Re: QSI 700 series cameras in stock and available now.
Finally someone with a purchased camera to get some insight from! Thanks for posting your experience. Was wondering when some feedback was going to start rolling in from the new line.?
If you wouldn't mind, I would greatly appreciate some photos of the camera as it has been very limited/non existent from the initial roll out.?
I very much hope QSI will develop a native driver for NINA and be able to not worry about ASCOM drivers.
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Re: QSI 700 series cameras in stock and available now.
I received my 760 from Cloud Break yesterday, coming from a QHY168C as my OSC camera. I had a couple initial bits of constructive criticism from my indoor tests last night due to clouds.?
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1) Screws and washers for locking down the filters came in an envelope, and the washers had mostly escaped into the included case during shipping to Cloud Break. With these being this small, a resealable plastic bag should really be included. Other than that, I like the included hard case, and appreciate there is space for the OAG down the road.
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2) When using the ASCOM driver with NINA 3.x, I noticed that if I cancel an exposure, the camera remains busy until the exposure completes, as if the camera itself is still exposing. If you accidentally set a 5-min exposure to loop when you didn't mean to, that can be rather annoying as you have to power cycle the whole camera in order to skip the wait and reset everything. I need to double-check if this also reproduces in the provided QSI demo app, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's specific to the ASCOM side of the driver.?
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3) My existing setup is a Pegasus Power Box Advance, fed via the internal USB cable on a Mach 2. The QSI doesn't seem to like being connected to the USB3 ports on the Power Box. I'm not counting this as a mark against the QSI, as my QHY 168C also misbehaves in this configuration. However, it's what the QSI does when it misbehaves that is a concern. You'll get the first few frames just fine, but it will fail at some point and when that happens it will just continue to return the last good frame over and over again. I was able to reproduce this with the QSI demo app as well. This behavior continues until the camera is power cycled. This can be disastrous when doing an automated capture session, as you'll just get a bunch of identical frames, but have no idea that the camera had hit a failure unless you are checking manually or trying to figure out why your stacked images are noisier than they should be. I did notice that the "download" took ~4 times longer when the bug was triggered than normally.
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4) Small fans means a higher pitched whine when the camera is on. This is a bit of a nit, but I generally find the QHY fan noise less objectionable.
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That said, the filter wheel behavior so far is consistent and repeatable, so doing some test flats indoors worked pretty well. Cooling is fine for our rather mild climate, and was using 35% power to maintain ~20C below ambient. I wasn't seeing any leaks from the Astronomik 50mm filters I'm using. Downloading over USB3 is nice and quick. In terms of the basics, there's nothing obviously wrong. I'll be happy if the driver bugs can be fixed, and can help provide logs/etc so long as I'm told how to capture them.
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When using the ASCOM driver with NINA, you can set the gain from NINA which is good. It is backwards from what I'm used to though. 0 is high gain, 1 is medium gain, and 2 is low gain. Just be aware.?
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I'm going to see if I can dial in my field flattener and get a reasonable flat field out of my TMB92SS using the full frame sensor when I get some time this week under clear skies. Vignetting was about 16% in the worst corners but I did notice a clear offset in the flats so it could possibly get a bit better. Need to see where in the optical train the offset is coming from.
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Re: New QSI driver- released 8/5/24
Hello Barry,
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Thank you for your feedback. We are committed to growing the QSI brand and advancing it into the future. However, our current resources for software development are somewhat limited. As sales of the new QSI 700 cameras increase, we hope to allocate more resources toward developing the new X2 drivers and enhanced macOS support.
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We are focusing all our amateur astronomy efforts on the QSI brand and have exciting plans for new products in the future so naturally will want to evolve the software.
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Thanks
Vince
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Will,
The Sony sensor may not behave identically to the Kodak but the light frame was showing edge glow, which makes me think the dark should too, or it will not get removed.
