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Pages: 1 bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light       #5402399 - 09/04/12 06:19 AM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Hi there, Here is my first light with this camera. I have a lot to learn regarding processing yet but it is coming The scope is Lunt 80THa/PT/BF1800 Just before sun goes down - single frame jpeg - unprocessed Cheers Sedat Post Extras:       Kokatha man Post Laureate Reged: 09/13/09 Loc: "cooker-ta man" downunda... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: bilgebay]       #5402433 - 09/04/12 07:07 AM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   .....a very promising start Sedat....! Post Extras:       Erk1024 scholastic sledgehammer Reged: 07/06/11 Loc: Henderson, NV Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: Kokatha man]       #5402958 - 09/04/12 01:04 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Wow. Cool stuff Sedat! I'm interested in that camera. What kind of capture framerate do you get out of it? Were the frames noisy or pretty clean? What's your capture computer? It looks like you have to use two firewire ports at the same time? Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: Kokatha man]       #5403384 - 09/04/12 04:26 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Thank you Darryl...I am a happy camper now need to learn the techniques though... Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: Erk1024]       #5403407 - 09/04/12 04:38 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Hi Eric, I was wondering what the second firewire port on the camera was for ? Are we supposed to connect it by 2 cables in tandem ? I was able to reach the maximum frame rate with a single cable though.. My computer is a Sony Vaio VGN-SZ4XTN/C running on XP. 4GB ram, 750Gb HD. Here is the capture data logged by Firecapture: Filename=SunFlament_L_02_09_2012_Grasshopper Express GX-FW-28S5M_110443.avi Date=02.09.2012 Start=11:04:43 Duration=38s Frames captured=750 Camera=Grasshopper Express GX-FW-28S5M ROI=1920x1440 Profile=SunFlament Diameter=39.36" Magnitude=-2.34 CMI=74.1° CMII=19.2° CMIII=54.4° Filter=L FPS=26 Shutter=1.490ms Sharpness=512 Gamma=512 Exposure=558 Gain=175 Brightness=0 Histogramm(min)=0 Histogramm(max)=255 Histogramm=100% Noise=7.227286 AutoAlign=false PreFilter=none Limit=750 Frames Comment=null 750 frames in 38 seconds. I guess either the internal bus or the hard drive is not upto the task. At times, the computer was having difficulty in saving the frames and once the buffer was full, everything would come to a halt. I am wondering if an SSD disk running on Firewire 800 port would help things or make it even worse... a memory stick didn't help at all.. I have a MacBook Pro on order, but I am not sure I will want take it to field for capturing images... not at least the first few months NExt weekend I will see if I can improve the situation. Limiting the recording speed to 15 fps seemed to help most of the time...but then, why did I purchased this expensive camera ? Post Extras:       DonAtPointGrey Vendor - Point Grey Reged: 03/09/12 Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: bilgebay]       #5405323 - 09/05/12 05:40 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   The 2 firewire ports are there for daisy-chaining. You can hook another camera to it, or whatever firewire device you need. It is useful in industrial applications where you need a bank of 4 cameras side by side. This way you can run little baby cables from camera to camera without having to run all those cables back to a hub or computer. The problem of saving all data to the disk is one I've heard a few complaints about. Unfortunately, from what we have seen, this has to do with overall system bandwidth - it isn't a problem with the camera. I'm sure it will get faster with an SSD drive in the computer, but I'm not sure about one on the 1394 port. The data can't be routed directly from camera to HD, it has to go through the computer. Your overall bandwidth is also potentially less than each individual device (i.e. camera and HD) because all that has to flow through the motherboard memory. If it is a problem I would recommend writing to support@ptgrey.com to see if they can help you optimize your configuration. I hope this helps! Don Post Extras:       Bird Post Laureate Reged: 08/07/03 Loc: Murrumbateman, Australia Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: DonAtPointGrey]       #5407447 - 09/06/12 10:52 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   At 26fps I assume that must be 8 bit data, so 1920x1440x26 = 68Mb/s capture rate, this could easily be at the limit of a laptop system with a normal "laptop" 5400rpm drive. If your laptop has a USB3 port then you would get a faster data rate capturing to an external USB3 drive, I do this when I use my laptop. If you don't have a usb3 port, then consider a faster (7200rpm) internal drive. SSD drives are the fastest but they are still quite expensive. A FW800 drive would probably also help - I haven't tried this, but it must be on a different firewire port to the camera, otherwise it will be sharing the bandwidth with the camera, not what you want! Also, if you can put more RAM in the laptop, firecapture can buffer more data... cheers, Bird Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: DonAtPointGrey]       #5413690 - 09/10/12 04:37 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Hi Don, It's good to hear from you. Thanks for chiming in. As you were suggesting, I am looking into possibilities for an internal SSD drive. This past weekend I have done some more tests and can say that the most challenging object for my system (computer+camera) is the Sun. I guess, this is because data abounds with the sun and the frames' file size gets bigger. Shooting the moon didn't prove as problematic as the sun. Half of the frame is dark to start with... I will keep you posted... Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: Bird]       #5413697 - 09/10/12 04:45 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Thank you Anthony. This laptop is only USB2.0 unfortunately. I will go with an internal SSD as you and Don are pointing out. Cheers Sedat PS Here is a recent mosaic me and my friend Onur put together with this camera and C11@7000mm fl. http://filepost.com/files/ead3cac3/62_mpx_mozaik_(1).jpg/ Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: bilgebay]       #5427066 - 09/18/12 10:36 AM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   As suggested by Don and Bird, I installed an internal Sandisk SSD to my laptopv last weekend. The difference is like day and night. I had no difficulty in recording 26fps for at least 2000 frames. This means 5.14GB of data by the way. With the exposure setting that I thought would be good for the Sun, the max fps was 19-20 and I was able to record 4 consecutive avi movies without halting. https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45851117/photo.PNG https://dl.dropbox.com/u/45851117/photo2.PNG Hovewer, when I opted for recording .bmp files instead of .avi, the system halted again after 7-8 hundred frames. This has to do with the processing power of my laptop I believe. I don't mind this normally, but when the avi files are 5Gb+ this can be a problem for Registax or Autostakkert. I can live with this problem though Both the camera and the SSD made my day today. I wanted to share this with you guys. Clear skies Sedat Edited by bilgebay (09/18/12 10:43 AM) Post Extras:       dvmak sage Reged: 05/11/06 Loc: Moscow, Russia Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: bilgebay]       #5429125 - 09/19/12 12:12 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   Hi Sedat, Can you check the camera speed in ROI mode? What can be the frame rate at 640x480, for example? Tis is interesting for planetary imaging. Post Extras:       bilgebay Post Laureate Reged: 11/06/08 Loc: Türkiye - Istanbul and Marmari... Re: Grasshopper Express 2.8Mp Mono First light [Re: dvmak]       #5429289 - 09/19/12 02:02 PM Edit   Reply   Quote Quick Reply   51-52 frames max..@640x480 ROI - of course this is true when shooting the sun or another bright target. I have yet to try this camera on anything other than the moon and sun. Here is our first mosaic with Grasshopper Express Meanwhile, I was able to see 160-180 fps with Flea 3 easily in ROI mode...in one case I even saw 212 fps at >256x250 ROI but the recording is kinda frozen after a few seconds. I was trying to image Venus. I haven't slept last night in order to shoot Jupiter and Venus but I have nothing to show New camera curse I guess. Seeing was terrible and unfriendly clouds were all over the place. I have waited for a favorable moment or two in vain Post Extras:       Pages: 1

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