Which ZWO camera?

[xanthic]

Sorry, not going to be able to make it tonight. I don't know if OSC cams are as good as mono for guiding. My gut feeling is not, but maybe someone can offer some advice?

[Teslar]

I have the IMOGH the chip is tiny and difficult to get the target on it. I've just bought a bright star to help with that also had fogging problems

[+RonC]

Made the right choice then Tom 

I won't sell the QHY5 till I've tried guiding with the 120MC though!

 

Ron

[red dwalf]

if you get any problems with guiding using the asi camera Ron give me a shout, when the camera arrives don`t use the disc, all the new drivers are on there website, also the newer versions of sharpcap 2 and firecapture are better downloaded from there websites, you need to download the camera driver for your model, the sdk program and the ascom program, it tells you on the website the order to download and open them in, camera driver first of course.

also i did`nt set up the camera for guiding as they suggest on the zwo website, i set it up in PHD 1.14 as a ascom camera exactly the same as i did with the atik titan and it works a treat.

[+RonC]

OK Rob thanks, will do. I downloaded and printed off the manual yesterday, interesting read! 

[Al.Grant]

Just done a very quick indoor test using FireCapture to check fps with ZWO120mm plugged direct to laptop (usb2) using the supplied cable compared to fps when connected with a 20m active usb cable.

 

Checked all available resolutions using ROI and the fps was the same for both cables. No settings changed between tests. 

Going to repeat this with the powered hub in the line, once with the power on and again with the power off.

Then I'll run again with other equipment plugged into the hub.

 

I have no real idea what fps others get or what I should be expecting, but what I got ranged from 1280x960 = 13.7fps  to 320x240 = 200fps.  

But as you'd expect it's total image size, so just dropping down one level on the list doesn't automatically mean more fps

 

For example 1280x400 gives 32fps (1280x400=512,000), faster than 1024x768 giving 21fps  (1024x768=786,432)

 

Might then run through the same with SharpCap2

 

=========== Edit ============

Just run through with the 20m active USB cable and powered Hub (from Astronomiser) - and still getting same fps.

I expect things will drop when I add more equipment to the hub and more data starts running over the cable

==========================

 

 

Al

Edited April 28, 2014 by Al.Grant

[red dwalf]

interesting Alistair, i`m sure it`s my ports on the obsy desktop pc that don`t like the camera, supposed to be usb 2, everything else works fine.

your frame rates look to be about right, there is also a setting in firecapture that lets you higher and lower the usb traffic.

[Al.Grant]

Had FireCapture freeze a couple of times when switching ROI settings - then realised that I was still on ver 2.2 (desktop shortcut still pointing to old install).

 

Just tried again with ver 2.3, 20m usb and powered hub with HEQ5 tracking via Stellarium and getting faster fps rates for all resolutions.

 

Now I need some clear skies so I can get actually try using this thing :-)