Starlight Xpress TRIUS PRO-814C Manuale utente

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

Manual for the TRIUS PRO-814C colour CCD

camera

Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress ‘TRIUS PRO 814C’ camera. We hope that

you will be very pleased with the performance of this product. Please register your

product and warranty at https://forms.gle/tmsHEJfQG2bLJjr57 .

The TRIUS PRO-814C is an advanced, high-resolution one-shot colour, cooled CCD

camera, especially designed for astronomical imaging. It uses a third generation

version of the very popular Sony ‘EXview’ CCDs that offer very high QE and extremely

low thermal noise. This ‘PRO’ camera uses an updated version of the original TRIUS

main board and has both improved read noise and faster download time. It features

an internal USB hub with 3 external ports and a dry argon CCD chamber fill. The USB

hub permits several other devices to share the single USB connection and greatly

reduces the number of cables required in a typical set-up. For example, a Lodestar PRO

or Ultrastar PRO guide camera and an SX filter wheel could use two of the USB ports

and the third might connect to an electric focuser, or similar peripheral. The argon fill,

along with other improvements to the cooler stack, has improved the delta T to about

-42 degrees C below ambient. The camera also includes a CCD temperature

monitoring circuit that provides regulated set-point cooling of the chip, an adjustable

chip alignment plate and a very compact overall size.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

The TRIUS PRO-814C uses a Sony ICX815AQG ‘EXview’ progressive scan CCD, with

3388 x 2712 x 3.69uM pixels in a 12.48 x 9.98mm active area. This EXview device has

an excellent quantum efficiency, with a broad spectral response peaking at around

77% in yellow light, and an extremely low dark current, well below that of any

comparable CCD currently available. While this device also has an excellent blue light

sensitivity, it has a strong infra-red response, which makes it ideal for all aspects of

both planetary and deep-sky imaging, especially with an H-alpha filter. The H-alpha

QE is about 65%, considerably better than other interline chips and even greater

than the popular KAF8300 CCD.

The full-frame download time is approximately 4 seconds and a binned 4x4

download takes only 0.5 seconds, so finding and centring are very quick and easy in

this mode.

Here is a diagram of the connectors to be found on the rear panel of the camera:

Please take a few minutes to study the contents of this manual, which will help you

to get the camera into operation quickly and without problems. I am sure that you

want to see some results as soon as possible, so please move on to the ‘Quick

Start’ section, which follows. A more detailed description of imaging techniques

will be found in a later part of this manual.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

‘Quick Starting’ your TRIUS PRO-814C system

In the shipping container you will find the following items:

1) The TRIUS PRO-814C camera head with external cooling fan assembly.

2) A universal AC power supply module.

3) A USB camera cable.

4) An adaptor for 2” drawtubes and M42 Pentax thread lenses.

5) A guider output to guider port RJ12 lead.

6) Two USB 2.0 Mini to Mini USB cable 0.5m

7) Two USB 2.0 Mini to Male B USB Cable 0.5m

8) A 'Y' power lead for connecting the cooling fan.

9) A USB Stick with the TRIUS PRO-814C control software and this manual.

You will also need a PC computer with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8

installed. This machine must have at least one USB 2.0 port available and at least256

Mbytes of memory. If you intend to view the finished images on its screen, then you

will also need a graphics card capable of displaying an image with a minimum of

1024 x 768 pixels and 24 bit colour. A medium specification Pentium with between

1GHz and 4GHz processor speed is ideal, but I recommend avoiding some of the

lower specification ‘Netbook’ computers, as they can’t handle the fast data stream

from the camera. Please note that USB 2.0 operates at a very high speed and cannot

operate over very long cables. Five metres of good quality cable is the maximum

normally possible without boosters or extra powered hubs, although you can

sometimes get good results at longer distances with very high quality cables.

Installing the USB system:

First, find a free USB socket on your PC and plug in the USB cable (do not connect the

camera at this time). If you do not have a USB2 capable computer, it is normally

possible to install a USB 2 card into an expansion slot.

The next operation is to run the software installer from the USB Stick provided.

Insert the USB Stick into the computer and wait for Windows Explorer to open with

the list of folders on the ROM. Now run the SETUP.EXE file that it contains – this will

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

initiate the self-install software which will guide you through the process of installing

the SX camera software onto your computer.

Now connect the USB cable to the socket on the camera rear panel.

Windows will report ‘Found new hardware’ and will ask for the location of the

drivers. Point the installer at the appropriate driver folder on your USB Stick (32 bit

or 64 bit) and the driver installation should proceed smoothly. (Ignore any warnings

about the driver having not been tested by Microsoft).

At the end of this process, the USB interface will be installed. The XP drivers will

show up as a ‘BlockIOClass device’ and the camera software will be able to access it.

You can confirm that the installation is complete by checking the status of the USB

devices in the Windows ‘Device Manager’ (see above). Start up the Windows

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

‘Control Panel’ and select ‘System’. Now click on the tab labelled ‘Device Manager’,

‘Hardware’, and all of the system devices will be displayed in a list (see above). If the

installation is successful, there will be a diamond shaped symbol labelled

‘BlockIOClass’ and clicking on the ‘+’ sign will reveal it to be a ‘Starlight Xpress USB

2.0 SXV-H814C BlockIO camera driver’. If this device shows as faulty, try clicking on it

and selecting ‘properties’ and then ‘update driver’. Following the on screen

instructions will allow you to re-select the correct inf file from the CD

(SXVIO_H814_398.inf) and driver files (SXVIO.sys and generic.sys), which should fix

the problem.

The newer ‘Signed’ drivers create a device in the ‘USB’ section of the devices list and

this will be found at the bottom of the device manager window.

