Xavier's Presentation on YouTube

[szigler511]

The Kalamazoo Astronomical Society just posted a recording of a joint presentation by Xavier and Fred Bruejenes (developer of Eclipse Orchestrator). Members of this forum may be interested. I found it quite useful even though I've used SEM for two eclipses. The link is below. Thanks to Xavier for taking the time to present!

Xavier described how difficult it is to maintain the software and support users. It's not easy, especially for donation ware. I have donated previously, but after watching the video, I decided it was time to help out again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLHfURDO1YY

[MikeMaurer42]

Thank you for the link, and donating again as well,

[David]

In the YouTube presentation Xavier mentions the camera shoot more reliably and faster if a serial port cable is used for the the camera shutter. I guess the serial cable will fire the shutter and the USB cable will transmit the ISO, Shutter speed and Aperture. Will the present version of the software support use of the serial port connection or do we need a beta version or the not yet seen updated version of SEM?

[gmvtex]

Hi David,

I purchased the DBUSB box and connector to the remote shutter connection on a D850 and D810A (two boxes and connectors) and they both work well with the software and script. You specify which shutter box you are using with the camera in the 'Hardware Configuration' found under 'Setup' and then have both a USB connection AND the shutter connection to each camera. For some reason the 10 pin connection cable from the shutter box (labeled DBUSB and DBUSB2) to these two DSLRs worked well, but the 4 pin connector cable used for cabled shutter releases on cameras like the Z-7 and Z-7II that I also bought did NOT.

Using the Configuration Wizard generated script, setting of a minimum delay of .8 sec and specifying 'fill' for the number of corona captures, I was able to get approximately 190 exposures. I found that if I went below .8sec, I started missing photos. If I went above .8 sec, the number of photos taken was also smaller - so .8sec seemed to be my sweet spot.

I've been wondering if I put in a burst command for Bailey's Beads, whether that would increase my take or not. I think both the D850 and D810 could shoot at least 5 frames/sec in Cont High with a fast card.

Best of luck!

Cheers,
Greg

p.s. Unfortunately, Shoestring Astro is not taking any more orders prior to the eclipse. I am told that Hap Griffin makes these serial connectors for Canon cameras and has a relatively quick turn around.

[gmvtex]

A follow up to my last post.

I actually found that the sequence of actuations was more reliable without the serial shutter cables added to the cameras. I have to work with Doug Anderson to figure out what was not working, but even the 10 pin connectors didn't seem to be making a good connection because the number of shots doing the same simulation of totality produced variable results and I had quite a few more actuations using just the USB 3 cable from the computer to the Nikon USB connection.

Doug sent me a test program to troubleshoot the serial connection system, but i haven't gotten to it yet.

I thought the serial shutter cable was adding more actuations, but not in this particular case.

cheers,
Greg

[ultracyclist]

Hello everyone!

I'm experimenting with taking rapid bursts of Baily's beads using my EOS R6....

I recently built one of the shutter control serial cables mentioned here: https://beskeen.com/projects/dslr_seria ... rial.shtml. (In testing, I'm able to fire the shutter by manipulating the serial port through software.)
There doesn't seem to be a way to tell SEM the name of the tty the serial cable is connected to....

Is there a version of SEM that works with this version of shutter control cable? Does it only support the DSUSB cables?

(I sort of figured out from reading posts here and there that the DSUSB ones are proprietary and they don't seem to work in the same way as the serial cable I constructed.)

Thanks -- I'm learning a lot....