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Planetary 5x dropping out in middle of Capture session


Tbear

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I purchased the pro version of BYE and am using it with my brand new system consisting of a Celestron 9.25 CGEM II with a Canon M6 Mark II camera. Finally had a clear night for my first major outing last night. I nailed the goto and polar alignment, started off easy by taking several 1000 shot frames of the moon which came out great. Got cocky and figured I try Mars. 

I set out to take several loops of Mars set at 1000 frames with 5x activated and showing on BYE. At some point during the loop, perhaps after a few hundred shots or so, the 5x screen when to 1x ( just a small dot left on the screen ). This happened several times as I tried again to capture Mars. I finally was able to get through a loop of about 500 shots without it happening,  but I don't know what is causing the 5x to drop out. The camera can't be timing out because live view was still showing a 1x view. I turned the camera on and off and reconnected but it continued to happen randomly. 

I couldn't find a thread in the forum about this; perhaps I'm the only one its happened to?  ( although I didn't scroll through all 74 pages )

Any advice or help would be great.... All in all, for the first time out with the system it was incredibly successful for me, in part due to the guidance and good advice I have gotten here, so thanks to all that have answered my previous posts.

Ted

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LiveView causes the Sensor and Electronics to Heat-Up.  The longer utilizing LiveView, the Hotter the Sensor.  Until it reaches the Sensor Thermal Protection Limit, after which LiveView Shuts down.

This is not a BackyardEOS feature, but rather a Protective Feature of ALL DSLRs.  Some are based on Direct Sensor Temp, and others are based on a Timer (20-30 minutes).

Ways to avoid LiveView Thermal Shutdown:  Do something other than LiveView for 30-60 minutes after Polar Alignment.

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If the camera goes out of live view 5x automatically it is initiated by the camera.  Could be that the camera is proactively terminating live view due to internal heat, if this is the case it is good because it is there to protect the internal camera electronics.  When it goes out of 5x to 1x.... is live view still streaming or do you have to pause/stop live view and start it again to have it stream again?

Regards,

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I would amend S3igell's advice to say "Do something other than LiveView for several minutes before starting your Planetary session". For example, you could disconnect BYE and power the camera off for 10 minutes..

Oh and BTW, if you are powering the camera from its battery, rather than from an A/C power adapter, the camera will operate warmer because discharging the battery causes it to warm up. This can contribute to thermal shutdown.

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Thanks for the info. Makes sense. Its fun learning something new every time I turn around...

I didn't use the camera or live view for setup or alignment, only when I started to image. However, I left live view on pretty continuously in hindsight for about an hour albeit not at 5x all the time.

Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the stills and here is a summary: 

From 9:21 to 9:23 took three loops of the moon ( no 5x ) of 1000 frames. No problem

At 9:42 I used 5x for Mars for two loops. Loop 1 shot 785 frames then dropped the 5x. Loop 2 was all at 1x. I didn't notice it dropped out until after it finished.

I ran another series at 9:45 with 5x kicking out after frame 904; the second and 3rd loops were all at 1x.

I ran another loop at 9:48 and all 1000 were good at 5x

Changed lenses and ran at 10:02 and 5x kicked out after 64 frames. ( odd, since it was about 15 minutes since last loop, although I left live view on )

At 10:03 I ran a loop and all 1000 were good at 5x.

Again changed some lenses and at 10:15 ran a loop that kicked out after 625 frames.

At 10:17 I ran 500 frames that were good at 5x

At 10:18 the next loop I did kicked out after 183 frames.

Although some of this data is a little irregular, I tend to agree with your comments that I have to be more sensitive to not keeping live view on when I don't need it, as well as letting the sensor cool down from time to time.

Although I have a dummy battery on order, last night I was using an internal battery

Also, I did not have any dwell time between shots - perhaps that would help, especially since the total exposure time is so short. Having a dwell time certainly wouldn't extend the session very much.

Any further comments are always welcomed.

 

Ted

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I am a bit confused about what you mean by "I ran a loop".

Were you on the Planetary screen and a loop is a Capture Plan of a set number of images (frames). Or are you on the Frame & Focus screen where you are using the Loop button in conjunction with the Snap Image button to capture a set of still images?

Thanks!

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Your post is confusing,  It does not matter if you have 5x enabled or are in 1x or even if you are recording a planetary loop or not.

What matters is if live view is on or not. If the camera is in live view mode it generates heat, and this is the root cause IMO.  Hope this makes sense.

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1 hour ago, astroman133 said:

I am a bit confused about what you mean by "I ran a loop".

