Download Sbig Driver

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Company For more than 25 years, Diffraction Limited has been the global leader in Astronomy and Scientific Imaging Solutions—continually delivering unsurpassed products, software and services to a multitude of industries including research, education, spectrometry, astro-imaging, unique optical laboratory applications, and more. Hi just purchased a legacy St4000xcm and before contecting up I have tried downloading the Sbig drive checker. On the download page when I hit the download link a box opens requesting a username/password, have tried entering my DL details and enter but doesnt work. Under the Classic drivers we had a separate system level driver to boot each model camera and then an additional driver to communicate with the booted camera. With the new 32/64 bit Drivers we have only a single system level driver (sbigu32/64.sys) and separate firmware files to boot each model camera.

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Controlling an SBIG STF-8300M astronomy camera in Windows and Linux
Part 1: Setup and Installation

Left: STF-8300M connected to a Nikon 50 mm f/1.2 camera lens.Astronomy cameras have no provision for changing the aperture, so only manual lenses can be used. The aperture in most regular lenses closes down to f/22 automatically, so if you use a regular lens you would need to jam something inside it to keep the iris open.
Right = full-size crop (1.85% of original area) of a single 10-minute frame of the Horsehead Nebula shot through a 50-mm camera lens, showing the remarkable smoothness of the images from a cooled CCD camera (7 nm Hα filter, color added).

The SBIG STF-8300M is a mid-range 16-bit monochrome USB camera popular with amateur astronomers. It is highly sensitive in near infrared and nearultraviolet. There's no aperture control or autofocus, and its minimum exposure time is 0.09 seconds, which means it's not much good as a regular camera. But the pixels have a full well capacity of 25,500 electrons, and it cools to 40°C below ambient, so the dark current is a remarkably low 0.002e-/pixel/sec, which makes it incredibly useful for astronomers. It's also useful in the lab for imaging low-light phenomena like chemiluminescence.

Although the camera is highly regarded, the manufacturer has not paid as much attentionto software. This article describes some of the troubleshooting steps that may be necessary in getting the software to work.

CCDOps5 Problems

SBIG provides a basic control program called CCDOps5. I installed this on my laptop, which was running 64-bit Windows 7, but it would not run.

The program cannot start because MSVCR110.dll is missing from your computer.Try re-installing the program.

The solution can be foundhere.You need to install the 32-bit version of theMicrosoft Visual C++ Redistributable.

vcredist_x86.exe = 32-bit version
vcredist_x64.exe = 64-bit version

This is not related to whether your OS is 32 or 64 bits. It must match the version the software was compiled with.

File format problems

By default, CCDOps5 saves images in SBIG format or 8-bit TIFF format, with no option for 16-bit TIFF, so you have trick it. In the menus, set the default format to FITS. The nexttime you change it back to TIFF, a dialog box comes up asking whether you want 8 or 16 bits. If you select 16, the setting is remembered and you get 16 from then on.

SBIG also includes a utility that can convert their proprietary SBIG formatto TIFF or FITS. There's a Python utility on the Internet that's also supposed to work, but it just crashed on my system.

CCDSoft problems

CCDOps5 is nice, but it's only useful for testing whether the camera works. To capture a series of frames, you need something like Bisque's CCDSoft. Unfortunately, CCDSoft version 5.00.210, which is provided with the camera, does not work for the STF-8300. No matter which camera you select, it says 'Device not supported, Error code 220 0xDC'.

It seems that this software is obsolete, and Bisque wants you to buy theirvery expensive TheSkyX software, which tries to do everything, including control your telescope, be a planetarium, and for 200 bucks more, maybe control your camera. For those of us who don't need no steenkin' planetarium, this creates another challenge: navigating Bisque's website.

To control the STF-8300, you must download CCDSoft Version 5.00.217from www.bisque.com/sc/media/g/ccdsoft/default.aspx.There is no link to this page on their website. The only way I found it wasfrom a mention by one poster in their Forum page.

Download Sbig Driver App

Before you can download it, you must register and enter the Serial Numberof your copy from the CD. Bisque will then email you a password, enablingyou to log in. The web site is extremely disorganized—it took me along time to find the correct page.

Getting rid of the giant advertisement

The new version of CCDSoft works, but it also pastes a giant ad for TheSkyX on the screen. On my computer, it filled up the entire screen, making it impossible to usethe program. Normally in Windows if a window gets too big you would hit Alt-Space. A menu would pop up with options for minimize, resize, and restore. But this only works if the window has a border around it, which the ad does not.

