" to work around the bugs.
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  #634  
Old 28-02-2017, 05:25 PM
rsevs3 (Ryan)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luka View Post
Will do Nico. I will change the default exposure time before the function is activated from 10s to something large so it does not triggered unless people intentionally switch it on.

Ryan, how are you going with parts for your camera?
Still lurking, but nothing to contribute with you guys fault finding. Yet I have been busy tying up a few loose ends on other projects before I dive into this one.

I have the ebay parts ordered. I had a D70 arrive yesterday, advertised as working condition but worn. So sensor should still be good. Will probably order another one or two, one for debayering and one for a oops situation.

I'm thinking I might just do a complete order of parts minus the bulk parts you have. The expensive parts it looks like I don't have any of the specific items. That way I can get the ball rolling without having to sort every single item I have. I have been slowly trying to enter them into partsbox.io to see if it is of use.
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  #635  
Old 28-02-2017, 11:23 PM
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I made some MAJOR changes to our ASCOM driver. Probably 1/3 of the driver code was modified in some way.
1. I fixed the binning bug. Binning never worked properly but whoever wrote APT was smart enough not to trust the driver and worked around it. Most likely nobody is using binning as they don't have mono sensors.

2. I moved all settings to an ASCOM compliant properties page.

3. I made the settings accessible from the imaging software via settings button (in APT look at bottom right corner). This will pop up a (limited) properties window similar to what we had, but done in a completely different way and ASCOM compliant.

4. Numerous ASCOM improvements and small bug fixes. Too many to list.

5. Finally, the ASCOM conformance checker passes with:
No errors, warnings or issues found: your driver passes ASCOM validation!!

Believe it or not, but the ASCOM simulator drivers do not pass the conformance checker without issues!!!


The new driver version 0.5L is in the usual spot and the source code is on our GD. No updates are needed to our firmware (Grim's new firmware will not work).

Note that Grim released a new firmware today which has humidity measurements and improved cooling. We don't have source code for this yet but once released I will combine Grim's and my improvements.


PLEASE TEST everything. This was a big change and I am finally close to being happy how things are done.
Let me know of any bugs or ideas for improvement.



Ryan, debayering will most lead to the oops situation
If you want a good "several-nights-horror-reading" about debayering have a look here
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  #636  
Old 02-03-2017, 05:55 AM
pat30 (Patrice)
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Luka,
On the new driver the speed control does not work, I have several images with adjustments on each side but it remains identical (see pictures)

Click image for larger version

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Click image for larger version

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Do others have the problem ?
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  #637  
Old 02-03-2017, 07:41 AM
gehelem (Gilles)
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Hi, thank you very much Luka, great work !
I can't test with my actual setup, i'm in hardware ATM. I will test your driver ASAP.

I've added 2 articles on our site :
Gilles.
(btw : what is your opinion of translation module i've added ? Is it usefull/accurate ?
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  #638  
Old 02-03-2017, 12:46 PM
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Patrice, thank you for doing the tests. I will fix the bug. Anything else you noticed?

Also Grim sent me the source code changes for the humidity and the improved cooling. I will incorporate the changes to our software. I also realised that we can display humidity in our settings window. Ascom/imaging software does not support it but we can display whatever we want in our window.

Grim also commented that 60% of cooling to start may be too strong for some cases. For example, if you want to go from 25C to 20C the temperature will go below 20C before recovering. I think I may have a smart solution for this...

I am expecting one more version to be released for testing and debugging and we will probably be ready to release the final version and the source code then


Gilles, I very much liked your article about the wiring. I never though the heat conduction in wires can have such effect. Very enlightening.

The translations work well, depending on the content but usually I can figure out what is going on. I noticed few interesting things:
1. The labels in images are of course not translated. Nothing can be done about this but it can make the understanding difficult at times. For example, I had to look at images to understand the difference between "cables pas enroulés" and "cables enroulés".
2. Different languages are translated differently. The German translation of the wiring article was better than English (or Croatian).

I also noticed a small "bug", clicking on flags to select a language does not refresh the language in the selection box. For example, pick French in the selection box and then click on the English flag. The whole page will be in English but the selection box will still show French. But otherwise, the translation is a very, very useful tool. Thank you for doing it.


I forgot to mention that the v0.5L of the driver has tooltips in settings. If you hover the mouse over a particular element it will tell you what its function is.
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  #639  
Old 02-03-2017, 03:27 PM
pat30 (Patrice)
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Nothing else, the rest works (about 500 Bias captured).


The faster cooling will be a good thing on my model 60% is well (you must try), I installed yesterday at the break of lunch for tested the Rome version.
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  #640  
Old 02-03-2017, 03:33 PM
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Working on the code now. I also want to make 60% adjustable so if people want to go from 25C to 20C they can reduce this number. Or cool down the camera starting with 100% if they desire...

Also I am thinking of removing the scroll-bars for offset/gain/reading time. Considering we already have the scroll boxes, the scroll bars don't really add much functionality but take up lots of space. Not sure.
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