I recently purchased a ZWO ASI1600MM-COOL camera and have just now started trying to set it up with IND/Ekos. While the camera seems to connect and image just fine, I can't find any setting for adjusting the gain. Am I missing something?

I found a gain setting under the device options, but it doesn't look like this is settable in the imaging tab in Ekos. I also did not find any settings value at all for offset. I am new to CCD's as I have been using my Canon DSLR prior to this so I am very open to the fact that I could be just missing something.

I use the ASI1600MM-COOL also. You can set the desired Gain/Gamma/Offset/Bit-Rate under the Control tab in the Indi control panel for the camera. Make sure you Save the changes under the Options tab. In the Ekos control panel you then simply choose your exposure time and you're good to go.

FWIW: I use the ZWO Unity setting of 139 Gain, 50 Gamma and 21 Offset. If you need to focus quickly increase the Gain to >300 to allow faster capture. Don't forget to reset to 139 when you're ready to capture you lights, darks, bias and flats. (Don't be tempted to reduce the Offset otherwise all sorts of blacking clipping occurs).

To determine your best exposure for any given filter, object and seeing condition you will need to evaluate the histogram in some test images to ensure you don't clip blacks or whites.

Also, when deciding on the cooling set point keep within 30-35 degree points below ambient temperature and stick to it. I run set at -10 degrees which is around 34 degrees below ambient in my location.

Capture Bias at 0.001

Aim for 12-16k ADU on flats The Auto Flat feature is great for this, I set it at 14k with 1k tolerance. (Make note of all the flat exposure times and reuse for flat darks if you normally take them).

Keith

Nice summary!

Thank you for the information. It was very helpful. Is there a functional reason these values can't be changed on the fly in the imaging tab? Don't get me wrong, it's not difficult to go to the control tab when I need to make these changes and to set defaults, but I would think it would be more user friendly to be able to change this in the image capture window and for running sequences of jobs. One practical example I can think of is there might be multiple jobs you run on different objects during the course of a night and there could indeed be a situation where the gain/gamma/offset need to be changed on the fly. If you have to make the changes globally in the control tab only then you don't have an 'on the fly' method of capturing with alternate settings. Perhaps this becomes more of a wish list item at this point.

I just checked under the control panel for my ZWO ASI1600 and there is no offset setting in there. The first three settings are Gain, Gamma, and Brightness Should I use 139, 50 and 21 for those three settings for the typical 'unity gain' settings for the 1600?

Adding some level of control in the Ekos control panel would also be on my wish list. I already added a request.

Brightness / Offset are one and the same field BUT not the same meaning. Offset is a multiplier to avoid zero pixel values, that incidentally, kills the black end of your histogram if too low.

Correction on my previous bias exposure setting; Ekos automatically chooses the lowest possible exposure length of 3.1999e-05 (1/3200). You check this in the image FITs header.

Keith

Ekos now contains a feature in the CCD / Capture module to quickly define the Gain for your preview and sequence images. Well done Jasem.