Now connect up the power supply and switch it on. The supply is a very efficient

‘switch mode’ unit, which can operate from either 110v or 220v AC via an

appropriate mains power cable (supplied). You can now start the software by double

clicking on the icon, when you should see the main menu and image panel appear. If

this is the first time that it has been run, you will receive a warning about the lack of

an ‘ini’ file – just click on ‘OK’ and then open ‘Set program defaults’ from the ‘File’

menu. In the bottom right hand corner of this box, select SXV-H814C. Now click on

‘Save’ and the ini file will be created and the software set for your camera.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

Now click on the camera icon at the top of the screen. If the USB connection is OK, a

message box will inform you of the ‘Handle’ number for the SXVIO interface and

various other version details etc. Click ‘OK’ and the main camera control panel will

now be seen.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

As can be seen above, there is a CCD temperature monitoring window at the right

hand side of the panel. At switch-on, this will default to full power cooling with an

end point of -40C (actual temperature) and, needless to say, this is rather extreme. I

recommend changing the set point to about -10C for normal use, but you can go

much colder if you are imaging during the winter months. Under indoor conditions,

the low airflow will limit the cooling capability, and you should use a set point of no

lower than -5C for stable cooling. You can determine the optimum settings for your

camera and ambient conditions when you have some experience of using the

system, but do not try to operate at extreme cooling when the air temperature is

high. Connecting and using the external fan unit will improve the cooling by at least -

5C and can give as much as -10C extra delta T. It is connected by using the 'Y' lead

provided in the camera component set, as below:

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

Recording your first image:

We now have the camera and computer set up to take pictures, but an optical

system is needed to project an image onto the CCD surface. You could use your

telescope, but this introduces additional complications, which are best avoided at

this early stage. There are two simple options, one of which is available to everyone

with a sheet of aluminium baking foil:

1) Attach a standard ‘M42’ SLR camera lens to the TRIUS-H814C, using the 26mm

spacer to achieve the correct focal distance.

2) Create a ‘Pin hole’ lens by sticking a sheet of aluminium baking foil over the end

of the adaptor and pricking its centre with a small pin. Make the hole as small as

possible.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

If you use a normal lens, then stop it down to the smallest aperture number possible,

(usually F22), as this will minimise focus problems and keep the light level

reasonable for daytime testing. The pin hole needs no such adjustments and will

work immediately, although somewhat fuzzily!

Point the camera + lens or pinhole towards a well-lit and clearly defined object some

distance away. Now enter the ‘File’ menu in the PRO-814C software and click on ‘SX

camera interface’. Select an exposure time of 0.1 seconds and press ‘Take Photo’.

After the exposure and download have completed (about 4 seconds) an image of

some kind will appear on the computer monitor. It will probably be poorly focused

and incorrectly exposed, but any sort of image is good! In the case of the pinhole, all

that you can experiment with is the exposure time, but a camera lens can be

adjusted for good focus and so you might want to try this to judge the high image

quality that it is possible to achieve.

Various other exposure options are available, as can be seen in the picture above.

For example, you can ‘Bin’ the download 2x2, or more, to achieve greater sensitivity

and faster download, or enable ‘Continuous mode’ to see a steady stream of images.

‘Focus mode’ downloads a 128 x 128 segment of the image at high speed. The initial

position of the segment is central to the frame, but can be moved by selecting ‘Focus

frame centre’ in the ‘File’ menu and clicking the desired point in a full size image

with the mouse. The focus window has an adjustable ‘contrast stretch’, controlled by

the 12-16 bit slider. The image will be ‘normal’ if 16 bits is selected, while setting

lower values will increase the image brightness in inverse proportion.

If you cannot record any kind of image, please check the following points:

1) Ensure that the power indicator lamp is on and that the cables are properly home

in their sockets.

Handbook for the Trius PRO-814C

Issue 1 September 2020

2) If the screen is completely white, the camera may be greatly overexposed. Try a

shorter exposure time, or stop down your lens. See if covering the lens causes the

image to darken.

3) If the USB did not initialise properly, the camera start-up screen will tell you that

the connection is defective. Try switching off the power supply and unplugging

the USB cable. Now turn the power supply on and plug in the USB cable. This will

re-load the USB software and may fix the problem after restarting the

SXV_hmf_usb program. Otherwise, check the device driver status, as previously

described, and re-install any drivers which appear to be defective.

4) If you cannot find any way of making the camera work, please try using it with

another computer. This will confirm that the camera is OK, or faulty, and you can

then decide how to proceed. Our guarantee ensures that any electrical faults are

corrected quickly and at no cost to the customer.

As the PRO-814C is a ‘Single-shot’ colour camera, the full resolution raw image will

show a fine grid pattern, due to the RGB colour filters on the CCD chip surface. This is

normal and will disappear once the image has been converted to colour by the

software. Unlike commercial digital cameras, astronomical colour cameras do not

normally output a colour image directly. This is so that various image corrections can

be performed on the raw data (e.g. dark frame subtraction), as these are impractical

after conversion to colour. Also note that binning the raw image at anything other

than 1x1, will destroy any colour information and so output only monochrome

images.

Converting your images to colour:

The images from your camera are monochrome at the moment and they need to be

converted into true colour before enhancing them. Any processing of the image,

other than calibration with dark frames etc., will distort the colour rendering of the

result and so the conversion needs to be done before proceeding. Important! You

cannot convert a binned image to colour, as binning sums the different colour pixels

together and averages out the colour information. All images that you intend to

colour convert must be taken in binned 1x1 mode. Also please note that you cannot

sum frames together before colour conversion. This must be done after the images

have been colour converted.

Here is a small enlarged section of a daylight image which may be similar to your test

image taken with a 50mm camera lens

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