QHY550 M/C/P

Model	QHY550M (Monochrome Version) QHY550C (Color Version) QHY550P (Four Direction Monochrome Polarize Version)
COMS Sensor	SONY IMX250 Pregius Global Shutter CMOS Sensor
Pixel Size	3.45um*3.45um
Effective Pixel Area	2464 × 2056
Effective Pixels	5.0 mega pixel
Effective Image Area	8.50mm * 7.09mm

*Please contact QHYCCD about the price.

Introduction

QHY550 has the 2/3inch SONY 5.0mega pixel IMX250 Global shutter CMOS sensor. Besides the monochrome and color version it has the special Polarize version.

Unlike the rolling shutter technology used in most cmos cameras, The Pregius is global shutter pixel technology for active pixel-type CMOS image sensors that use Sony’s low-noise CCD structure,and realizes high picture quality. For high speed moving object and the atmospheric agitation the pregius sensor can generate undisborted imaging.

QHY550 has build-in two stage TEC cooler. It can cooled the sensor to -35C below ambient. This can reduce the dark current of IMX250 significantly. Which greatly improving the dark signal detect performance. Especially for detect the tiny difference of the polarize light. Which is necessary for the astronomy, life science and optical lab.

QHY550 Polarize Version

With the on-pixel four direction polarize filter, It can capture the polarize image at only one exposure.No need change the polarize filter for three times. Tt can generate the polarize video at 68FPS high frame rate. Polarize detector can be used in industry image to detect the scratch, transmissible object and getting the no-reflection pictures. In gemstone,geology and material science, biology science it also has important applications.

Since the polarizer is formed during the semiconductor process, form and formulation of polarizer, uniformity, mass productivity and durability are excellent compared to conventional polarization sensors. Furthermore, The Polarization sensor is covered with an anti-reflection layer which helps to reduce reflectance and avoids poor flare and ghost characteristics.

Specifications

Model	QHY550M (Monochrome Version) QHY550C (Color Version) QHY550P (Four Direction Monochrome Polarize Version)
COMS Sensor	SONY IMX250 Pregius Global Shutter CMOS Sensor

Pixel Size	3.45um*3.45um
Effective Pixel Area	2464 × 2056
Effective Pixels	5.0 mega pixel
Effective Image Area	8.50mm * 7.09mm
Fullwell	11000e
AD Sample Depth	12BIT (output as 16bit or 8bit format)
Sensor Size	Typical 2/3inch
Full Frame Rate and ROI Frame Rate	24582056 68FPS@8BIT 24582056 34FPS@12BITROI 1080lines （eg.24581080,19201080）126FPS@8BIT ROI 480lines (eg.2458480, 640480） 270FPS@8BIT ROI 100lines (eg.2458100,100100） 940FPS@8BIT*Note：QHYCCD has optimized the cmos drive freqency and limit the max frame rate. The CMOS sensor may not work under the maxium frequency to ensure the better noise performance. If you need the customized higher frame rate version please contact QHYCCD.
Readout Noise	2.0e-2.5e
Dark Current	0.005e/pixel/sec @ -10C
Exposure Time Range	20us-600sec
Anti-Glow Control	Yes. Big reduction of the amp-glow of the IMX250 sensor
Shutter Type	Electric Global Shutter
Computer Interface	USB3.0
Built-in Image Buffer	128MByte DDR2 memory
Non-volatile memory / On camera storage	Build-in total 512Kbytes Flash Memory. 100Kbytes user-accessible space for stellar ROI frames for analysis of exoplanet investigation, occultations, atmospheric seeing messurement, focus , optic analysis etc. Support 100100 image x 10rames 5050 image x40frames. 2525 image x160frames 1010 image * 1000 frames （total frame numbers is based on 8bit image）
Cooling System	Dual Stage TEC cooler（about -35C below ambient）
Anti-Dew Heater	Yes
Telescope Interface	M42/0.75 or optional C-mount
Optic Window Type	AR+AR High Quality Multi-Layer Anti-Reflection Coating （for QHY550M and QHY550P） IR cut Coating(for QHY550C)
Back Focal Length	18mm(±0.3)
Weigth	460g
Retail Price	QHY550P(Cooled) $2,999 QHY550M(Cooled) $1,900

