SGP Appears To Be Slowing Down My Downloads

Hi,

I’m using a FLI PL8300 camera with SGP.

I also am using a Moonlite Nitecrawler, a SX Maxiwheel FW, a SX Ultrastar guide camera and an AP 1100 GTO as my imaging equipment.

If I use the FLI software (FLI Grab) then the images I take will download in about 2 seconds (the camera is working at 8Mhz). If I take an image with SGP - with all my equipment attached and working - then the download speed jumps to 25 seconds (same computer and everything). Now if I just have the camera and FW attached and working in SGP then it also downloads in a couple of seconds.

So is it possible that some other component/driver is causing SGP to slow the download down when everything else is attached?

Here is the Log from last night. I’m hoping you can see what the issue is.

Thanks

sg_logfile_20181002210000.txt (892.7 KB)

I had a friend look at the log file and it looks like maybe I have the dome updating to frequently…would that be causing this problem? I may have it updating its position every 10 sec!!

It appears I’m talking to myself here :(. I tried changing the times on the NexDome but that had no effect at all. After the exposure the camera just sits there for 25 sec before it finally downloads the image.

Can anyone at SGP please look at the log and tell me whats going on? It seems that after you guys released ver 3.0 andsg_logfile_20181004200700.txt (271.4 KB)
got my money that you don’t help anymore???

Someone pointed out the following:

[10-04-18 20:18:32.901][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: CaptureImage…
[10-04-18 20:18:32.902][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: Start exposure…
[10-04-18 20:18:32.902][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI camera: setting normal speed readout (mode 1)…
[10-04-18 20:18:32.902][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI camera: setting mode…
[10-04-18 20:18:32.902][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI camera: current mode is: 0
[10-04-18 20:18:32.902][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera Error: Error with FLISetCameraMode, setting mode to normal (Code: -22)
[10-04-18 20:18:32.903][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI camera set mode complete, new mode is: 0
[10-04-18 20:18:32.903][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera invoking new mode stabilization period…
[10-04-18 20:18:52.904][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera new mode stabilization period complete…

[10-04-18 20:18:52.904][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: Setting pre-flush…
[10-04-18 20:18:52.904][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: Flush cycles: 0
[10-04-18 20:18:52.904][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] Setting FLI image area…
[10-04-18 20:18:52.904][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: capture command sent…
[10-04-18 20:18:57.910][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: read data (16 bit)…
[10-04-18 20:18:57.910][DEBUG] [Camera Thread] FLI Camera: reading lines…

That seems to account for most of the time issue…whats it telling me and how is this corrected??

Hi, A couple of things come to mind: I have a QSI camera with the 8300 sensor. When I am in high quality mode, my downloads take around 20 seconds, but in fast mode, it is considerably faster but at the expense of image quality. Are you comparing apples with apples?

Second idea. I’m assuming that the FLI software connects to its own camera without using ASCOM whereas SGP is forced to use the ASCOM driver. Does your camera’s ASCOM driver have a settings dialog? Are there some options there that may be influencing the download time?

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You might want to take a look at this post on CN:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/634192-the-art-of-flats-if-onag-and-ad-lum-filter/

#16. You can set the speed on the fli in sgp and that is VERY important. The download speed that you are describing is about what I get at 1mhz. The post will explain it all thanks to Tolga. You want to have it set to low speed to minimize the read noise.

I’ve been doing it wrong for over 3 years.

I wish it were that simple. With the FLI 8300 there is only one speed shown in the Settings dialogue and that is 8MHz…so at that speed it should be downloading in a sec or two - which it does with FLI Grab (FLI’s testing software) but not in SGP when everything is connected and running.

I need to do more troubleshooting in SGP as the other day when I had just the camera and FW connected it downloaded, as it should, in a second or two. It seems when something else gets connected and runs that an issue is introduced. Will try and isolate that.

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Yup, not that simple. The 8300 only has one mode.

Could be a problem with SGP’s use of the official FLI driver. Have you tried Hartmutts ascom FLI driver?

More info and download I think is available in the following thread:

You can see the difference in my ML8300 in the frames between the two. Unfortunately, you still wont be able to switch from 8mhz.

No I haven’t tried his driver…can you point me to where I can find it?

I think I may have figured out the problem I’ve been having. I was using a equipment profile that I created from the ML16200 profile that I had been using before switching over to the PL8300. I just used that ML16200 profile as a template to speed things along. I’m guessing that SGP was still trying to use the USB driver for the ML16200 and so expecting 2 modes of operation for the PL8300 (which only had one mode).

Noticing that everything worked normal (2 sec download) when just using a “basic” equipment profile I rebuilt the PL8300 profile from scratch and it now works as advertised. I guess for all future equipment profiles I will build them from scratch to avoid this problem.

Thanks to all for helping me out on this.

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