I'm using the ZWO SDK libraries in a project that monitors the night sky for meteors. During nighttime the camera uses a fixed exposure time of 10 fps, while during daytime the exposure time is set to 'automatic', which typically results in rather short exposure times. Switching between daytime to nighttime mode is done at sunset/sunrise by calling ASISetControlValue with the appropriate setting of an ASI_BOOL.
This worked perfectly fine using libraries up to 3.0324, but when I recently switched to version 6.0110 there was suddenly a change in behaviour. After a one successful night of observing the camera switches to daytime mode, but when it comes back to the dark sky the night after, images suddenly appear much darker. While the exposure time is correct (still at 10 fps), the much darker images indicate that somehow the chip does respond as well as the previous night. The level of gain is set to 'automatic' with the ASI_BOOL flag after initialization, and not touched when changing between daytime/nighttime. Brightness and Gamma are always kept at constant values (and I checked these do not change either).
The level of gain attained in darkness is identical on both nights.
Anyone noticed something similar? I suspect this is related to the driver. I'm now trying a workaround by restarting the camera at each twilight.
Cheers,
Eric.