Of course we may be viewing each with a different stretch and several of my assumptions may not apply.
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On Thu, Aug 22, 2024 at 01:43 AM, Paul Homer wrote:
I am not seeing the edge glow that I normally see in a dark. (I use a QSI 583 and 683) and this makes me suspicious that it has been altered.
Hi Paul.
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Just a FYI, the QSI 6120 has a Sony sensor and doesn't have the same edge glow and bias pattern that the Kodak KAF8300 shows.
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Will.
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On Thu, Aug 22, 2024 at 02:51 AM, Kevin Cummins wrote:
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OK, kinda got it.? So assume that an imaging session will start and it's 20¡ãC.? The temperature may drop during the night to 15¡ãor 10¡ãC.? How should I assess the method to determine where cooling should be set? A -20¡ãC setting for a camera that can go to -40¡ã should be considered reasonable? Because if so, I might just set it and leave it.
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Back in the day, the philosophy was "as cold as you can get it". Maybe not now?
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While I'm at it, where can dessicant pellets for these cameras be purchased from? If I set my oven at home to 500¡ã for 5 hours, I might not have an oven left.
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I loaded up your earlier dark frame in TheSkyX FITS viewer, the attached image shows how to set TheSky's fits viewer for a reasonable display when capturing images.
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For my QSI683, 583 and 532 cameras I run those all year round at -15c but I'm in the UK and rarely have to deal with an ambient much higher than 20c at night and can't image during the hottest mid-summer temperatures anyway as we have no astro darkness during late June through late August.
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The 6120 doesn't have descant pellets, it uses a brass micro-sieve capsule, I bought a spare for the 600 series cameras direct from ATIK in 2021 but had to go through QSI support in the UK first as the part# wasn't on ATIK's spares list.
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The cost at that time was 42 Euro's delivered.
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Zack, understood and good news.
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I will be raising that temp - this was a litmus test to make sure that the cooling was actually working. What is a good general rule for cooling?
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It gets really hot in there in the summer. Maybe 110¡ãF.
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It's a big leaning curve Kevin and will take some time to master.
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The camera can only cool in ideal conditions to -40c below ambient but you should never run a cooled camera at the maximum cooling because the temperature regulation needs some headroom to move in and when you come to calibrate your images you need to have the lights, darks, flats and bias frames all taken at the same temperature.
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You won't achieve that if the camera is set to maximum cooling and your images at the start of the session were taken at -5c and the ones at the end of the session reach -20c, for example.
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Set the camera temperature according to the expected ambient conditions and select the targets to suit, saving those targets that would benefit from long exposures at deep cooling for the time of year, or time of night, when the ambient temperatures are low and the camera can deliver.
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I looked at your dark frame in PIxInsight and for the temperature it looked ok to me.
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TheSky's image viewer is a bit too aggressive I found, when I last used it, but there are a number of stretch options if I remember right and you have to select the right stretch option for the target, Its more of a quick check tool and not really a tool for assessing image quality IMO, PixInsight is the ideal tool for that.
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OK, kinda got it.? So assume that an imaging session will start and it's 20¡ãC.? The temperature may drop during the night to 15¡ãor 10¡ãC.? How should I assess the method to determine where cooling should be set? A -20¡ãC setting for a camera that can go to -40¡ã should be considered reasonable? Because if so, I might just set it and leave it.
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Back in the day, the philosophy was "as cold as you can get it". Maybe not now?
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While I'm at it, where can dessicant pellets for these cameras be purchased from? If I set my oven at home to 500¡ã for 5 hours, I might not have an oven left.
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You are now showing -24.7c and the dark is looking as expected for a 6120. All is well.?
The FITS header is still showing that your setpoint is -40c which you need to make sure it is set to something that it can reliably achieve given your ambient temp.?
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I looked at the image after the STF Autostretch (Ctrl-A) Looks like approx 5 vertical bands and about 100 hot or warm pixels plus noise and a lighter band at the extreme top.
