Support@Seestar BT20250119819156S
Zero dropped frames!!!
I may sound like a bitter old man, but that's not the case, my criticism is only intended to make your product better and improve user experience.
I have stated this in the past but I will repeat it again here - I am really impressed by the S50 and by what it can achieve for such a low cost. I have been using the S50 for a year now with great success and I just checked the size of my S50 backup archive, it's 243GB, you can imagine how many sleepless hours that is, since until very recently you could not take images without being physically present and awake. That's why I cannot wait to try the new planning feature, but the weather is not cooperating.
Thanks for not ignoring my suggestions and those of other people posting here. We do like the S50 and we would like it to get even better, more enjoyable and easier to use.
wvreeven
May I ask if you have successfully completed the starry sky level calibration? From our side, we believe this is the main cause based on the data we reviewed.
starnet59
I understand what you mean. I’ve been following your activity on the forum, and I see that you’re very active, offering great ideas and helping others. Sometimes, I haven’t responded to your questions because there isn’t a good solution or improvement for the issue at the moment, and I don’t have more help to offer. So please continue sharing your interesting and valuable ideas!
Support@Seestar Good question and the answer is that I haven't tried that. I will as soon as the rain, that's plaguing us now, is over.
wvreeven There's no need to rush, I think maybe with better weather you can get some good shots.
Support@Seestar I ran another test tonight. I took 11 minutes of images in over 15 minutes. So again about 66% of the images were accepted but not the rest. I installed the latest SeeStar firmware and enabled horizontal level calibration. I am open to suggestions for how to improve. The bug report number is BT20250124166190S Thanks!
satch984 Agreed, around 75% is the best you can hope for. But I would not call this "great" and on longer captures and mosaics you usually get less than 50%.
wvreeven Thank you very much for your test and time. I hope to clarify the imaging time issue first. Seestar also needs some time to enhance, handle the image, dither and so on during imaging, so even all images stacked succeed without discard, It is also difficult to get more than 48 minutes of superimposed images during an hour of shooting
A lot of folks miss the point just made by Tech@ZWO. Overhead (dithering, enhancing, writing the image to memory) takes up a significant amount of time which doesn't add to the stacked image time. If you save every frame and then take a look at the time stamps on the saved images you will see a general pattern with 11.5 sec between the first 4 frames which includes the 10sec of imaging plus 1.5sec of overhead for enhancing and writing the image to memory. Between the 4th and 5th frame this climbs to 21.5 sec due to the dithering. So for every 50 sec of stacked frames, assuming no dropped frames, it will take 4 x 11.5 + 21.5 sec = 67sec. So you have 50sec of stacked frames in 67sec which comes to 75% efficiency of imaging for perfect, zero dropped frame, stacking. So in 1 hour expect no more than 45min (sorry ZWO Tech but I say the overhead is 25% not 20% and another person on CN did the exact same analysis independently and found the same result).
wvreeven If I understand you correctly, this option already exists. Disable "Live" from Me->Advanced Feature->Live. Read the Info provided for this toggle. I've used it several times after making sure the scope was centering the image correctly (that is, I start with Live enabled, let a few frames stack and ensure its what I want. Then disable Live and let it run)....
curtismacc I have no problem with 75% stacking efficiency, I also consider that the best you could expect. I do have a problem with less then 50% efficiency, especially in mosaic mode. For me mosaic efficiency starts at less then 50% and goes downhill from there, the longer you wait, the smaller it gets. I have never seen the effective mosaic exposure time go beyond 110 minutes, no matter how long the total exposure is. After wasting many nights on mosaics with nothing to show for it, I have completely given up on it. As far as I am concerned, this feature does not work and I am using the planning feature instead to acquire the data and then doing my own mosaics with third party tools.
5 days later
marvindj Thanks for reminding me to switch off Live mode. I gave this a try tonight and it indeed works as expected. I got 180 images of 10 sec in half an hour. Great!
Tech@ZWO Support@Seestar It looks like SeeStar continues imaging while it dithers or maybe while it repositions the target in the center of the field of view. It would help if it doesn't do that so no images with star trails are gotten. Sorry for being so picky. Disabling the Live mode already is a huge advantage for me!!! Thanks for all the support you have given me here.
starnet59 Yes, I have seen much poorer stacking rates with mosaic as well.
satch984 And are you OK with that? How many normal exposures could you have done in those 8 hours? Also, do you stay awake for 8 hours at night or do you set an alarm?