Camera Altair 183M problem with FireCap.

[pupak]

I purchased this camera to get a small size high resolution chip for the full solar disk. In FC 2.7, the camera fails at higher resolutions, where the FPS drops from 20 to 1.5 and loses frames. I tried several USB cables, Win10 and Win11 PCs, even Linux, but the problem didn't go away. It's just smaller or bigger. It's not completely unusable, but for example BIN cannot be activated at all. Only ROI works.
The camera is light and cooled only by a fan, so it is ideal in the sun, but it does not work at 100%. Does anyone have a similar experience or an idea how to fix the problem? Thanks for every opinion.

[Montana]

Probably not the issue but worth checking, you say the frames drop to 1.5 at higher magnifications, what does the exposure increase to, is this causing the drop in frame rate (not the dropped frames)?

Alexandra

[pupak]

Exposure is set to 5ms so FPS will not be affected. I start recording 500 frames, 20-30 are recorded with 20 FPS, then suddenly drop to 1.5 and the frames drop out. I tried different RAM buffer size for recording, but it has no effect.

Petr

[marktownley]

Are you using an SSD drive?

Try the camera with FC v2.6

[thesmiths]

Did you try another capture program like SharpCap? I assume you installed the newest driver for the camera?

SharpCap PRO: Altair Astro have worked closely with SharpCap developer Robin Glover since 2015, to fully integrate Altair cameras with SharpCap at a basic level.

They don't seem to mention FireCapture in their product description.

AltairCapture: Unlike cheaper cameras, Altair Astro has spent considerable time improving the extensively featured and intuitive AltairCapture software, which can be downloaded from www.altairastro.help. AltairCapture is a stable 64 bit Windows application, which allows full control of the camera in high speed video or still mode.

With ZWO cameras, I've noticed that using their own ASICAP software can sometimes give higher frame rates than with FireCapture and SharpCap. They probably use the most up to date SDK. I assume it's hard for the capture programs to keep up with all the firmware/software changes for all the different camera manufacturers.

[pupak]

A fast SSD drive is a matter of course. It works with SC 4.0 64, but the speed is about 15 FPS. The record is stable. AltairCapture works similarly to SC 4.0. On the Altair website, there is only the ASOM driver and AltairCapture. I couldn't find any SDK anywhere and the DLL libraries in FC 2.7 are quite old. I have no idea where to get another one.

[thesmiths]

On the Altair website, there is only the ASOM driver and AltairCapture. I couldn't find any SDK anywhere and the DLL libraries in FC 2.7 are quite old.

The SDK (software development kit) in generally only available to developers and only useful if you are writing your own application.

The ZWO version of this camera (which I have) says it can get to 19 fps. With FireCapture, I could get this with "8bit mode" (which I think is actually 10bit) but I would only get 9.5 fps in "16bit mode" (which I think is actually 12bit).

When you say you are getting 15fps, which bit resolution is that?

[pupak]

The SDK contains DLLs that are used by third-party applications. They are already two years old in FC 2.7, which will probably be the crux of the problem. I am using 8 bit recording. 16 bit is unusable (5-6 FPS).

[thesmiths]

I have to admit that one reason I have standardised all my cameras on ZWO is because their software support seems better than the "smaller" competitors. On a hardware level, they all use the same sensors (from Sony, Panasonic, etc). My assumption has been that the app developers (FireCapture, SharpCap, etc) are going to keep their apps more up to date with the products from the market leader. It's like that in all industries.

I would also say that ZWO originally started from the planetary camera market and then later went into the cooled DSO market. Most of the other current CMOS camera manufacturers started out with cooled CCD products and they don't seem to value high FPS so much.