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On Thu, Aug 22, 2024 at 02:13 AM, Kevin Cummins wrote:
OK, please help me learn.
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I've been shooting film and digital for years but this is a whole new game for me. I never got serious with my used ST2000XM years ago. I was in South Carolina and was still shooting gas hypered film. OK, I'm old...
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When I took this dark, I used the "take photo" option in TSX. It showed up in TSX FITS viewer as a pile of crap, so to speak. Small and looked like an old failing CRT with a bad signal. So that has been my reference in my communications here.
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I just opened it up in Pixinsight out of curiosity, and it's completely black with the exception of about 40 pixels scattered about. Is that what you are seeing as well?
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Next, what is the proper cooling to set? Should it be maxed out?
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I can give the camera time to cool properly and take another dark from the office here. We can see if it's cooling.
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All info and advice welcome. I don't know crap about this.
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Thanks.
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Kevin
It's a big leaning curve Kevin and will take some time to master.
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The camera can only cool in ideal conditions to -40c below ambient but you should never run a cooled camera at the maximum cooling because the temperature regulation needs some headroom to move in and when you come to calibrate your images you need to have the lights, darks, flats and bias frames all taken at the same temperature.
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You won't achieve that if the camera is set to maximum cooling and your images at the start of the session were taken at -5c and the ones at the end of the session reach -20c, for example.
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Set the camera temperature according to the expected ambient conditions and select the targets to suit, saving those targets that would benefit from long exposures at deep cooling for the time of year, or time of night, when the ambient temperatures are low and the camera can deliver.
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I looked at your dark frame in PIxInsight and for the temperature it looked ok to me.
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TheSky's image viewer is a bit too aggressive I found, when I last used it, but there are a number of stretch options if I remember right and you have to select the right stretch option for the target, Its more of a quick check tool and not really a tool for assessing image quality IMO, PixInsight is the ideal tool for that.
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Will.
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Thanks, William. I don't have Google Drive set up like that yet but will.
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Good info in the cooling.
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I have a 683WS with mechanical shutter and 6120WSG with mechanical shutter. And the dew cap is tight on the TMB130, plus observatory is in the dark.
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I want to get this system done in time for Orion and other gems this year. I'm having major surgery later this year and will not be able to actually go to the observatory once that happens until March or so. I've been working towards this point for 12 years, so a little anxious.
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I still need to figure out Voyager...
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Kevin
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Zack, when I go into TSX like just now tonight, this is what I've been seeing.
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Ambient is 20.55¡ãC in the observatory.? This is the camera status that is displayed after about 3 minutes and taking the image. Camera shows -24.2¡ãC.
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Here is the image @
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I haven't figured out how to read the EXIF or header info yet.
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Thanks.
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Kevin
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Kevin,?
As stated before, the stretched view of the image in TSX is not to be judged, as it will look bad.?
You need to properly look at the file to make a judgment about the sensor.?
In Pixinsight when you first open it, it will be unstretched. You can perform an autostetch with the little nuke icon, or CTRL+A. I recommend watching videos on pixinsight to learn more about it.
In the ASCOM settings prior to connecting to your camera, you can set the fan speed to OFF, QUIET or Full. Given your ambient temp, set it to full for now. Ensure that "optimization" is set to "image quality". Now connect to the camera and make the set point to something achievable like -5c to -10c and start cooling.?
William gave a good diagnostic on it -? Make sure that the fans are indeed both running when you set the cooling.?
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On Thu, Aug 22, 2024 at 01:43 AM, Paul Homer wrote:
I am not seeing the edge glow that I normally see in a dark. (I use a QSI 583 and 683) and this makes me suspicious that it has been altered.
Hi Paul.
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Just a FYI, the QSI 6120 has a Sony sensor and doesn't have the same edge glow and bias pattern that the Kodak KAF8300 shows.
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Will.
