Astroart Forum

Is it possible to install the native divers for cameras, in my case an Altair Hypercam 294c Pro Tec, and an Altair GPCAM30 (guide camera) into AA8, and if so, how?

The native drivers give greater control than does ASCOM.

In Sharpcap Pro, I can use either, and using the native drivers is the preferred method.

It would be nice if I could do this in AA8, but I guess it would mean MSB installing the relevant SDK, which I know is available from Altair Astro.

Hi, no I'm sorry, only the ASCOM connection for Altair will be available.

ASCOM is only a middle layer, it internally connects to the same native drivers.

Some months ago a user measured the ASCOM was slower with another camera, but later it was discovered that in native mode the camera downloaded images with lossy compression (less real bits). Once this was disabled the performance was the same.
Fabio.

Hi Fabio,

Thank you for your response.

Not a major issue as the ASCOM works ok with AA8. It was just that having the option to use either native drivers, or ASCOM in Sharpcap Pro, I find that using the native drivers is preferable, at least to me.

I appreciate that for software developers the ASCOM interface is very convenient, as it removes the need to include individual drivers for each camera. Most all modern cameras , are ASCOM compatible of course.

To me personally, I find that Astroart's real power is in its image processing ability.

I do like the fact that I can use AA8 with PHD2 for guiding, a nice feature.

Thanks again for your response, and a Happy New Year to you.

Maybe I am using Astroart and ASCOM wrong then? When using FireCapture, I can download 1 to 2 FPS in full resolution with my ZWO ASI1600MM, but Astroart take 2-3 seconds to download an image from the camera. There's no compression in the FireCapture images.
Are there some settings in ASCOM and/or Astroart to pay attention to?

I suggest to analyze the data, all pixels may be EVEN or multiple of 4. This was the case last time.