Astroart Forum

Hi all,

inspired by the thread "Warming up after cooling ccd?" in the Main Forum I thought about using the script commands Camera.GetTemperature and Camera.SetTemperature(C) in scripts of my own.
I'm using the Atik Camera 314L+ and just tried out this two commands with operating this camera. Here is what I experienced by doing so.

Camera.GetTemperature:
The command is functioning quite well. The returned measurements are correct and agree with the statements in the ATIK-314L Settings window.

Camera.SetTemperature(C):
In my case this command is without any effect to the cooling behavior of the camera. Neither there is a change in the ATIK-314L Settings window nor do change the measurements returned by the Camera.GetTemperature command.

Obviously there is going something wrong and I would appreciate any hint to bring the command Camera.SetTemperature(C) on the right track.

Regards
Rolf

Hi,
please note that damaging/stressing an amateur camera by quick cooling or warming is a classic urban legend that every 4-5 years strikes back. (Well, unless your camera use liquid nitrogen or the manual of the camera says that).

By the way "stress" at power up is much higher than natural warm up.

Camera.SetTemperature is usually supported on the ASCOM driver, but it's not supported for the older Artemis driver. If your driver does not support it, you will have to set the temperature by hand.

Kind regards,
Fabio.

Thanks for your reply, Fabio.

No, I do not worry about thermal stress of the chip and I see the difference between cooling down (faster) and warming up with running fan (slower).
What I had in mind was to control the switching_on_cooling_down_process in a script because I sometimes forgot to do this manually before starting a capture session - what can be very annoying.

The clue is the note about ASCOM/Artemis driver. I'm using the Artemis driver and that is the explanation. Perhaps I should/will change this.
On the other hand the Camera.GetTemperature command is functioning very well with the Artemis driver and a display of the actual chip temperature at appropriate position in the script could be sufficient to solve the problem for me.

BTW, looking down some threads earlier I see this topic has been discussed already. So I should have done searching before asking, please excuse.

Regards,
Rolf