QHYCCD QHY168C User Manual
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QHYCCD QHY168C User Manual

Coldmos astronomy camera
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COLDMOS Astronomy Camera
QHY168C
User's Manual Rev. 1.1

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Summary of Contents for QHYCCD QHY168C

  • Page 1 COLDMOS Astronomy Camera QHY168C User’s Manual Rev. 1.1...
  • Page 2 QHY168C This document is an online document. You may save this PDF file or print it out. QHYCCD reserves the right to change this user manual without prior notice. Package Contents please confirm that the package contains the following items: USB3.0 cable(1.5m)

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    QHY168C Table of Contents 01 Software Installation 02 Use QHY168C 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...

  • Page 4: Software Installation

    3. Download and install the ASCOM Capture Driver As you most probably want to use your QHY168C as an expose camera, please download the Capture version. If you want to use it as a guide camera, please download the Guide version.
  • Page 5 QHY168C 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: Use Qhy168C In Sharpcap

    QHY168C 02 Use QHY168C in SharpCap 1. Connect QHY168C to 12V power supply. Connect QHY168C to your PC with USB3.0 cable. 2. Run SharpCap. If the aforementioned software and drivers all have been installed properly, the video image will appear automatically and you will see the frame rate at the lower-left corner of the software as shown below 3.
  • Page 7 You can open the histogram to confirm that. QHY168C is a color camera, so it is very important to set the offset 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.
  • Page 8 QHY168C 8. After you connect 12V power supply for QHY168C to power the TEC cooling circuit, you can set the CMOS sensor cooling temperature in the "Thermal Controls" 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"...

  • Page 9: Color Balance For Qhy168C

    QHY168C 03 Color Balance for QHY168C SharpCap will start at the default RGB balance for color camera. Here is the screenshot of the QHY168C start up For color camera, SharpCap will show the WB Red/Green/Blue 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.
  • Page 10 QHY168C As we said before, if you are doing planetary imaging you should set the offset value as low as possible. To make the background close to zero. Then you can easy to get correct color balance. Otherwise it will not easy to get it. Sometimes the offset of an image is good but you cannot get good balance.

  • Page 11: Use Qhy168C With Ascom

    ASCOM connection and does not support the ASCOM VIDEO connection. 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.
  • Page 12 QHY168C Normally, you can set the gain=1 and offset=10 to start. Click Connect before start shooting...

  • Page 13: Use Qhy168C In Ezcap_Qt

    QHYCCD deep sky cameras. You can use this QHY168C camera in this software. 1. Install EZCAP_QT software. 2. Connect QHY168C to 12V power supply. Connect QHY168C to your PC with USB3.0 cable. 3. Run EZCAP_QT. Select "Connect" in Menu->Camera. If the camera is successfully connected.
  • Page 14 QHY168C...

  • Page 15: Use Qhy168C In Firecapture

    QHY168C 06 Use QHY168C in FireCapture The latest FireCapture supports QHY168C already. Please go to FireCapture website to download v2.5 BETA (32-bit) version. By default, it will be installed in the "Documents" folder. After it was installed successfully, navigate to "Document folder", and you will find its installation folder as shown below.

  • Page 16: Use Broadcast Video Streaming

    QHY168C 07 Use BroadCast Video Streaming BroadCast video steaming is a special function that QHY168C supports. It can send the video image to multiple target software via QHYCCD BroadCast video driver. For example, you can use the SharpCap software to control the QHY168C camera and at the same time the video 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.
  • Page 17 QHY168C...

  • Page 18: Faq

    08 FAQ 1. Does QHY168C support 8bit or 16bit? QHY168C supports both 8bit and 16bit output (For 8bit, it is 0-255, and it only uses the high 8bit, for 16bit it is 0-16383 mapping to 0-65535). 2. How to get maximum FPS? Since QHY168C has very high data bandwidth.
  • Page 19 4. How to clean the CMOS sensor and the optic windows of the camera? If you found there is dust on the CMOS sensor. You can screw off the front part of the QHY168C. The QHY168C's CMOS sensor has the AR coating so you need to be careful to clean it. You can use the clean kit for DSLR sensor to do it.
  • Page 20 DDR enabled mode. 7. How to protect the cooler in QHY168C? The cooler in QHY168C can lower the CMOS temperature to a value that's almost 35 degrees centigrade below the ambient temperature. So you need to be careful to avoid thermal shock, which means that when the cooler's temperature rises or fall dramatically, the cooler is subjected to strong internal stress due to contraction principle.
  • Page 21 QHY168C the power, if the "Cooler Power" value is very big, you should gradually turn it down before turn off the power. 8. The FPS of cameras sometimes suddenly drops to zero under DDR mode on SharpCap, what’s the solution for this problem? Recently, we have been told by our users that the FPS of their cameras sometimes suddenly drops to zero under DDR mode on SharpCap.
  • Page 22 CMOS camera, it’s recommended to set the gain to the Unity Gain. For QHY168C, its Unity gain = 10. When you 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.

  • Page 23: Camera Maintenance

    If the environment humidity very high, the optic window of the CCD chamber may get dew. The 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.

  • Page 24: Inspections

    QHY168C 10 Inspections CMOS Sensor IMX071 COLOR CMOS SENSOR Effective Pixels 4952*3288, 16mega pixel Pixel Size 4.8um*4.8um Shutter Electric Rolling Shutter Readout Type Progressive Scan Imager Size APS-C Format ADC Output Bit 14BIT (14BIT/8BIT OUTPUT) Exposure Time 30us-3600sec Max Frame Rate...

  • Page 25: Mechanical Size And Back Focal Length

    QHY168C 11 QHY168C Mechanical Size and Back Focal length...
  • Page 26 QHY168C...

  • Page 27: Revision History

    QHY168C 12 Revision history Date of change Revision Content of change January 25, First edition 2017 Deleted IR coating April 7 , 2017 Added instructions for how to set gain and offset Added Mechanical drawing...

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