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OK, please help me learn.
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I've been shooting film and digital for years but this is a whole new game for me. I never got serious with my used ST2000XM years ago. I was in South Carolina and was still shooting gas hypered film. OK, I'm old...
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When I took this dark, I used the "take photo" option in TSX. It showed up in TSX FITS viewer as a pile of crap, so to speak. Small and looked like an old failing CRT with a bad signal. So that has been my reference in my communications here.
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I just opened it up in Pixinsight out of curiosity, and it's completely black with the exception of about 40 pixels scattered about. Is that what you are seeing as well?
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Next, what is the proper cooling to set? Should it be maxed out?
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I can give the camera time to cool properly and take another dark from the office here. We can see if it's cooling.
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All info and advice welcome. I don't know crap about this.
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Thanks.
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Kevin
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Kevin.
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For the temperature of the camera at exposure time the dark frame looks ok to me.
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A couple of points, the fan control in the QSI driver setup has user options, set to "Quiet" mode the cooling of the camera will not reach max delta C, which for the 6120 is a maximum of -40c below ambient at 100% cooling.
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Under extreme ambient temperatures you'll need to set the fan speed to Full Speed, and of course, check that the fan control is not currently set to "Off" which would severely impede cooling.
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The small Sunon Maglev fans in the 600 series cameras are known to wear out and fail but are readily obtainable, inexpensive and easy to replace by the owner.
Check that the fans are both spinning, spiders and other bugs are quite happy to set home in the fan openings and stop the fans rotating.
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At your observatory ambient of 30c the maximum that the camera would reach is -10c in ideal conditions, and setting -10c would be difficult to maintain anyway as the cooler system has no headroom for regulation and under these ambient temperature conditions I would recommend setting only -5c.
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Like SBIG, QSI did offer a liquid cooling kit to bolt onto the back of the camera to help cooling under high ambient conditions and that would add another -7c to -10c of delta C.
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If your 6120 doesn't have the optional physical shutter and only the on-sensor electronic shutter (QSI cameras with Sony sensors could be ordered with or without a physical shutter) then you'll need to ensure that no light can enter the camera when taking darks.
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Finally,
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When sharing files on GoogleDrive you can change the share permissions for the file, for a public share you need to set the option under "General access" to "Anyone with the link".
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HTH
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William.
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Kevin,
I am not seeing the edge glow that I normally see in a dark. (I use a QSI 583 and 683) and this makes me suspicious that it has been altered.
Also, the temperature of the CCD is recorded as 13.5 and the set temperature as -40 both of these are not realistic, -40 is too low and 13.5 is too high - it appears something may be wrong with the cooling.
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On 22 Aug 2024, at 9:44:48 am, Kevin Cummins < kahuna@...> wrote:
It was 26¡ãC outside and over 30¡ãC in the dome, so cooling was working. Why isn't it dark?
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Thanks.
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Kevin
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If your ambient temp is 30c, that means you would only be able to get to a set point of -10c reliably, just something to note.
Again, your FITS header is reporting that the CCD temp is +13.5. That is not an air temp, so that is not an indication that the cooling was necessarily working.?
I would try to take darks again with a set point of -10c and confirm that your cooling is properly working in your capture software.
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It was 26¡ãC outside and over 30¡ãC in the dome, so cooling was working. Why isn't it dark?
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Thanks.
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Kevin
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In the future, you just need to adjust sharing settings so that "anyone with link" can download/edit your file on google drive.
Google drive will also send out emails that you approve request to allow people to download your file.?
Looks like you have your set point to -40 c which is unlikely achievable and will lead to your camera being at 100% and unable to maintain a consistent temp. You need to make your set point to what ever is ~40c below ambient. So in your case, you need enter the send point to -18c, not -40c.?
Your FITS header is reporting that the CCD temp is +13.5c so you might have not engaged the cooling to begin with.?
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@Nycturne
WILL B