First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by Averton »

PDB wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:51 am
Averton wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 1:48 am
DavidP wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 9:34 pm Very impressive SSM. Does it have to be calibrated somehow?
And your images are superb.
Thanks David :)
Yes, the unit needs to be calibrated. This is very easy to do.
You aim the sensor at the sun and adjust the small potentiometer visible through the hole in the front panel using a jewellers screw driver until the reference voltage is 1V.
Here are a couple of links with great detail on how to make one & how it works.
https://www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2017/ ... itor-sssm/
http://www.joachim-stehle.de/sssm_eng.html
https://www.airylab.com/contenu/SSM/Use ... SSM-EN.pdf
So far, we have found it very useful.
Hmmm,

nobody seems to remember building has been discussed in detail on SolarChat already in 2015 viewtopic.php?p=197225&hilit=ssm+build#p197225

Good to see my software is still usefull.
I see the Linux version, what software are you using for capturing? (If FC, you can steer captures from the plugin)

BTW, nice captures you made.

Paul
Hi Paul,

Thank you for your software! It saved us the issue of writing something of our own to capture the data from the SSM.
Yes, we are aware of the previous thread re the SSM and software on Solar Chat.
We just thought from the responses to our thread that there were a number of people who were not aware, so it wouldn't hurt to include other relevant links.
Yes, we do run the software on Linux. Another thank you for having a Linux version of your software :)
No, we don't use FC. We use ZWO's own ASICAP for capturing.
The reason for this is that with no amount of adjusting environment variables have we been able to make FC capture as fast as the ZWO software. We have even gone to the point of downloading the ZWO SDK and working through some examples and compiling them to try to get to the bottom of the issue. We stopped doing this when a friend of ours, who works as a Linux developer, tried everything that he could, including custom kernels to try to fix the data transfer rate with FC on Linux and failed. He has done a lot more than us using not only ZWO cameras but QHY & PlayerOne as well. In the end, very reluctantly he has given up and bought and uses a Windows notebook running FC for capturing.
So we do not use the SSM to trigger capturing, rather we waited until the average line was trending down and then took a series of videos and then selected the best one.
Thanks again :)

Regards
Clare & Peter


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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by Carbon60 »

MichaelTeoh wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 7:42 am I wonder if we can somehow calculate the seeing using the video sequence we capture. I am not sure how the seeing is technically calculated by the SSM, but I think maybe we can calculate that by looking at how much a feature shifted from frame to frame?
I've often wondered the same thing, Michael, especially on close view images. It would make sense to have some sort of live measure of the observing conditions through the scope/filters in use.

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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by Carbon60 »

Nice results, Clare and Peter. These are beautiful FDs.

Stu.


H-alpha, WL and Ca II K imaging kit for various image scales.
Fluxgate Magnetometers (1s and 150s Cadence).
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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by PDB »

The reason for this is that with no amount of adjusting environment variables have we been able to make FC capture as fast as the ZWO software
That's interesting. I did many tests some years ago (on exactly the same pc, dualbooted with win and linux), and Windows always outperformed linux for usb camera handling. But it was equal for all software I tested (FC, ZWO, my own test ...). The main problem (with the ASI178) was it started to give error 11 after a while, and usually no way to recover. (Some test by someone on INDI forum showed bugs (and incorrect error handling) in the ZWO linux libraries (he even made a replacement library that outperformed everything, but never succeeded to integrate that in existing software). But things change, but a bit surprised that ASICAP outperforms FireCapture. (maybe should retest, but then I need to rebuibuild a Linux machine)

But anyway, if it works, don't change the solution.

Regards,

Paul


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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by Averton »

Carbon60 wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 8:44 am Nice results, Clare and Peter. These are beautiful FDs.

Stu.
Thanks Stu :)


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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by Averton »

PDB wrote: Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:37 am
The reason for this is that with no amount of adjusting environment variables have we been able to make FC capture as fast as the ZWO software
That's interesting. I did many tests some years ago (on exactly the same pc, dualbooted with win and linux), and Windows always outperformed linux for usb camera handling. But it was equal for all software I tested (FC, ZWO, my own test ...). The main problem (with the ASI178) was it started to give error 11 after a while, and usually no way to recover. (Some test by someone on INDI forum showed bugs (and incorrect error handling) in the ZWO linux libraries (he even made a replacement library that outperformed everything, but never succeeded to integrate that in existing software). But things change, but a bit surprised that ASICAP outperforms FireCapture. (maybe should retest, but then I need to rebuibuild a Linux machine)

But anyway, if it works, don't change the solution.

Regards,

Paul
We keep re-testing FC vs ASICAP on a regular basis everytime there is an upgrade to either the software packages or Linux itself (every 2 years for Linux as we use Ubuntu LTS) and so far not once has FC maintained a high data transfer rate. It often starts out reasonable and then appears to run out of buffer space or something as it just slows to a crawl & drops frames.


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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by midar »

I'm trying to photograph the sun using SharpCap Pro software. I have purchased the factory Airylab Solar Scintillation Monitor and would like to use it in my script I use to capture the sun. I have an output from the COM port :

Code: Select all

B0.77$
A14.29$
C2.49$
I assume that the A value is the immediate seeing value. What do the B and C values mean ?
Thank you for your answer.


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Re: First use of our DIY SSM 25 January 2023

Post by DeepSolar64 »

Where have you been Clare & Peter? I have not seen you two online in quite a while. I hope you two are ok.

James.


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