ASI 178MC won't take exposures longer than 30 sec

[pcfreeman1]

I am using an ASI 178MC camera, and it won't take exposures longer than 30 seconds regardless of what I put in the "camera settings". I set the binning to 2x2, but while brighter there is a visible quality impact.

I assume this is a common camera, and was looking for advice as to whether this is firmware related.

Thank you

[EricClaeys]

@pcfreeman1, is this daytime or nighttime? There is a nighttime max exposure variable you can set. What is yours at?

[pcfreeman1]

I have that nighttime setting at 60000 or 60 seconds.

But it won't take any images over 30 seconds.

[EricClaeys]

@pcfreeman1, I'll need a log file to see what's going on.
See here for what to do.

[pcfreeman1]

Here is the output for (cd ~/allsky; git log | head):

commit 02bf855
Merge: 90d782a 27e85df
Author: EricClaeys [email protected]
Date: Mon Nov 15 18:11:24 2021 -0600

Merge pull request #787 from AndreasLMeg/keogram_mono

keogram: (cleanup/enhancement) support mono images

commit 90d782a

Here is the log file:
allsky.log

[EricClaeys]

@pcfreeman1, please grab the most recent capture.cpp file. Copy it to allsky/src, then stop the service and run:
make capture; cp capture ..
then restart the service.
The version you have isn't always accurate in reporting the exposure time.

It looks like the first several times you tried it you got 60 second exposures. I assume you restarted it several time, versus the software doing that on its own?

[pcfreeman1]

Replaced the capture.cpp file, and executed the "make capture; cp capture .." command. It seems to be working, but I will update if it doesn't tonight.

When I tried it at first and was getting 60 second exposures, I upped it to 90 seconds and reduced binning to 1X1 to see if that would work. It didn't, and it reverted to the 30 second exposures. The restarts were me saving the camera settings and restarting it.

Thank you for your help.

[pcfreeman1]

This works well enough now. However, it now caps out at 60 seconds instead of 30. That is probably good enough.

[EricClaeys]

@pcfreeman1, many people have problems running with both auto-exposure and auto-gain. You could also try disabling auto-gain. At nighttime we use the ZWO auto-exposure algorithm.

[EricClaeys]

@pcfreeman1 When your camera is in auto exposure mode it has a limit of 60 seconds. That's a ZWO limit, not an Allsky limit.