Atik 383L+mono Image Capture Breakdown

[niteman1946]

Hi Group,

I use Sequence Generator Pro (SGPro) to capture the images through my Atik camera.  The other night I was able to collect 12 images in Ha and 12 images in OIII at 10minutes each.  There was also an attempt to capture 12 images in SII at the end of the session, but due to clouds, only six were gathered.
Unfortunately, while Ha and OIII came out good, the six SII images had major problems.

Take a look at the files included using DropBox.  The three (3) images with SII in their title show a large horizontal light band at the lower 25% of each.  Upon inspection, you can see that this light band is really two images of the same thing.  And the image in these two is the same as in a section of the "darker" and more properly exposed area.

During this time the control software (SGPro) allowed two of the SII files to fall out of the prescribed minimum temperature.  And during this time, "dithering" ceased to operate.

As best I can tell, all of the Ha and OIII that preceded the SII behaved normally.

While I suspect that all of the operation problems are due to glitches in the SGPro software, I would like to ask if any members have seen this behavior before.

Thanks,
Mark

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uv44j88t2f30tli/AACuP_hdGgP5MfWdxMcIpVmsa?dl=0

[niteman1946]

Anyone seen this problem?

Mark

[niteman1946]

There appears to be zero activity on this forum.  Are there any Atik reps that could comment?

Mark

[NickK]

Hi Mark,
I'd shoot ATIK an email on their support email address.

It could be that they have been closed for the seasonal holidays.

Kind regards,
Nick

[niteman1946]

Thanks Nick.

Just did.

Mark

[Chris]

I've been working with Atik to try to resolve issues running with SGP and there's a new version of the ASCOM driver in the current download package.

SGP is aggressively multitasking and it looks as if there can be clashes between activity on different processes or threads.  I've added more locking to try to prevent things happening that might cause problems.

I also went through the connecting and enumeration process to make running the setup dialog more reliable with a second camera when the first one is already connected.

Please try this and let us know if it helps.

Chris.

[niteman1946]

Just a bit of follow-up on this issue.
The culprit was my old Win Vista desktop computer.  I replaced it with a Dell Win 8.1, 64 bit desktop and problems went away.  This was neither an issue with Atik nor Sequence Generato Pro.  The new computer was around $500.  Not bad, and everything is operating well.
Mark

[Chris]

Is this with the original drivers or the new ones?

[niteman1946]

Hi Chris,
I'm using the same Atik driver i started with.  I have recently changed from ASCOM 6.0 sp1, to 6.1.  However that was a recent requirement of SGPro, resulting from their upgrade activity.  And this was done post my change over to the new computer.
IIRC, the old Vista suddenly developed alzheimer's  late last year.  It would stall out a few hours into the session, leading to the problems alluded to in my original post.  It just took me a while to figure that out.
Cheers,
Mark