Change of capture device

[Astroarg]

My mini PC has done me well, but I got a great deal on a PI4 and have set up for Astroberry/KStars package.

 

Anyone using this with advice for first use?  I've had clouds and more clouds for 2 months now, I've had a daytime play and setup - INDI took a while to get use to compared to ASCOM!  I've updated Astroberry so got the latest PHD2 with multi-star.. just wondering if those using it have done anything else to make the use easier!  I got myself a GPS dongle (magnet back) which sticks to my counterweight .. took a while to sort it out, but GPS working a treat.

[MarkAR]

Are you using EKOS on it directly or using the Pi as a server and running Ekos on another computer?

[Astroarg]

directly for now, which is why I went for the more powerfully PI.  I've just noticed that FireCapture is included, so that is Lunar, Solar (when I get solar kit) and Planetary software I need to learn!

 

I've found a few good guides... oddly the astroberry.io website is severely lacking helpful documentation for beginners 😞

[TerryMcK]

I find that the PI4 can’t really keep up when I do frame capture on solar with firecapture. You really have to set the region of interest down to smaller sizes  and then you can get decent frame rates. I think it is because I use the integral sdcard rather than a dedicated SSD to write to. The sdcard has lower write speed than an average SSD.

So I actually resort to swapping back to Windoze (spits) laptop which does have a SSD and use sharpcap when shooting solar.

[Astroarg]

good to know, thanks.  Solar would be new to me, just debating spending more but would allow me to do something when its cloudy at night and cloudless in the day haha

[TerryMcK]

I think it will work fine at full speed if you have an external SSD drive connected to one of the USB3 ports and configure Firecapture to save to that. I might invest in one and try it out.

[Astroarg]

4 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I think it will work fine at full speed if you have an external SSD drive connected to one of the USB3 ports and configure Firecapture to save to that. I might invest in one and try it out.

Hi Terry

 

so I just grabbed one of these as I have a 128gb m2 sat at work doing nothing !

https://thepihut.com/products/argon-one-m-2-raspberry-pi-4-case

 

 

[Astroarg]

[TerryMcK]

I've just got a Samsung T7 500GB USB3 drive and tried it out on the PI4 using Firecapture. It can sustain high frame rates from the ASI183MM really well so will use that to capture sun videos next time I have 5 minutes.

[TerryMcK]

I tested the new drive today with solar high speed video capture and had to cut the ROI down to around 1600x1024 and got a frame rate of around 100fps at 8ms exposure. That was ok and obviously got faster frame rates with even smaller ROI settings. 

Not as good as a Windoze (spit) PC with USB3 but still the PI4 is acceptable.

 

The good thing was the sustained rate did not buffer and wrote consistently to the SSD drive

[Astroarg]

23 hours ago, TerryMcK said:

I tested the new drive today with solar high speed video capture and had to cut the ROI down to around 1600x1024 and got a frame rate of around 100fps at 8ms exposure. That was ok and obviously got faster frame rates with even smaller ROI settings. 

Not as good as a Windoze (spit) PC with USB3 but still the PI4 is acceptable.

 

The good thing was the sustained rate did not buffer and wrote consistently to the SSD drive

nice!  I don't get that with my mini-PC or laptop.  Both oddly cut off around 20fps, and my 183C only returns under 10 (I can't remember the ROI, but the 385C I think was simply HD at 1920x1080)

 

I've now got this set up, looks like I'll have some clear skies tomorrow night but want to go out and test my star tracker on the MW before I go on holiday.. decisions decisions

[Astroarg]

just did a test with oacapture (FireCapture on the PI seems to only want to select ZWO or QHY).. with my 385C.  Keeping the default save location as the SD Card, I get a max of 10fps.  Changed to the SATA M2 now connected... 100fps 🙂

 

Now to wait for the moon to come back (so happens to be the week I'm away on holiday)