SSAG Not connecting MacBook Air (late 2013) OSX 10.13.5

[Scott Mundy]

Hello all,

After years of working just fine, the recent OSX updates are wreaking havoc with my ability to use my tried and true programs and equipment with my tried and true 13" MacBook Air. Last clean session was in December and timing and weather didn't get me back to it until May. At that point I discovered Neb4 wasn't working but I was getting a connection with PHD. I updated to current 2.6.5  version and fired it up again last night to try to get some guiding in, and now I can't get the camera to connect at all. 

I uploaded the log file to this location:

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_xrM5.zip

Any help is sincerely appreciated. I am using a MacBook Air late 2013 model running OSX 10.13.5. It was all working and hopefully someone has a similar problem solved. 

Thanks in advance,

Scott

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Scott,

There's not enough info in the log to tell why the camera connection is failing.

Could you run System Information and check under Hardware > USB to see if the computer is finding the camera at all? It should show up as "Vendor-Specific Device" with Vendor ID 0x1856 and Product ID 0x0011 (or possibly 0x0012).

Andy

[Scott Mundy]

Thanks Andy!

Here is the system info. It does appear to be finding it:

Vendor-Specific Device:

  Product ID: 0xba11

  Vendor ID: 0x1856

  Version: 0.00

  Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec

  Location ID: 0x14200000 / 14

  Current Available (mA): 500

  Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

Hope that helps and any insight is appreciated!

Scott

[Andy Galasso]

Well, that explains why PHD2 is not seeing it.  PHD2 is looking specifically for product ID 0x0011 as the identity of an SSAG camera, but the camera is showing up as 0xba11.  If you haven't tried already you should try power cycling the camera (un-plug usb cable, then plug back in) to see if the Product id changes to 0x0011.

[Scott Mundy]

Gotcha! Looks like it is still 0xba11 no matter what I do. Unplug/replug USB; restart MacBook; Shutdown/restart etc.       I really appreciate your time on this! It has worked fine up until I tried to get some imaging in last night and this all started. Thanks in advance for any insight!

Scott

[Andy Galasso]

Scott, I'm going to email you directly so we can work through this off-forum and we can post back here when we have a resolution.

Andy

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[Andy Galasso]

To close the loop on this in case anyone was following along, we're not sure why Scott's SSAG is showing up with a different USB Product ID, but PHD2 has been updated to handle either the original USB PID (0x0011) or the new PID (0xba11).

Andy

[Geoffrey Lewis]

Hi Andy and Scott,

I had a similar problem with my SSAG earlier this year and I found out that there is a known problem with some SSAG where the firmware gets corrupted and reports spurious VID and PID - see the below thread on Cloudy Nights

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/406237-orion-ssag-firmware-reset/
In my case device manager was reporting an unknown device, so I tried the 'Cloudy Nights' process with less than satisfactory results. I contacted Orion direct who advised me that they are aware of the problem on a few of their USB units, but that they have no facility to flash the chip to reset it and offered a small discount to purchase a new camera....

'Considering that we are aware this can occur with USB cameras, and we don’t believe it to be the fault of the end user I’ve inquired with our supervisor to see if this is a situation in which we could offer a discount on a new unit. If you would like, we can set up a $50 discount on a new 52064 StarShoot Autoguider, which would already come with free shipping and handling on our website. Please let us know if that is agreeable and if you have any further questions....'

.....which offer I did not accept, so I am now using a lodestar X2 for guiding instead.

I'm not sure if this is the same problem experience by Scott, but thought I would share it anyway.

Regards,

Geof

[Andy Galasso]

Geoff,

Thanks for that information.  I do believe that is the issue that Scott had with his camera too. My original fix for Scott was to allow PHD2 to connect to the standard USB id, or else to the id that Scott's camera had.  But based on your information I updated PHD2 to be more general and provide an option for the entering a specific USB ids to connect to.  This applies to the Mac/Linux versions of PHD2 only.  For the Windows version, the USB ids are embedded in the USB driver so you would have to do the .inf file hacking described in the CloudyNights thread.

Andy

[Geoffrey Lewis]

Thanks Andy,

I still have my SSAG and did wonder whether your PHD 'fix' would get it working more reliably again, but I use Windows, so clearly that solution is not going to work for me. C'est la vie....

Regards,

Geof

[Scott Mundy]

Thanks Andy for all the time and effort! 

Thanks Geoff for the solace that I am not the only one this has happened to! I did circle back on the CN thread you provided and it seems there was some sloppiness in the initial programming that caused the SSAG onboard EEPROM to ship "unlocked", allowing overwrite of the firmware. I have an old XP laptop that I used previous to switching to the MacBook Air. I was trying to get that going but could not get the SSAG to connect, so I will dig into that fix. If I can get the SSAG up on that computer, I will at least have a working imaging rig again! Worst case a separate planetary imaging setup with BYEOS.

Thanks again all for the help! 

Scott

[Andy Galasso]

The PHD2 Camera Support wiki page has been updated with the instructions for how to access an SSAG with corrupted firmware:

https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/Orion-Starshoot-Autoguider-VID---PID-Override

Andy