QHYCCD QHY168C User Manual Download Page 1 | Manualshive

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COLDMOS Astronomy Camera

QHY168C

User’s Manual Rev. 1.1

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Summary of Contents for QHY168C

Page 1: ...COLDMOS Astronomy Camera QHY168C User s Manual Rev 1 1 ...

Page 2: ...or notice Package Contents please confirm that the package contains the following items USB3 0 cable 1 5m 1 Self locking power cable 1 Angle adjustment adapter ring 1 Spacer to convert M54 to 2 inches 1 12V power adapter 1 Dust cap 1 Drying tube 1 desiccant 1 Driver download card 1 Inspection report 1 camera 1 Optional accessories Car power adapter 1 ...

Page 3: ...8C in SharpCap 03 Color Balance for QHY168C 04 Use QHY168C with ASCOM 05 Use QHY168C in EZCAP_QT 06 Use QHY168C in FireCapture 07 Use BroadCast Video Streaming 08 FAQ 09 Camera Maintenance 10 Inspections 11 Mechanical Size and Back Focal length 12 Revision history ...

Page 4: ...168C to 12V power supply Connect QHY168C to your PC with USB3 0 cable For the first time the system will find a new device and search the driver You can skip the online searching by clicking Skip obtaining driver software from Windows Update and the computer will find the drivers After installation is complete successfully you can find the device in the device manager as shown in the picture below...

Page 5: ...QHY168C 2 Note that after you downloading and installing the new drivers by using this software be sure to pull the USB cable out and then plug it in to enable the new drivers ...

Page 6: ...eed which makes the frame rate much lower than the highest frame rate declared on its webpage Now you can try to get the most out of it by changing several settings First you can try to set the exposure time to 1ms then try to reduce the USB traffic value For modern computer with i7 4 core it should get the max performance But please note that not all computers can get the best performance due to ...

Page 7: ...set to a low value and make the histogram peak close to zero Because the color camera color balance is to multiply a ratio to the pixel value in the FPGA The bias will be multiplied too and it may affect the color balance 6 If you want to try 16bit image you can switch the Colour Space to RAW16 7 By check the LX mode you can expand the exposure setting range and take long exposure shot QHY168C cam...

Page 8: ...section in SharpCap as shown in the following picture Basically you can control the temperature of CMOS by either adjusting Cooler Power or clicking Auto and adjusting Target Temperature You can also see the CMOS temperature at lower left corner of the software Before use this function you should read the content about how to protect the cooler in the FAQ section ...

Page 9: ...ue progress bar Since the color balance is the ratio between Red to Green and Blue to Green You can fix the Green color to 7 and adjust the Red and Blue For example in the image above the blue is 10 and red is 10 green is 7 It looks the image is well white balanced If you need more blue since it has limit of 15 In this condition you can reduce the green a little and you will have more room for the...

Page 10: ...ist The ratio will not be correct For example the G sensitivity is the double of R sensitivity G 2R In order to get white balance We multiply a ratio of 2 to R R 2R G so we get R G When a bias exist The bias is a constant added to each pixel So the image you see is R R bias G G bias 2R bias Now the ratio R G R bias 2R bias and it is not equal to 1 2 It shows the bias will affect the true value of ...

Page 11: ...nnection Please note that QHY168C always transfers maximum bit depth by ASCOM to make the best DSO imaging performance The image format is 16bit width and patch zero on low bit MAXIMDL 1 First you have to make sure that both ASCOM Platform and ASCOM driver have been installed If not please install it first 2 Start MAXIMDL 3 Follow the instructions shown below to finish the setup ...

Page 12: ...QHY168C 9 Normally you can set the gain 1 and offset 10 to start Click Connect before start shooting ...

Page 13: ...era ID 4 In Menu Camera Setup Click Temp Control and set the CMOS sensor temperature You can enable the Auto Control and set the target temperature For example here we set the temperature to 10C The CMOS temperature will come to 10C very fast in about 2 3minute If you want to close the TEC you can select TEC OFF If you just want to set the TEC power but not the temperature You can select Manual an...

Page 14: ...QHY168C 11 ...

Page 15: ...nts folder After it was installed successfully navigate to Document folder and you will find its installation folder as shown below Enter that folder and run FireCapture exe then select QHYCCD camera And after the loading you will see the image on FireCapture like shown below For detailed and helpful tutorial of this software please go to its website to check the tutorial section at http www firec...

Page 16: ...ideo appearing on the SharpCap will be sent to any of software that support the WDM camera like the HandyAvi Adobe video encoder online chat software etc This function is very useful for the video live broadcast applications 1 Install the BroadCast Driver 2 Connect QHY168C to 12V power supply Connect QHY168C to your PC with USB3 0 cable 3 Turn on Enable Live Broadcast at the bottom of Camera Contr...

Page 17: ...QHY168C 14 ...

Page 18: ...DDR function The next version SharpCap will support it 3 If there is power leak for your mounts and computers The power leak may cause the leak current transfer from computer to the camera via the GND This may affect the USB transfer and may cause the data packet lost and cause it hang You need to make sure the computer and the mount is well grounded 4 If the USB port s voltage not enough Some com...

Page 19: ...for DSLR sensor to do it The optic window has AR coating So you need to be careful when cleaning it You can also use the DSLR clean tools or the lens paper Don t use strong force to clean it The coating is not so hard and it is easy to get scratch when you use strong force on it Note that the optic window doesn t have IR coating because the IR coating in this position can easily cause halo around ...

Page 20: ...e the video more smooth when in some slow computer or some mainboard which is not friendly to USB3 0 like the VIA chipset In these computers they cannot handle the high speed USB data well and the data is always lost With this DDR it can buffer the input image data and then send to computer Even the high frequency pause happens it can keep the USB data lossless SharpCap version has options for ena...

Page 21: ... this solution may not work very well 9 What should I set my gain and offset to GAIN is the pre ADC analog to digital converter programmable gain amplifier setting OFFSET is the ADCvoltage offset setting Thecorrect setting of OFFSET and GAINcan change the CCD s system gain making the CCD output signal range matches the ADC quantization range so as to get the best dynamic range 1 Set the gain 0 set...

Page 22: ... use Lucky Imaging technique because the exposure time is very short the number of captured photons is very limited and the sensor can hardly get saturated It s recommended to set the gain to a high value The readout noise of CMOS camera will drop when you increase the gain Setting the gain to a high value can reduce the readout noise so that the limited photon will not be drawn in the readout noi...

Page 23: ...QHY168C has the build in heat board on this optic window to heat the optic window to avoid it In most conditions it can take effect If the optic window still get dew please try the following method 1 Avoid the CCD Camera face down to ground The cold air is heavy than warm air if you put the camera facing down to the ground the cold air is easy to get the optic window and cause it very cold and get...

Page 24: ... Exposure Time 30us 3600sec Max Frame Rate 10FPS Full Resolution 30FPS 1920 1080 HD 15FPS 4096 2160 4K video 32FPS 1024 line 42FPS 768 line 54FPS 600 line 130FPS 240 line Pixel Binning Hardware Binning for 3x3 binning video mode Full Well TBD Readout Noise TBD Amplifier Glow Control Yes There is no visible amplifier glow on dark image Cooling System 2 stage TEC 35C below Ambient Optic Window AR AR...

Page 25: ...QHY168C 22 11 QHY168C Mechanical Size and Back Focal length ...

Page 26: ...QHY168C 23 ...

Page 27: ...4 12 Revision history Date of change Revision Content of change January 25 2017 1 0 First edition April 7th 2017 1 1 Deleted IR coating Added instructions for how to set gain and offset Added Mechanical drawing ...

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