PHD2 and Orion StarShoot AutoGuider Pro random disconnects

[Ben Miller]

Evening all.  I'm hoping someone has the magic bullet for my issues as I've run out of plan B's.  For a year I've been guiding without issue with this camera and PHD2.  I recently upgraded computers and OS (from W7 to W10) and since have been unable to get the camera to stay connected for more than a few hours.  Extending the "nonresponsive" setting will allow the camera to fail slowly and reconnect but after 30 minutes or so ultimately fail to reconnect.

I'm using the same PHD2 version, same version of the Orion ASCOM driver, and same ASCOM platform version (6.3).  I've disabled USB selective speed.  I've tried 3 different USB cables, all connected directly to the PC.  I've also rotated through the 6 different USB ports (2 - 3.1 and 4 - 3.0 ports).

I've gone back PHD2 versions and updated to the newest.  I've done 2 full formats and right this second only have ASCOM, the camera ASCOM driver, and PHD installed to avoid any conflicts.

Guide me gurus ;)  Teamviewer is installed and I'm happy to open up access for any kind of testing.

[oliv deso]

Hello Ben

I would have suggested

- change the cable and use a rather short cable. I mean 3m or 10ft max for passive cable.

- use only USB2 port at the PC side since the camera is a USB2 camera.

You already have tried this, but I suggest you keep this configuration fur further investigation.

Then I see 3 points to check or try:

- disable all energy saving features in the USB drivers

- increase a little bit the minimal processor frequency, from 5% to 10%

- try PHD2 2.6.3. I found it more stable with recent cmos camera

- adjust the USB traffic parameter if the driver has this feature

- use a powered USB hub

Olivier

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[Andy Galasso]

plenty of good ideas there, but I have to disagree with this one:

On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 11:31 PM, oliv deso <oliv...@gmail.com> wrote:

- try PHD2 2.6.3. I found it more stable with recent cmos camera

There are no changes in PHD2 between 2.6.3 and the newer versions that can have any effect on an ASCOM-connected camera.  If you saw a correlation, it was either coincidental or related to some other factor changing.  ASCOM drivers, camera drivers, and USB drivers can all potentially have an effect, but those are external to PHD2. For an ASCOM camera connection downgrading phd2 will have no benefit and you will lose features and bug-fixes in other areas.

[Ben Miller]

I'm not really sure what to do here.  Last night I connected the camera, flicked around between QHY, WDM, and the simulator just to make sure I wasn't crazy, then started looping at 18:56

This ran without issue until I stopped it at 07:58.  So nearly 13 hours of perfect operation.

Then, without physically touching the machine so as not to disturb the USB connection if that's my problem, I restarted windows, launched PHD2, and attempted to loop again.

Disconnect after 16 minutes

I don't believe a physical issue with exhibit such intermittent behavior.  Other applications like AstroCap can stream video over the same USB cable and ports for 24+ hours.  They do, however, use the native SSAG pro driver and not the ASCOM driver which PHD2 uses.

I did attempt to increase min CPU utilization. And hilariously now PHD2 won't even connect.  If I attempt to run ASCOM diagnostics and connect to the camera it will show "could not connect".  I do know from the last two weeks if I physically disconnect and reconnect the camera it will "wake" the driver back up and I'll be able to connect again.

Help

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_n0VA.zip

[Andy Galasso]

Ben,

I can see this is a very frustrating problem without any obvious solution.  I once had a laptop with a problem with one of the USB ports: if I gently touched the cable the camera would disconnect.  All the other USB ports worked fine.

It sounds like your problem started when you switched computers. Perhaps the USB system on the new computer is just not reliable enough for use with the camera.  Have you tried checking the computer manufacturer's web site for updated usb drivers and/or other chipset or power management drivers?

If the camera worked reliably on the other pc, you may have to abandon this pc and switch to a different one.

One thing to note is that you can do your testing in the daytime. Connect the camera to PHD2 and loop exposures (perhaps use a short exposure duration to maximize the amount of data being transferred.)

Sorry I do not have any more ideas.

Andy

[Ben Miller]

Thanks for the feedback.

I definitely do looping during the daytime to "stress" test.  I'd agree that the computer/usb might be the cause if this exact camera, on this exact cable, on the exact same USB port didn't run AstroCap for days without issue.  AstroCap interacts with the camera in a similar way, pulling full rez images.  The only difference is it uses a native device driver and PHD2 uses the ASCOM driver.

Testing a few more things today, keep guessing away guys!

[bw_msgboard]

I don’t know anything about this AstroCap software, but a lot of these apps essentially operate the camera in streaming mode.  That’s a significant difference because there’s less transactional and control traffic between the app and the camera.  But since Orion supplies the drivers, including the ASCOM version, and the hardware, it seems like you should be able to get some advice from them.

 

Bruce

 

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