QHY183c m8

[Peter Ward]

This is new territory for yours truly. Inexpensive OSC imaging with a small telescope from the 'burbs.:eyepop:

I was quite keen to tinker with my freshly minted QHY183C camera...and a sucker hole in the clouds last night let me do just that :).

QHY deserve some roses and unfortunately some brick bats as well.

Cons: The camera does not function with a 5m USB3 cable. Only the supplied 2m and my own 3m cables worked. Documentation is very poor.
No mechanical shutter. Software a joke, but the drivers (including ASCOM) are very robust.

I tinkered with Sharpcap, but it crashed so many times I gave up. MaxIm control however was bullet-proof.

Pros: Really well priced. Remarkably sensitive and noise free.. Downloads in the blink of an eye. Compact.
Remarkable resolution . Well made. When it worked, live-stack with Sharpcap was fun to watch...a colour image developed beautifully within minutes.

Anyway, enough of my mini-review.

First light image here (http://www.atscope.com.au/BRO/gallery477.html)

[LewisM]

I've been saying it for YEARS - an OSC on a small(ish) refractor in suburbia works JUST fine, without the need for filters of any kind - just remove the LP gradients etc in PI (VERY easy).

I found LP filters WAY more detrimental than useful, and I have LP probably surpassing suburban Sydney levels (stick your rig next to YSSY 19R and we'll be similar :lol:)

I never could get a single QHY camera - irrespective of type - to be recognised consistently on any of my systems, so I gave up. SX on the other hand just plug and play all day, same as SBIG.

[Peter Ward]

Where's YSSY 19R?? :) (07/25 16LR/34LR ;) )

I had nil driver problems with the QHY. I tired the QHY163C and QHY183C and they both connected out of the box with Win10 and X64 systems

Sharpcap is not supplied by QHY, so can't blame them for shortcomings there, both cameras worked flawlessly with MaximCCD

Have to say it's a lot of fun.

Nothing to register, the data literally races out of the camera compared to my STX16803.....

Also de-bayering does not give quite as accurate colours as mono with RGB filters, but you can only just pick it, plus I haven't explored all the debayering options yet.

[leon]

You call this tinkering Peter, gees I wish i could just tinker around and end up with that result.
Nicely captured,

Leon

[Atmos]

Officially moving to the CMOS dark side ;) The stowaway resolves quite well.
There isn't many CMOS cameras that have a mechanical shutter as they have an electronic curtain shutter or something to that effect. Could be useful for darks but that's about it.

I've enjoyed the few QHY cameras I've had issues with them on my MacBook Pro running Parallels; lots of crashes. They're been pretty stable on Bootcamp though but it is enough for me to consider staying with ASI as I do prefer Parallels over Bootcamp.

[LewisM]

16...19... what's 30° to Tiger Airways? :lol:

[Nacks]

Very seriously close to buying this camera. Seems good for the price, which is what I can only afford atm. Few months down the track, I possibly/will/maybe go the mono/filter way ;)



This image is well done, so I think it has helped me to decide to buy the 183C.

[gregbradley]

An impressive result and nice first light? for the Stowaway.
Lovely sharp optics and round stars to the corners.

Yes these CMOS are compelling. Backside illuminated sensors used to be $30,000 now they are quite cheap.

It would be handy to have the mono and use it for luminance and the colour for the RGB.

Greg.

[alpal]

Hi Peter,
nice pic.


Many USB cables won't work if they are 5 m long.
I've seen it on many different devices in my job.


Also - with my QHY9-M - if I use fast download speed it
increases the read noise by a factor of 4.

The software should have had a warning on it because I had
to find out the hard way -
although later I found that out inside the instruction manual.
So - always use slow download but I don't know
if it's true for your camera?
It's easy enough to find out by testing in the 2 different modes.





cheers
Allan

[Peter Ward]

Gee...this was a while back...

I've since solve the USB3.0 Com issues with a StarTech Active USB 3.0 USB-A to USB-B Cable. (tried several other so-called "active" cables...a waste of time and money :( )

The StarTech's were not too badly priced on Amazon (read about $120) and work very well.

As a result the most software that will run the camera is now stable and the maximum frame rates have increased significantly.

If the weather co-operates :lol: I'll likely give the 183C a bit more of a workout next new moon...we shall see!

[alpal]

Hi Peter,
at least you've solved it but still a test would be interesting between
low & high speed readout - if it's available in those 2 modes?


I attach a pic of my QHY9-M.
With 16 bit there are 65,536 levels and the test was done indoors as a dark frame.

You can see on the X axis that on low speed the peak noise was 1020
out of 65,536 levels.
On high speed it was 4215 peak noise out of 65,536 levels.


The background noise is normally about 4,000 to 5,000 units
so the induced noise was as great as the light pollution noise
when used on high speed!





cheers
Allan

[ChrisV]

Nice Peter. OSC rules! It is difficult though. While you can run a ruler through LP with gradient removal, you can't get rid of the associated noise

[Slawomir]

Very pleasing result for such short exposure. There is a bit of a tilt - and I only mention it as I am in a process of adjusting imaging train myself after changing focuser ,so I look for it.

[rustigsmed]

thanks for the cable tip - have been having issues with my qhy163m - but thought it was drivers... and a lovely lagoon, esp for such short exposure time :thumbsup: