ZWO native driver problems

Just bought SGP 3.0 after trying 2.6 with good experience.

However, I am have some problems with my Camera (ASI071).

  1. When using ASCOM, some dark frames have lower levels than Bias, which seems weird, and suspected to create some later problem when calibrate subs/flats in Pixinsight.

  2. Because of above problem, I have tried ASI native driver which only available in 3.0. And I see gain no longer work. I use 90 for bin1 and 240 for bin2, this setting works ok in ASCOM mode but has not effect on native driver, it always using gain 0 no matter what I change (either in control or per event gain). The fits header then shows Egain of 2.8xx, which is GAIN of 0. And starting/median levels are much lower than in Acom mode.

  3. After connected native driver, go to Control Panel, Camera, click Settings of Camera, will 100% crash SGP.

Above is correct in ASCOM mode, GAIN=90 EGAIN=1.0xxx


Above is incorrect in native mode, GAIN=90 EGAIN=2.8xxx. Image data was in GAIN0, so EGAIN is correct here (I guess was getting from ASI driver), but GAIN90 isn’t correct which is simply got from settings but doesn’t seem to properly send to ASI driver.

That reminds me of Canon EOS cameras, in which the camera is using the overscan area to compensate for dark noise. Is there anything in the camera setup that would suggest something similar is happening here?

The ‘dark frames have lower levels than Bias’ issue is not a problem when you do the calibration properly, see PixInsight Forum

I am using both a Canon EOS 600D and as of late a ZWO ASI294MC Pro.

Bernd

For what it’s worth, I am seeing the same issue using the ZWO native driver with my ASI071MC Pro. It appears that the gain is always zero, regardless of the gain setting in Control Panel or in the event settings. The FITS header reports the gain that was selected, but EGAIN is always around 2.82, corresponding to gain zero, and the median level is only around 6 ADU for a bias frame. When using the ASCOM driver the median level for bias frames is about 60 ADU regardless of the gain setting.

I have not seen the crash when clicking Settings. With SGPro 3.0.1.0, the Settings button is grayed out in Control Panel and in the Sequencer panel when the ZWO native driver is selected.

I have also not seen the issue with dark frames having lower medians than bias frames with the ASCOM driver (as stated above this is not a problem, but it is a curious anomaly), but I just started using SGPro. So far for me the ASCOM driver is working as expected with the ASI071MC Pro.