Side-by-side setup with ASiair gear

[pmrid (Peter)]

I’ve read the “no dithering” warnings. I reckon I can afford to drop 20% or so of subs if that’s the price. So now the question is controlling a second camera. I only need one guide camera and ccd of course so the mount control, guiding, focus and No.1 ccd imaging can all be controlled through one Asiair. But I expect I’ll need a second ASiair going to control the No.2 ccd.

Any ideas?

[Drac0 (Mark)]

But I expect I’ll need a second ASiair going to control the No.2 ccd

Correct. A number of people have made the request for multiple camera support on the ASIAir but sadly it appears ZWO have no intention of adding it. It's one reason I prefer a laptop or mini pc.

Cheers.
Mark

[pmrid (Peter)]

Originally Posted by Drac0

Correct. A number of people have made the request for multiple camera support on the ASIAir but sadly it appears ZWO have no intention of adding it. It's one reason I prefer a laptop or mini pc.

Cheers.
Mark

And yet, I still wonder whether a tethered PC or whatever can manage dithering 2 cameras simultaneously. What software offers that feature? I don’t know of any.

[JA]

Originally Posted by pmrid

And yet, I still wonder whether a tethered PC or whatever can manage dithering 2 cameras simultaneously. What software offers that feature? I don’t know of any.

Hi Peter,

Whilst i don't use it I believe NINA offers multi camera support. See NINA Youtube with Cuiv

I too have thought on the same problem of multi camera support and whilst I know it can't be done on the ASIair for astrocams, I believe it might be possible to do so on multiple DSLRs and controlled by ONE ASI Air, with dithering, given the nature of the simple control signal and the distributed data storage. Still untested.

Best
JA

[Drac0 (Mark)]

And yet, I still wonder whether a tethered PC or whatever can manage dithering 2 cameras simultaneously. What software offers that feature? I don’t know of any.

I use APT which allows this - you can set up a number of cameras by running multiple sessions (default is 2 with initial install, but easy to create more), set one as the server, the others as clients & co-ordinate the dithering between different length exposures in a couple of different ways. Works well.

For example:
You have one camera doing 45 second exposures & another doing 5 minutes exposures. You can do either both do one image & dither together after the longer exposure finishes. Or, a better way to me, is set the shorter exposures to do as many as it can before the long exposure finishes then both dither together. In the case of the 45/300 setup, the 45 second one would take half a dozen images while the 300 second does one image, then both would dither together. The only real downside of this is that the shorter exposures get less dithering based on how many can be done while the longer exposure is going. A shorter exposure of a bit less than half the long exposure, say 120sec with 300sec, does very well.


Cheers,
Mark

[PRejto (Peter)]

If you want full control over two cameras, including the ability to dither, you can check out this software developed for me by Tom How. You can use two copies of TheSkyX running on the same computer:

http://astro.neutral.org/software/mu...t-TheSkyX.html

Peter

ATT article I wrote on dual scope setup

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwR...48-cA4vRZzNKsw

[pmrid (Peter)]

For the moment, I have set up 2 refractors side-by-side each with its own ASiair Plus and each running separate CCDs ( a ASI1600MM Pro with NB filters on a SharpStar 94EDPH and a ASI533MC with an Optalong L-enhance filter) on a SkyRover 72ED. The mount and guiding are controlled with one ASiair (the1600MM) and both CCDs have their own EAF. I have disabled dithering for now, to see what the price may be in added noise. To partially offset, I plan to run the 2 coolers at -20C rather than my normal -10.

So I can run both CCDs simultaneously. I have already identified one drawback to that - the 2 CCDs have different fields of view. The 1600 is wide enough to get M8 and M20 in frame while the 533 points at a spot in between the 2. Bugger!

The bureau suggests the weather may clear in a week or so but by then the moon will be about 2/3 and growing. Still, it should be OK for testing this setup.

More to follow.

[JA]

Originally Posted by pmrid

For the moment, I have set up 2 refractors side-by-side each with its own ASiair Plus and each running separate CCDs ( a ASI1600MM Pro with NB filters on a SharpStar 94EDPH and a ASI533MC with an Optalong L-enhance filter) on a SkyRover 72ED. The mount and guiding are controlled with one ASiair (the1600MM) and both CCDs have their own EAF. I have disabled dithering for now, to see what the price may be in added noise. To partially offset, I plan to run the 2 coolers at -20C rather than my normal -10.

Hi Peter,

Perhaps consider doing a back to back trial on just one scope of Dithering versus No-Dithering, using darks and on a relatively bright target to see the magnitude of the difference and therefore whether you then think it's worth implementing dither or possibly implement your idea to turn up the cooling for some improvement.

Best
JA