Clarity on gain used in file naming and sequence options

Sequence Generator
1

Hi, I’m using an ASI CMOS camera with SGP in an ascom setup and am wondering about the gain settings and which ones are valid and which ones are not.
There seem to be many different places to set gain, and it’s a bit unclear to me which ones actually work and which ones do not.

The ZWO camera settings dialog can set gain and offset. But setting things here does not allow them to show up in the file naming dialog. It seems that neither gain or offset parameters doesn’t pass from ASCOM to the SGP software. I am thinking that this is the place I should be setting gain and offset. I either use the little wrench on the sequence page next to the camera, or on the control panel page. The same dialog comes up for me.

But then there are other places in SGP to set gain, such as the event settings dialog or control panel dialog for the camera, under the gain/binning settings. I can set gain but not offset in these other places. These settings seem to be SGP parameters as they do pass to the file naming, but wondering whether they actually change the camera settings or not, or are they just parameters in SGP not being passed anywhere?

Finally, in the FITs headers. What sets these parameters? Do they represent camera settings or just parameter settings which may or may not be what the camera is set to?

Thanks,
Terri

2

This should be addressed with the latest SGP release a couple of days ago.

It should be what the camera is set to. It is at least what we told the camera to set to but we do not read the data back out of the camera to verify.

As far as where to set gain/offset there are 3 options which are applied in the following order:

  • Event - In the event settings. - Use this if you want to vary the gain/offset for every event
  • Sequence - In the control panel for the camera. - Use this if you want to setup multiple profiles with different gains/offsets
  • Camera - In the settings for the camera. - Use this as a fail over when no other things are set.

Thanks,
Jared

3

The ZWO camera settings dialog can set gain and offset. But setting things here does not allow them to show up in the file naming dialog. It seems that neither gain or offset parameters doesn’t pass from ASCOM to the SGP software.

This should be addressed with the latest SGP release a couple of days ago.

theresamarie1:
Hi Jared, I’ve installed the .169. version and it does not pass camera settings from the ASCOM settings to the filename. The only way I could get it to pass settings is to use the sequence settings dialog, and that gets passed. But that leads me to my next question(s).

In your response on the ordering of gain settings (Event, Sequence, Camera), does this imply a priority? In other words, if I set Event, does this get overridden by sequence and then camera settings. Just trying to understand what you mean by order. Most of the time I don’t set the event gain. Because it seems when I used the ascom driver, I’m always going to have the ascom camera settings so is everything else irrelevant? THis would seem a false assumption per what gets stored in filename. In general, it is one of the things that’s a bit maddening (for me) about SGP, there are so many places to set the same parameters, that it’s a bit unclear on precedence and/or priority.

1 Like
4

Yes, that is the priority that the gain setting will be applied. I’ll check into the ASCOM aspect, however not all ASCOM drivers expose gain. This is primarily aimed towards ZWO cmos cameras.

Thanks,
Jared