SGP with ASCOM electronic release?

This post may be more appropriate on the ASCOM matters forum. It is prompted by the AstroPhotographyTools feature of driving the KMTronic relay to trigger a camera.

Here goes - can an ASCOM camera driver basically be an electronic release only, operating a relay (and with some internal intelligence to know whether the shutter is still open or not). In that way, I could write my own and use SGP to operate virtually any camera. I would obviously not have access to downloads, focusing and so on, but I would be able to slew to target, dither, guide, prompt for focus and operate the obsy.

I have recently had my old Fuji camera modded and being a CSC, I can fit it to virtually any lens or telescope on account of their short flange to sensor distance. The HDMI output drives a 7-inch 4K monitor, making focusing relatively painless, using the magnify option.

Hi Buzz,

Yes sure. You may need to be somehow creative when implementing the interface but the ASCOM Camera simulator is going even further: a zero-electronics system.

Kind regards,
Horia

Thanks - so when SGP expects to download an image from the camera, I feed it a dummy?

Wild speculation but maybe the driver could find the image file generated by the camera and extract the image data from it. It would need a USB connection to the camera so the driver could see the camera memory as a separate drive.

Well, I guess the only way is to give it a go. Relay on order. If it works fine, I’ll share back with the community. After all, how hard can it be :slight_smile:

With some free time brought on by early retirement (and before my better half has formulated plans to make use of it) I have successfully coded a simple remote release ASCOM trigger. In those cases where there is no substantive interface to a DSLR or mirrorless camera, it allows SGP/APT/Nebulosity to take camera exposures. I am using the same KMTronic relay that I used in my observatory. The command protocol is very simple and can be modified to suit other relays that work off VCPs. Like the ASCOM simulator, it returns a small dummy image.
The advantage of this approach is dithering is even more useful when a camera is not cooled and this allows me to guide, dither and have full control over when the camera exposes, and of course, mix exposure times, say for Orion neb. If anyone is interested, I can mail them a Dropbox link.