To get rid of the big ad, do the following:

Download Sbig Driver Software

Sbig
  • Right click on the bottom taskbar (which contains the Start button) and uncheck 'lock taskbar.'
  • Drag the taskbar to right. It is now vertical on the right side of the screen.
  • A Close button should now be visible on the ad. Click Close. If your screen is too smallfor this to work, you're out of luck. Even the Task Mangler can't get rid of it.Your only recourse is to edit the program with a hex editor.

Focusing in CCDSoft is much slower than in CCDOps5, and CCDSoft sometimes getsitself into a screwed-up state where it captures useless truncated files. Butit's easy to use, and so far I have not had it crash. It's convenient, but theadvertisement problem and the slowness of its focusing caused me to switch toNebulosity instead.

Windows problems

Download sbig driver software

Be sure to turn off Microsoft Windows Update. Otherwise, your laptop may decide that it needs to reboot while you're in the middle of an exposure, which happenedto me the first day. You also have to change the power settings so the computer doesn't go to sleep while you're taking exposures.

Linux CCD controller software problems

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There are many advantages to controlling the camera in Linux. For example,you could take advantage of Linux's better networking and use a pair of USB-Ethernet adapters or hubs to control the camera from a remote location. While Linux software is not as easy to set up as Windows software, it isgenerally easier to troubleshoot. I was hoping to modify the Linux Imal scientific imaging program to control thecamera directly. However, so far I have not been able to get any of these other Linux camera control programs to work.

Xmccd

Xmccd is a graphics-mode program that requires Motif, Motif developer libraries, FITSlibraries, FITS utilities, ds9 image display software, XPA communications library, Fxload, and the SBIG library (libsbig). All these components have to be downloadedand installed, so the overall process is very complicated. The authors recommendSuse 12.2 or 12.3.

The xmccd documentation says that they are discontinuing support for SBIG cameras,because SBIG no longer plans to release their Linux library. This is a big deal,because the library has to upload camera-specific firmware to the camera wheneverit is connected and powered on. Thus, it wouldn't make sense to start using xmccd with an SBIG camera if you're just starting out.

Nightview

Nightview is a little simpler. The documentation says it doesn't need the SBIGlibraries, and it can be run from the command line. However, when I tried to compileit, it still insisted on the wxwidgets graphics library.

Wxwidgets installed flawlessly. The following commands got nightview to compile.

./configure --without-sbigudrv --without-xnightview --without-xmove
make

This program seems to create a Web server and a number of CGI scripts, but thedocumentation is a little vague.

Remote control options

Remote control eliminates the risks of keeping a computer outside, where itcan fall into the snow or have weird things done to it by bugs and animals. SBIG's STT series cameras with Ethernet built-in are the easiest solution for remote control. But if you have an extra laptop lying around, you can use VNC to control an STF camera remotely. It doesn't eliminate the need for keeping alaptop outside, but at least you don't have to be out there in the snow with it.

However, an STT costs about $1500 more than an STF, so if the software doesn'twork, it's a bigger loss. But network software is a little easier to write thanUSB software, so if you're a programmer the STT might still be a good choice. Siig driver download for windows 10.

Download sbig driver app

Hardware issues

  • It is much heavier than a DSLR, so with a camera lens attached you need a small counterweight to balance it, unlike with a regular camera.
  • The 12V power connector is shorter than normal. This means standard 12 volt battery cables don't attach securely. I had to make a special adapter by solderinga 5.5×2.1 mm DC power connector with a locking ring to a Celestron Car Battery Adapter cable.
  • There is no on/off switch. The manual warns that unplugging it at the powerconnector will damage the camera. I might just install a switch on it myself, but it's not clear what could be causing an inductive surge in a camera.
  • It produces outstanding images. The image quality blows away a DSLR, but it also has lots more hot pixels. Here is a full-size crop of a 10-min exposure. At least 30 hot pixels are visible. You have to use dark frames with this camera.
  • The image above also showed astigmatism in the edges (as shown by distorted starshapes around the edge), which means that the lens adapter distance is a little bit off.

Notes

Update (Nov 04, 2014) Another SBIG camera controller is Ekos, which is said to bea complete astrophotography stack for Linux that supports all of SBIG CCD/Filter wheel features. The author says you can even use SBIG CCD hooked to a raspberry PI.It's oriented toward Ubuntu users, but source code is provided.