Curves

Mechanical Dimensions

User Guide

1. Before Start: Input Voltage Requirements

The camera requires an input voltage between 11V and 13.8V. If the input voltage is too low the camera will stop functioning or it may reboot when the TEC power percent is high, causing a drain on the power. Therefore, please make sure the input voltage arrived to the camera is adequate. 12V is the best but please note that a 12V cable that is very long or a cable with small conductor wire may exhibit enough resistance to cause a voltage drop between the power supply and the camera. The formular is: V(drop) = I * R (cable). It is advised that a very long 12V power cable not be used. It is better to place the 12V AC adapter closer to the camera.

First connect the 12V power supply, then connect the camera to your computer via the USB3.0 cable. Make sure the camera is plugged in before connecting the camera to the computer, otherwise the camera will not be recognized. When you connect the camera for the first time, the system discovers the new device and looks for drivers for it. You can skip the online search step by clicking “Skip obtaining the driver software from Windows Update” and the computer will automatically find the driver locally and install it. If we take the 5IIISeries driver as an example (shown below), after the driver software is successfully installed, you will see QHY5IIISeries_IO in the device manager.

Please note that the input voltage cannot be lower than 11.5v, otherwise the device will be unable to work normally.

2. Install "All-In-One" System Pack

All-in-one Pack (Windows) is for all QHYCCD USB3.0 devices, including all Cooling CMOS cameras, QHY5III and QHY 5II series, QHYCFW3. We recommend you choose “Stable Version” as usual.

In this pack there are:

1. System driver. It must be installed to make devices work.

2. EZCAP_QT: it’s developed by QHYCCD which could be used in QHY devices tests, simple capture tasks, and above all, the management of updates. So even if you won’t use EZCAP_QT as your main capture software, we suggest you install it to get the latest information of QHY drivers/SDK updates.

3. Ascom driver: Ascom Platform is supported by most astronomy devices which connect to Windows.

4. SDK: SDK is the file of “.dll” format. With this the device can be identified in other capture software.

5. SkyX Plugin: special support for SkyX.

6. QHYCCD BroadCast WDM Driver: It is a broadcast driver that supports QHYCCD cameras with video broadcast function, which can meet the needs of customers to send video images to other target software.

How to install it?
Take SharpCap (x64) for example:
Before the installation, make sure you’ve already installed SharpCap (X64) on your PC;

Then click ”Third Party Software Support” – “SharpCap 64”, the pack will detect the location of SharpCap files and install automatically; if not, please manually select root directory of SharpCap where you installed it, like: C:\Program Files\SharpCap 3.2 (64 bit)

3. Connect with Software

Before using software, make sure you have connected the cooling camera to the 12V power supply and connected it to the computer with a USB3.0 data cable. If it’s a planetary/guiding camera, 12V power is not needed.

Note: We recommend 64-bit Software when you’re using cameras with a large sensor, such as QHY600. A full resolution image from the QHY600 is 120MBytes. It takes a significant amount of processing power and memory to capture, buffer, display and process. We therefore suggest using 64-bit software with the QHY600, for example, SharpCAP x64 , N.I.N.A x64. etc. Although the camera has 4GB of internal memory, 32-bit software will run within this memory area and the remaining memory may be not sufficient for normal operation.

3.1 EZCAP_QT

EZCAP_QT is software developed by QHYCCD. This software has basic capture functions for QHYCCD deep sky cameras.

Run EZCAP_QT. Click “Connect” in Menu -> Camera. If the camera is successfully connected, the title line of EZCAP_QT will display the camera firmware version and the camera ID as shown below.

Click “Temperature Control” in “Camera Settings” to set the temperature of the CMOS sensor. You can turn on “Auto” to set the target temperature. For example, here we set the target temperature to -10C. The temperature of the CMOS sensor will drop quickly to this temperature (approximately 2-3 minutes). If you want to turn off cooling, you can choose Stop. If you just want to set the TEC power but not the temperature. You can select “Manual” and then set the percentage of the TEC power.

