Author: Robin

Lots of improvements in this build

• Many small bugs fixed from crash reports received (thanks to all those who submit their crash reports!)
• Improved ASI camera support (you should be able to use the WDM drivers if you want now, as long as you choose the WDM driver as the first camera you open after starting SharpCap – If you want to switch between the Native and WDM drivers, close and re-open SharpCap)
• Improved QHY camera support – includes updates to the QHY SDK that fix a number of issues and support for the WDM drivers as for ASI cameras above.
• Updated Ximea SDK – may give some support for newer Ximea cameras (I don’t have a Ximea camera to test with, so can’t be sure…)
• Sensor temperature reported on devices where this feature is available (some QHY, ASI cameras)

Download from here.

I have been meaning to get round to this for ages, but been a bit busy recently… Anyway, there is a beta build of what will become SharpCap 2 available to download that should support the QHY5LII and other QHY cameras.

Sharpcap 1.99.623

In theory this build may support the following cameras :

IMG : 0S, 0T, 0L, 0X, 1S, 2S, 3S, 5S, 1E, 3T, 2P
QHY : 6S, 8L, 9S, 5, 5II, 5LII, 5TII, 5RII

At least the API that I am using supports the cameras in that list. I’ve only tested it with the 5LII colour – other test reports welcome. I expect it will work with the Mono cameras more easily than the colour cameras to begin with (the colour cameras will need me to wire in their bayer pattern to get raw modes working for certain).

I’ve just uploaded a new beta build for SharpCap 2.0

Improvements include

• A circular reticule is now available as well as the cross hairs
• The focus score calculation is improved – should give useful indication of focus now, just try to get it as high as possible
• Fix for Basler cameras not working in recent builds
• Fix for SharpCap crashing when connecting to a non-connected ASCOM camera

Things to note

• Don’t try using the ASCOM simulator cameras – they are buggy and may crash SharpCap
• New focus score UI coming soon hopefully

Anyway, here is the download. (The download link is now fixed).

SharpCap 1.99.404 Beta is now available. This is the first beta release of what will become SharpCap 2.0.

It’s all been quiet on the SharpCap front for quite a while now as I’ve had other things occupying my time. I was also hoping to build a new, Ribbon based, UI for SharpCap 2. Unfortunately I wasn’t making much progress with the new UI, so I have now decided to keep the existing UI for the 2.0 version. I’ve kept a lot of the changes that will help me build a new UI in some future version though.

So, what’s new in this build?

* Filter wheel support (ASCOM compatible wheels)
* Automatically select highest resolution on camera initialization
* Remove old DirectShow code
* Build on Microsoft .NET framework 4.0
* Fix a number of minor bugs
* Install as a separate product to v1.5 – that means you can install both versions side-by-side

Anyway, please remember that this is Beta software, so try it out before you use it on a clear night!

The new version can be downloaded here.

I’m now working on SharpCap 1.6, so 1.5 is in maintenance mode – this means that I will fix bugs that are stopping it from working properly but new features will go into 1.6.

1.6 will require .Net Framework 4.0 to be installed – don’t worry, it’s a free download, and it works for versions of Windows back to XP. This means that SharpCap will no longer work on Windows 95/98 or Windows 2000, but I seriously hope that no-one is using these any more!

In some ways, not much change is visible in version 1.5, but behind the scenes there has been a lot of work, particularly for DirectShow cameras which have a completely new preview/capture implementation with a number of advantages :

• No more ugly (and annoying) stop/start of preview when switching to/from capture mode
• Much less code, hopefully less bugs!
• A new frame divisor filter to drop all frames but 1 in N.
• Ability (in future version) to apply transform filters to the AVI output if desired.

The pre-release versions have been out a while and no-one has reported any significant bugs with the new DirectShow implementation, so I’m hoping it’s solid. If it does break, please report the problem in the usual way, and anyway you can go back to using the old DirectShow code by looking further down the cameras menu.

Anyway, enough of that. The download link can be found here.

At long last, SharpCap 1.4 has moved from Beta into a full release. Sorry for the long delay – been busy recently with non-Astro stuff.

Here’s what is new in 1.4 :

• Long exposure support for Basler cameras (unlimited exposure time)
• Parallel port control support for LX modified webcams
• Automatic USB serial port selection for LX modified webcams – chooses highest numbered serial port.
• Frame progress bar shown for all cameras in LX mode to show how far through the current frame you are
• Single frame capture support for all supported cameras types
• Multiple output formats supported  – SER, PNG, FITS for non-webcam cameras
• Experimental support for any camera with an ASCOM driver
• Improved capture file handling – formats that produce multiple files like PNG and FITS create a folder and save them into it
• Many bug fixes

Get the release build of 1.4 from the downloads page.