FireCapture 2.7beta -- high frame rate option

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thesmiths
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FireCapture 2.7beta -- high frame rate option

Post by thesmiths »

I have been lately using FireCapture_v2.7beta with my spectroheliograph to utilise its very high speed, which derives, I believe, from its ability to allocate a huge amount of memory for DRAM buffering. There is an option to set the USB traffic setting at 100%, which allows my ASI 178MM to go up to 500 fps with a narrow ROI.

There is also an FPS control but the problem I had was the default for this is only 100 FPS. I wrote to Torsten and he explained to me that it's possible to change the "fixedFPSUpperLimit" parameter in the FireCapture configuration file:

fixedFPSUpperLimit
fixedFPSUpperLimit
torsten fc.JPG (78.71 KiB) Viewed 1613 times

However, it turns out there are two FireCapture.ini files. There is one in the installation folder, in which the FireCapture.exe sits, and another one in the User folder: C:\User_Home\Firecapture\FireCapture.ini

The one to edit is the one in the User folder, not the one in the installation folder. With Windows, you can open the file with Notepad and do
Edit --> Find --> fixedFPSUpperLimit. The default is 100; I changed it in my setup to 500.

This is a useful feature since otherwise I had to play with the exposure time and/or the USB Traffic setting to get to the FPS that I needed to make a properly sized scan. I think in future beta versions, Torsten will increase the default maximum FPS.
Last edited by thesmiths on Mon Jun 14, 2021 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.


thesmiths
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Re: FireCapture 2.7beta -- high frame rate option

Post by thesmiths »

With regards to why there are two FireCapture.ini files to keep track of, Torsten sent me this clarification:
The FC.ini in the installation folder is necessary because the "useUserHome=" entry is read from there at startup to decide whether FC switches to user_home mode. The other reason is for users running multiple FC instances (from different FC folders). In such cases the user_home mode wouldn't work as each FC instance would overwrite the settings from the other instance. So these users can disable the user_home switch and using/storing separated settings in the respective FC folders.

Torsten


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