Inconsistent timeouts with an ASI120MM

[Bill Stent]

I'm really confused. I'm not even sure where if this is the right place to ask, so bear with me...

Last night I was out at the dark sky site after about eight months of lockdown, and PHD (v.2.6.9 dev2) was unable to get frames from my guide camera.  Specifically, it gave the message that says that after 18 seconds (my intended 3s exposure plus a 15 second wait) the camera had not completed an exposure.

SharpCap 2.9 was able to get a frame or two, but very sporadically - like every five minutes or so. I went back to the PHD v2.6.9 that had worked previously - no difference. I changed cables and USB ports, even using the one in the back of the ASI1600MM-P, no effect. I suspected at the time that the camera - a ZWO120MM - had died or was dying.  I was able to control the mount without a problem, and that's through a EQMOD cable off the same powered hub that the guide camera is plugged into, so I think the USB port is OK.

Back at home, I decided to do some diagnostics. I installed ASCOM 6.5 sp1 in my desktop, as well as PHD2 v2.6.9 (not the dev version). Plugging the guide camera into a USB port, I was surprised to see everything seems to work. PHD was only able to give me a bright and badly focused image at .01s, but it was refreshing very quicly as I moved the camera and guide scope around.

So the camera works and the cable is good. I think.

So then I reinstalled the latest versions of ASCOM and PHD2 (including the ZWO latest native drivers) and tried again on the laptop. No difference. I changed USB ports, no difference. There are two distinct ASI cameras I can connect to: the ZWO ASI camera (which I think is the native driver, and correctly disambiguates into ZWO ASI120MM) and the ASI Camera (1) (ASCOM) pair, which I can drill down to a dialogue called ASICamera setup v6.5.16.0, and I think this is the ZWO ASCOM driver talking to me. Neither has any effect - I still get the timeout error.

I've heard people talking about power management. Could this be a possibility?  As far as I know, the laptop doesn't turn off any USB ports while it's plugged in - which it was.

I've also heard about USB traffic, which you can change in FireCapture. Again, I know nothing about USB traffic, but setting it in FC to about half way up the slider gives me more frames, but FC sporadically telling me that the capture has failed. If I move it down it seems to get fewer, and it comes and goes. Can you change USB traffic in PHD?

So USB traffic might have something to do with it - but I'm not sure if the drivers that FireCapture uses are the same as the ones PHD uses. (In fact I'm pretty sure PHD uses ASCOM and FireCapture uses some windows drivers.

Can anyone suggest some other diagnostics for me to test out?

[Ken Self]

I assume that at the dark sky site you were running off batteries versus mains power at home? Could be simply a voltage issue.

If everything works in one scenario but not another you need to look at what is different between the two.

[bw_msgboard]

You should read the trouble-shooting section of the manual because one of the sections (camera time-outs) describes procedures for isolating the source of the problems.  Most of this can be done in the daytime so it can be less frustrating.  

 

https://openphdguiding.org/manual/?section=Trouble_shooting.htm#Problems-_Camera_Timeouts

 

Good luck,

Bruce

 

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[George Shoup]

Happy New Year All.  The folks that pilot this forum have done an outstanding job this year.  

The time that you all donate to help others is appreciated by all.

I can offer one tip that works for me. 

Before jumping in to PhD guiding, learn to guide by hand first.  Get a guiding eyepiece with illuminated crosshairs 

and see if you can guide with your hand controller.  See if you can take some decent images guiding by hand, the way ol' Sandage and Arp did it with the 60 inch.  You will learn a great deal about your mount and how it operates.  You will learn the importance of polar alignment and how accurate is good enough.  You will appreciate how the great ones that came before us got it done.

 

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[Bill Stent]

Nope. I was done with that in the 1970s. Standing next to the pier with the RA slow motion in your hand, trying not to breathe for a 15 minute exposure is ok for kids but not for me.

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[George Shoup]

Exactly.  In the 70s I did it with a Cave  Astrola  8”.

This year I did it with a Losmandy and C11.  Once you learn you never forget, even after 40 years.  I just sold the Cave.  It’s a beast but still works like it did on day one. 1 1/2 inch shafts on both axis.  No Goto.  One power cord, one switch, and one red light. 

Thanks Bill.

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 31, 2020, at 6:53 AM, Bill Stent <bill...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[George Shoup]

And then you had to deal with film.  Didn't even know if you got anything for days.

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[Steve Winston]

> There are two distinct ASI cameras I can connect to 

I've seen the same timeout when PHD2 accidently connected to the wrong ASI camera. 

Quick test: Only plug in your guide cam (and leave your imaging cam disconnected from your laptop) and see if you still see the same problem.

And I've also seen the order of the ASI camera switch after updating the ASI drivers (this is what triggered the problem for me), so I then had to update my PHD2 profile to point it to the right ASI camera.

[Bill Stent]

Urrrgh. I’d blanked that bit out!

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[Bill Stent]

Yes, that was one of the tests I did on the spot. It turns out that an ASI1600MM-Pro is an excellent guide camera!

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