Were you on the Planetary screen and a loop is a Capture Plan of a set number of images (frames). Or are you on the Frame & Focus screen where you are using the Loop button in conjunction with the Snap Image button to capture a set of still images?

Thanks!

Sorry about the confusion. By a loop I meant the capture plan while on planetary.

Ted

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1 hour ago, admin said:

Your post is confusing,  It does not matter if you have 5x enabled or are in 1x or even if you are recording a planetary loop or not.

What matters is if live view is on or not. If the camera is in live view mode it generates heat, and this is the root cause IMO.  Hope this makes sense.

Sorry about the confusion. Once I started imaging the moon and mars, I pretty much had live view on for the entire hour or so. I spent a little time focusing, but the rest of the time running captures in planetary mode.  I would lose 5x while running capture, but perhaps that is coincidence. Something still doesn't seem quite right to me because I didn't really give the sensor any time to 'cool down' since I wasn't sure what was causing the issue; and when it switched down from 5x to 1x, I still had live view streaming capturing a 'tiny' mars ... so the sensor in my opinion hadn't shut down....?

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17 minutes ago, admin said:

Most cameras will shut down about 10-20 minutes into live view due to over heating.  1 hour in liveview is simply beyond what those cameras are designed for.

This is a mirrorless camera with no viewfinder. It doesn’t seem right that you could only use it for 20 minutes to take photos? If I was taking pictures at a wedding or something like that I’d be unhappy if it shut down in the middle of the ceremony! 
 

There is a timer setting for auto off for both the display and total power. Is it possible it thinks it’s not being used when connected to BYE and auto shuts down? Could the tiny Mars I see on the screen when this happens be somehow left there and repeatedly imaged after the camera has seemingly switched off totally much less from of 5x?
 

I’m not accusing BYE of having a problem, I barely know how to use it. But as an engineer, some of this isn’t making sense. I’m going to do some at home testing with BYE and my camera set at 5x for extended periods of time and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted. 

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Ok. I believe I have discovered my ‘ problem ‘. It has to do with the camera power saver mode and display auto off mode. I disabled the power auto off, but could only change the display auto off to a max of 30 minutes. ( By default it was set at 1 minute). 
 

I set BYE up in planet mode in my living room,  clicked on 5x and EXACTLY 30 minutes later the BYE display switched from 5x to 1x. ( interestingly enough, live view at 1x then continued to stream. )

Without touching anything else, I clicked on 5x and the image quickly changed back.p to 5x.  EXACTLY 30 minutes later it switched back to 1x. 

I subsequently read in the Canon manual that you can turn “ Eco “ on which actually disables these auto off features irrespective of their setting.  I’m confident this will permanently solve the issue. 
 

Live View has been running continuously now for 75 minutes with no apparent heat issues. I’d run it longer but I’m going to bed!

Thanks for everyone’s interaction that got me thinking.... I appreciate everyone’s input as usual. I’m sure my journey will raise some more questions...

 

Ted

 

 

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On 2/17/2021 at 10:20 PM, Tbear said:

Ok. I believe I have discovered my ‘ problem ‘. It has to do with the camera power saver mode and display auto off mode. I disabled the power auto off, but could only change the display auto off to a max of 30 minutes. ( By default it was set at 1 minute). 
 

I set BYE up in planet mode in my living room,  clicked on 5x and EXACTLY 30 minutes later the BYE display switched from 5x to 1x. ( interestingly enough, live view at 1x then continued to stream. )

Without touching anything else, I clicked on 5x and the image quickly changed back.p to 5x.  EXACTLY 30 minutes later it switched back to 1x. 

I subsequently read in the Canon manual that you can turn “ Eco “ on which actually disables these auto off features irrespective of their setting.  I’m confident this will permanently solve the issue. 
 

Live View has been running continuously now for 75 minutes with no apparent heat issues. I’d run it longer but I’m going to bed!

Thanks for everyone’s interaction that got me thinking.... I appreciate everyone’s input as usual. I’m sure my journey will raise some more questions...

 

Ted

—————————————————————————


Just an update for anyone reading this thread in the future that might have a similar camera and issue.

Changing the setting on the camera “ ECO “ ON should have disabled the power saver functions as indicated in the manual and solved the time out display issue I was having. I didn’t verify it before I went out last night and it turns out that with ECO set on ON , 5x would almost immediately drop back to 1x when engaged in BYE. So I turned “ ECO “ back OFF and set the display time out to 30 minutes ( it’s max ) and had no further problems. After using live view for several hours, I snapped an image to capture the sensor temperature and it was 28 C. The ambient air temperature was 10 C.  
 

Ted

 

 

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