SGP 3.0.1.0 ASI Native Mode Tests

Sequence Generator
1

Hey gents,

I saw the update included the new SDK, so I snagged it and ran some tests. Here is what I found:

  1. The cooling display bug still exists. Should be easy to fix. The cooling does actually work though, the value you are trying to cool the camera to shows up incorrectly in the control panel applet while it is cooling down.

Here is a few images of this that took a few mins apart that highlight how the display looks. The values seem to be incorrect.

ASI Native Temp Bug

ASI Native Temp Bug 2

  1. Event level gain does work! The images do not have the right ADU though.

3a. The gain range is the same as ASCOM (0-450) but this native mode driver does not expose offset to you. So I think the weird ADU results I am seeing in comparison to ASCOM is related to the offset being set to some default value (that is not exposed for you to change it).

3b. If you toggle to use ASCOM, take a frame, then disconnect and reconnect to the camera via the Native Mode driver, it will retain the offset that ASCOM had set on the camera. If you do this, then the native mode driver works fine. Until you try to change the gain, then it seems to set the offset incorrectly again. This sounds like an easy fix. IIRC all ZWO cameras now use 50 offset. If that is true, then SGP can just set the offset to 50 for all cameras when the gain is set? Thoughts on this? Other idea would be to expose the offset for the user to set somehow?

  1. 100 Bias files again took 5 mins to complete. I need to amend my previous statement that ASCOM only took 2 mins to do the same work, that was on a much more powerful machine than I ran this test on (bad Bill!). So, I ran the 100 Bias frames through ASCOM on my laptop as well and it took almost 10 minutes to complete. So if there is one benefit from this native mode driver, it can rip through frame downloads about twice as fast as ASCOM. Big win!
2

Nevermind on the offset 50 idea, the offsets are different for the cameras and not set to a single value. The offset will need to be exposed and set by the user to use this native mode implementation it seems.

3

Dear all,

I also run some tests with the same computer with the previous and current native driver.

I found exactly the same results as you Bill, except with the download time. I found that there is no improvement in using the native driver compared with ASCOM, almost the same time.

I will run again the test in order to see if the results are consistent.

On the other hand, I wonder how much the computer specifications are affecting the final result. I am using an INTEL PC-STICK, and the average time to complete an exposure is about 20sec, very far away of the 3sec. you are reporting Bill. What computer are you using?

In any case, and as a reference, in my PC-STICK performing the same test with SharpCap 3.1 the times involved are almost instant.

4

I used a Surface Book.

5

Ok, new test done…

The BAD:

  • In the INTEL COMPUTE STICK the time per bias is 20sec it make SGPro almos unusable for the CMOS’ers comunity out there (with this set up).
  • SharpCap perform the 100 Bias tests in just 90 sec whit the same computer.

The no so BAD:

  • Using a SURFACE 4 Pro the 100 Bias test last only 3min 40sec (2,2 sec per Bias) which is acceptable.
  • SharpCap takes almost the same time than in the COMPUTE STICK.

The Hope

  • The good people of Main Sequence were able to improve the performance of the system, or to enable an option to swith off the screen display of each image (I suspect this is the big difference between both approaches).

Jared, what do you think?

Good Nights to everybody

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