ASCOM driver for legacy SBIG cameras

I just ran across info about an ASCOM driver for legacy SBIG cameras developed by a private individual referred to as “Cedric-r”. Since I have an old ST-2000XCM, I was curious to test this driver. Short story - it works. There are also reports of it working with the STF8300. This test was run in a 32bit environment. It only supports the older cameras using a USB interface.

You need the installer:

ASCOM - Legacy SBIG

You also need to, first, download, install and run the SBIG driver checker utility to install the needed SBIG support libraries and USB driver.

SBIG Driver Checker

The SBIG ASCOM installer also installs an ASCOM interface for the built-in SBIG guide camera. I verified that PHD2 Guiding can connect to it and download images.

Finally, the installer also installs support for the older SBIG filter wheels. I was not able to test that since the ST-2000XCM is a OSC camera and doesn’t have a FW.

Charlie

Those cameras should be natively supported by SGP. But more driver options are always good.

Jared

Hi all,

I wrote that driver. I had 2 motivations:

  • not all software knows about sbig cameras (George developed the Nina native driver as I was developing the ascom driver).
  • I have an STT and I needed access to the embedded guiding camera.
  • I wanted to be able to use network cameras, not just usb (e.g. STT).

The driver has been tested by various people with sgp, Nina, voyager, ccdciel, apt, for the imaging camera, and all seem to work. I’ve only tested the guiding camera with PhD (the STT is rare).

It has been tested with various cameras, STs, STFs STTs. They all seem to work except one camera that shows a wavy interference pattern I haven’t been able to reproduce or remove. Could be setup specific.

It should also support all SBIG filter wheels, even the brain dead ones that don’t even know what filter they’re on.

I’d think the driver isn’t perfect, but seems to be good enough for prime time.

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