I get lost connection to camera when connecting to zwo asi 120 mm mini

[breador4]

I ordered my new zwo asi 120mm mini camera and cannot maintain a connection to it within PHP2.

I am able to connect, but when I try to loop, it loses and retrys the connection a few times then gives a lost connection error. 

I have sent a support request to zwo, but was wondering if anyone here has experienced this problem before.

Thanks,

Here are my logs

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_YsWi.zip

[bw_msgboard]

This is almost certainly a low-level problem on your computer, typically some part of the USB subsystem.  Here’s the explanation from the Trouble-Shooting section of the PHD2 Help guide:

 

Camera Timeout and Download Problems

In some cases, you may experience problems where guider images aren't downloaded or displayed.  In extreme cases, this may even cause PHD2 or other camera-related applications to be non-responsive (i.e. to "hang").  Again, this is almost always due to hardware, camera driver, or connectivity issues, with one of the most common culprits being a faulty USB cable or device.  It is highly unlikely to be caused by an application like PHD2, so you should begin your investigation at the lower levels of the system. You can start by confirming that the guide camera is working - try using a short, direct cable from the camera to the computer and taking exposures with the native or test application that came with the camera.  If the camera is functional, you can start looking at USB hubs and cables, swapping them one at a time to see if you can isolate the problem.  It's worth remembering that we work in a hostile environment while doing our imaging, and many of the components we use are not designed for cold, outdoor conditions. So something that worked just last week or last month may no longer be reliable.

Here are some diagnostic steps that can help you isolate these kinds of problems, as posted on the PHD2 support forum:

Camera timeouts are invariably caused by problems at the lowest levels of the system: the USB subsystem on the host computer, incompatible USB3/USB2 connections, damaged or low-quality USB cables, or flakey camera drivers.  You will probably need to work through a number of scenarios to see what your problem is.  Fortunately, this can usually be done in the daytime by putting the cameras in continuous-exposure mode and letting them run.  Start by connecting just the imaging camera and the guiding camera because these will be the two heaviest users of the USB subsystem.  To start, there are often problems when a USB-2 camera is connected to a USB-3 port on your computer.  Those things are supposed to be backward-compatible but that’s only at the hardware level – the driver implementations can be adversely affected.  There are two areas to look at: 1) USB traffic and bandwidth and 2) power delivery to the cameras.  Your main imaging camera probably has its own power supply but other devices like the guide camera may be powered via the USB cable.  If that’s the case for you, you may want to try using a powered USB hub to deliver power to the camera.  It’s also best to use high-quality USB cable with a 24AWG power conductor and eliminate long USB cable runs and USB extenders.  If your problem seems to be with USB traffic, there may be other things you can try:

1. Make sure your computer is running from AC power and that the OS can't disable the USB ports for power conservation. Don't run other resource-intensive applications while trying to image.
2. Bin the guide camera to reduce the size of the downloaded guider images
3. Adjust the USB usage limit of the camera if the camera driver supports that option
4. Use sub-frames in PHD2
5. If you’re running Windows, you can use a Microsoft tool to map out how the various USB ports are tied to the USB controllers in the computer.  Then you can try to isolate the two cameras on separate USB buses.  
6. Try using a different camera driver (e.g. an ASCOM driver) if one is available

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

 

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[andrea arbizzi]

I have this problem regularly.

Things to try:

- change cable

- change usb

- lower the resolution from raw16 to raw8

The last thing solved my problem..

Good luck

[John Sim]

I came across the same issue with that camera. In my case, if I connected to the camera first in SharpCap (to check focus and to do PA), disconnected and closed SharpCap and then started PHD2, then PHD2 couldn't maintain a connection to the camera. I tried disconnecting, reconnecting in PHD2 and restarting PHD2 but without success. However if I physically disconnected/reconnected the USB cable then PHD2 maintained a stable connection to the ASI camera. I've only used the camera on 2 nights. On the second night I didn't use SharpCap so PHD2 was the first software to connect to the camera and I had no problems with it. 

I have the ASI camera connected to a USB2 port. On the ZWO website they have a firmware update you must apply if you want to connect the camera to a USB3 port.

I'm using the "ZWO ASI Camera" driver in PHD2. I haven't tried the ZWO ASCOM driver, it may be better behaved

[Michael 8554]

My experience with an ASI 120MM (non mini) is that on power up it wants to load some settings from the PC.

So sometimes if I power up the PC with the camera already plugged in, the camera fails to initialise, suggesting to me that it has stopped polling the PC before those settings are available.

Then if I replug the camera it bursts into life.

Not a very PC savvy answer I'm afraid.

Michael
Wiltshire UK