I have two Lacerta FBCs (Flat Box Controllers), along with several Lacerta flat boxes, and have found their FBC a snap to use, either in standalone mode, or as a USB device. In AstroPhotography Tools, it is natively supported, and in conjunction with the APT Flats Wizard, automatically adjusts duration and brightness to hit a target ADU value. I had been using this approach, but am now switching over to an automated observatory that I am building, where two flat boxes will go on the wall in front of scope park positions. I have downloaded and purchased SGP, and am looking to have it run everything via a fanless PC on that same wall. I would like to automate flat image collection, but the Lacerta FBC isn’t supported in SGP. I asked the folks at Lacerta about this, and they responded:
"AFAIK SGP does not offer support for our FBC, unfortunately.
If you take the effort and nag the developer Jared Wellman, we would be happy to provide everything he needs to implement it.
He is a very nice guy, just loaded with work.
Mgen-3 implementation is working already, and we were able to do it without nagging Jared
Please use our Ascom mgen.app and you can instantly go forward!
best regards
Tommy"
Is there any chance that the Lacerta FBC could get native support? I could consider a contribution if that would help. If support isn’t likely to happen, can you suggest any other supported USB two or more channel PWM flat box dimmer? I don’t have to use my Lacerta FBCs (but I have two), as long as I could use the flat boxes themselves. I have a Pegasus PowerBox V2, but that is up on top of the mount, so that won’t work (moving cables). I am hoping for a stationary two channel PWM dimmer unit between the wall mounted fanless PC and flat boxes. I am also hoping to either use my two Lacerta FBCs, or else purchase something else off the shelf. I have read the thread on the Arduino approach, but would really like to avoid this, and simply use or buy something. Thank you.
Jared: Your reply on June 8th was very encouraging. I checked back with Tommy at Lacerta a month later to see if he was aware of any progress, and this is what he wrote:
"hello Kevin,
Jared told us there will be new Flatfield support in Ascom upcoming.
So at the moment nobody is doing anything, everybody seems to wait for that Ascom category and resting in his summer holiday chair.
At the moment FBC is working fully with APT only, Ivo only is the one brave developer ready to develop.
best regards
Tommy"
So does that mean that things will be stalled until ASCOM creates support for the Lacerta FBC? How would I go about encouraging action there? But do you need this to support their FBC? I could use some guidance. Thanks.
Potentially. I have looked at it and it seems to work differently from other flat boxes. Rather than having a typical “on/off” setting it appears that we’re supposed to start an exposure and then trigger a flash of the flatbox for a certain amount of time. I assume this is for highly sensitive chips and attempting to get the flat times as low as possible.
I’ll have to look some more but if what I’ve outlined above is indeed the case then it will take a decent amount of work to integrate with it.
Ideally having the Flatbox Manufacturer create a Cover Calibrator for this device would be the preferred way for integration as this would then cover all applications that support ASCOM rather than a one off implementation in each application.
