Starlight Xpress SXV-M8C User Manual

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

Starlight Xpress Ltd

SXV-M8C

4 Megapixel USB2

One-Shot Colour CCD camera

User manual

Thank you for purchasing a Starlight Xpress CCD camera. We hope that you will be very satisfied with the results.

The SXV-M8C is an advanced, very high-resolution cooled CCD camera, especially designed for ‘One-Shot’ colour astronomical imaging. Its special features include a built-in, fully programmable, USB 2 super-fast computer interface (USB 1.1 compatible), an optional add-on autoguider output and integrated dual serial ports for filter wheel and telescope control. The SXV-M8C uses a Sony ICX406AQ ‘SuperHAD’ interline transfer CCD, with 2312 x 1720 x 3.125uM pixels in a 7.225 x

5.375mm active area. SuperHAD devices have excellent quantum efficiency, with a broad spectral response peaking at around 65% in the green, and an extremely low

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

dark current, well below that of any comparable CCD currently available. The ICX406AQ incorporates a ‘Bayer Matrix’ of Red, Green and Blue filters, deposited directly onto the CCD pixels and a downloaded image may be quickly converted into a full-colour picture by application of the software provided.

The full-frame download time is approximately 14 seconds and binned 4x4 downloads take only 3 seconds, so finding and centring are very quick and easy in this mode. If you have only a USB 1.1 connection on your computer, the download time is longer, but is still reasonable at around 25 seconds for a full resolution frame.

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.

‘Quick Starting’ your SXV-M8C system

In the shipping container you will find the following items:

1) The SXV-M8C camera head.

2) A power supply module.

3) A USB camera cable.

4) A guider cable

5) An adaptor for 1.25” drawtubes.

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

7) A disk with the SXV-M8C control software and this manual.

Optional extra items include:

1) A serial port adaptor and cable.

2) An add-on guide camera head (includes a cable).

You will also need a PC computer with Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Windows XP installed (NOT Windows 95 or NT4). This machine must have at least one USB port available and at least 32 Megs 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 in 24 bit colour. A medium specification Pentium with between 1000 and 3000MHz processor speed is satisfactory. USB 2 PCI cards are readily available for upgrading a USB 1.1 machine, if you want to achieve the best possible performance. 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. Adding one, or more, USB 2 ‘Hubs’ in line can extend this, if necessary.

Installing the USB system:

First, find a free USB socket on your PC and plug in the USB cable. If you do not have a USB capable computer, it is normally possible to install a USB 2 card into an

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

expansion slot. Almost all machines manufactured after 1996 provide a pair of USB

1.1 sockets on the rear panel and either of these may be used if USB 1.1 is satisfactory. Please note that it may be necessary to enable your USB system in the computer BIOS (the SETUP menu which can usually be accessed at start-up). Many BIOS systems have the ability to disable ‘Plug and Play’ devices, such as the USB ports, so please make sure that these are enabled.

The next operation is to run the USB installer from the CD ROM provided. Insert the CD into the computer and run the ‘InstallSXV’ file which is found in the SXV-M8C directory. This will install the following files:

1) ‘SXVIO_BlockIO_M8C.inf’ in C:\Windows\Inf\

2) ‘Generic.sys and ‘SXVIO.sys’ in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\

If you cannot see the directories ‘C:\Windows\Inf’ and ‘Windows\System32\Drivers’, this will be due to the setup of your Windows Explorer software. In this case, go to the ‘Tools’ menu, followed by ‘Folder Options’ and select ‘View’. Now select ‘Show hidden files and folders’ and make sure that the ‘Hide file extensions for known file types’ and ‘Hide protected operating system files’ check boxes are NOT checked. After this, the various directories and files should be visible.

It is now time to set up the USB device. Plug the USB cable into the camera and observe the computer screen. After a brief delay, you should see an information box, which reports that the computer is ‘Installing a Starlight Xpress CCD camera’. If all is well, the cycle will complete within a couple of seconds, but it is possible that you may have to prompt the system with the location of the SXVIO.sys file (Windows\System32\Drivers). After another brief delay, the computer should say that it has found a new USB2.0 device and is installing a ‘Starlight Xpress USB 2.0 SXVM8C CCD camera’. In some cases the installation will halt after the first stage and you will need to restart the machine, or unplug and re-plug the USB lead to initiate the second step.