You can use the “preview tab” to preview and use the focus tool to focus. Then use the “capture tab” to capture the image.

3.2 SharpCap

Launch SharpCap. If the software and drivers mentioned above are installed successfully, the video image will appear automatically about 3 seconds after the software loads. You will also see the frame rate in the lower left corner of the software window as shown below.

If you have already started the SharpCap software before connecting the camera, in order to open the camera, click on the “camera” in the menu bar and then select the device.

Offset adjustment. When you completely block the camera (i.e., like taking a dark frame) you may find that the image is not really zero. Sometimes this will reduce the quality of the image contrast. You can get a better dark field by adjusting the offset. You can confirm this by opening the histogram as indicated in the figure below.

If you want to enter the 16-bit image mode, select the “RAW16” mode.

By selecting the “LX” mode you can expand the exposure setting range and take long exposures.

After cooling devices connected to the 12V power supply, the temperature control circuit will be activated. You can control the CMOS temperature by adjusting the settings in the figure below. Basically, you can control the temperature of CMOS by either adjusting “Cooler Power” or clicking “Auto” and setting “Target Temperature”. You can also see the CMOS temperature at the lower-left corner of the software window.

3.3 ASCOM supported software (e.g. MDL)

With ASCOM drivers, you can use the device with many software packages that support the ASCOM standard. We will use Maxim DL below as an example, but a similar procedure is used for The SkyX and other software packages supporting ASCOM.

First make sure you have not only loaded the ASCOM drivers but that you have also downloaded and installed the ASCOM platform from ASCOM. After both the drivers and platform are installed, start MAXIMDL. Follow the instructions shown below to finish the setup. Then Click Connect in and enter the software.

3.4 N.I.N.A

Open N.I.N.A. – Nighttime Imaging ‘N’ Astronomy. Drive connections via ASCOM.

Turn on the TE cooler to set temperature. Then set the exposure time to capture the image.

4. BroadCast WDM Camera Driver

QHYCCD BroadCast WDM Camera is a broadcast driver that supports QHYCCD cameras with video broadcast function, which can meet the needs of customers to send video images to other target software. For example, use sharpcap to connect a WDM-enabled camera, and the sharpcap display video image can be sent to other WDM-supported software for display, which is suitable for video online broadcast applications.

Installation:

Perform the AllInOne installation and check the BroadCast WDM Camera option.

The installation process is over, right-click the computer to find the device manager, and check that the image device name is QHYCCD BroadCast WDM Camera, which means the installation is successful.

Activate the function:

Usually sharpcap is used to connect the camera as the broadcasting terminal. After connecting the camera, you need to turn on the Enable Live Broadcast switch to broadcast.

Common supporting software (ie, broadcast receiver) includes: UFOCAPTURE, HANDYAVI, QQ video functions, etc.

AMcap test effect chart:

HANDYAVI test effect chart:

UFOCAPTURE test renderings:

Precautions:

Currently only supports Windows system.

Currently, the SDK does not support 16 bits for the time being.

RGB24 mode must be selected for color images, otherwise the image will appear gridded.

Appendix: Bayer Sequences of Some Colored Cameras

Cooled CMOS Camera	Bayer
QHY600C	RGGB
QHY268C	RGGB
QHY410C	RGGB
QHY367Pro	RGGB
QHY128Pro	RGGB
QHY294C	RGGB
QHY247C	RGGB
QHY168C	RGGB
QHY165C	RGGB
QHY163C	GRBG
QHY183C	RGGB
QHY174C	RGGB
QHY178C	GBRG
QHY290C	GBRG
QHY224C	GBRG
Planetary and Guiding	Bayer
QHY5III174C	RGGB
QHY5III178C	GBRG
QHY5III224C	GBRG
QHY5III290C	GBRG
QHY5III462C	GBRG
QHY5III485C	RGGB
QHY5L-II-C	BGGR
QHY5P-II-C	GBRG
Cooled CCD Camera	Bayer
QHY8L-C	GBRG
QHY10-C	RGGB
QHY12-C	BGGR

Appendix: White Balance Adjustment

California Dreamin' NGC1499

Photoed BY.
Terry Hancock（US）

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