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

At the end of this process, the USB interface will be installed as an ‘SXVIOClass 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 ‘Control Panel’ and select ‘System’. Now click on the tab labelled ‘Device Manager’ 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 ‘SXVIOClass’ and clicking on the ‘+’ sign will reveal it to be a ‘Starlight Xpress USB 2.0 camera driver’. If this device is 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 (SXVIO.inf) and driver file (SXVIO.sys), which should fix the problem.

Adding the camera control software:

Now that the USB system is installed, the camera control program can be used to operate your SXV-M8C. Copy the camera software files from the CD and paste them into a suitable directory, such as ‘SXVH9’ on your computer’s C: drive. Your directory should contain the files SXV_H9C.exe, SXV_H9C.hlp, bwcc32.dll and wsc32.dll

Connecting the camera:

The camera rear panel

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

Connect up the power supply and switch it on. You can start the ‘SXV_M8C’ software by double clicking on the icon and you should see the main menu and image panel appear. 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. The main program window will now be seen.

If you press the ‘Camera’ button at the top left, the program will warn you that the ‘Program Defaults’ have not been set, but pressing ‘OK’ will allow you to continue. The camera default settings are not important for current purposes and may be left as the software start-up values for now, but the warning message may be removed by selecting ‘Set program defaults’ from the ‘File’ menu and then saving the defaults window by pressing the ‘Save changes’ button. Once the camera control panel is seen, you are all set to take your first images!

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, at least one of which is available to everyone:

1) Attach a standard ‘M42’ SLR camera lens to the SXV-M8C, using the 25mm

spacer to achieve the correct focal distance.

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

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

of the 1.25” adaptor and pricking its centre with a small pin.

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 SXV_M8C software and click on ‘SXV-M8C camera interface’ (or use the camera icon). Select an exposure time of 0.1 seconds, High Resolution Interlaced mode and press ‘Take Photo’.

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

After the exposure and download have completed (about 14 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 better than none! 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. With our adaptor, most lenses come to infinity focus at about midway through their normal focus adjustment range.

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. The reason for the two ‘High Resolution’ modes (Progressive or Interlaced) is to enable both short and long exposures to be made in a format that can be colour converted. Progressive mode is ideal for use with relatively long ‘deep sky’ images (more than about 10 seconds), but will not work well for shorter exposures (daylight or planetary). Planetary shots are made in ‘Interlaced’ mode.

‘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 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. Please note that ONLY 1x1 binned images will decode to colour – the other modes are for focusing and acquisition only.

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

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

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

in their sockets.

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 reload the USB software and may fix the problem after restarting the SXV_H9C 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.

Converting your image to colour:

Once you have a recognisable image, it is quite easy to convert it to full colour. The ‘raw’ image will appear to have a fine grid distributed across it – this is the colour filter matrix and the variations of pixel brightness encode the colour data which we want to extract. Here is an enlarged section of a raw image:

Click on ‘Colour Synthesis’ in the main menu and you will see the synthesiser dialog.

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

This includes various options for correcting the colour synthesis for variations in the lighting conditions, filters etc. Briefly, these items perform the following functions:

1) Daylight Image? – If an unfiltered lens is used, the infra-red content of the

light will tend to produce a Green – Blue shift in the balance. A partial correction of this bias is provided by selecting this option, but the best option is to use an infra-red blocking filter when taking daylight shots (see 5 below).

2) Light Pollution Correction: - This option is for deep sky colour images,

where a strong colour bias is often present in the sky background. This option attempts to return the background colour to a neutral grey.

3) Colour Smoothing Filter: - Applies a low pass filter to the colour data to

smooth out colour noise.

4) Apply Anti-Alias: - Runs a special filter over the colour data to remove

coloured artefacts around sharp edges. This is especially useful for cleaning up erratically coloured star images.

5) IR Filter Used? – Sets the colour balance to allow for the loss of infra-red

content when using an IR blocking filter.

6) Stretching: - A selection of contrast boosting options which are preset for

various subjects.

7) Remove Background: - This option will adjust the sky background brightness

to give an optimum background level.

Handbook for the SXV-M8C Issue 1 Jan 2005

8) High Pass filters: - Automatically sharpen the luminance data to emphasise

fine details. Most useful for sharpening planetary images but will also increase the noise content.

For your first test images, I suggest that you turn on the Anti-Alias option and possibly the ‘Daylight Image’ option.

Now press the ‘Create Image’ button. After a couple of seconds, your raw mono image will be replaced by a full colour version.

There is every reason to expect that the image will be reasonably well colour balanced, but if it is not, you can adjust the colour in the ‘Set Colour Balance’ dialog box (Under ‘Colour’ in the main menu).

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