odd ZWO ASI120MC issue

[Dwayne Maxwell]

Hey everyone, so I recently got a new Laptop for my imaging rig I was previously using an old core 2 duo windows 7 laptop without issues whatsoever but anyways in testing using the new one first night i ran 2.6.5 dev 5 and had zero problems, 2nd night i ran a different setup but same mount and cameras and PHD kept loosing connection to my ASI120MC guide cam during re-calibration or if it did calibrate and start guiding it would just loose connection, image often when this happened would shift and jump to the left a large amount for some reason. today i reverted to 2.6.5 and it stopped the loosing connection part from happening and is generally working better but I am still getting the random image shift issue then loosing the star until the camera comes back to showing the correct image, usually this happens during a dither but not always. Anyone seen this before? any ideas? i'm using latest zwo drivers and mount is an Atlas EQ-G running EQMOD, main camera is an SBIG ST-8300C and am using APT. Also i did change windows settings for USB ports so they don't go into power save. 

Thanks for the help in advance!

Dwayne

[Dwayne Maxwell]

update

it seems to be triggered by other USB devices being active, parking my mount just caused it to trigger, last night i saw using my sbig cam in live view trigger it as well so it seems like the USB subsystem or something is causing the camera to get upset for some reason. 

other things to note sense i'm sure they will be suggested yes i have tried different cables and eliminating USB hubs, none of that has made any difference. 

[Andy Galasso]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 2:10 AM Dwayne Maxwell <dma...@gmail.com> wrote:

it seems to be triggered by other USB devices being active, parking my mount just caused it to trigger, last night i saw using my sbig cam in live view trigger it as well so it seems like the USB subsystem or something is causing the camera to get upset for some reason. 

other things to note sense i'm sure they will be suggested yes i have tried different cables and eliminating USB hubs, none of that has made any difference. 

Since you seem to have narrowed it down to USB traffic, you could try plugging the camera into other USB ports if you have not tried that already. Sometimes different USB ports on the PC go through different internal USB hubs and you might be able to isolate the camera traffic to its own hub.

Another thing to consider might be that the camera is not getting enough power from the new laptop's USB port.  The way to workaround that would be to try running the camera through a powered USB hub.

And one final suggestion... try disabling USB Selective Suspend in the Windows control panel power plan settings. Not sure if that will help but worth a try.

Although it is not a solution, you can enable subframes (brain, camera tab) to greatly reduce the amount of USB traffic from the camera.

Good luck and let us know when you find the culprit.

Andy

P.S. you should be able to diagnose the problem in the daytime by looping exposures in PHD2 and concurrently downloading short exposures from your imaging camera (like by taking bias frames continuously.)

[Dwayne Maxwell]

Thanks for the suggestions Andy,

no luck at all, bought a powered hub even to try that and nothing makes any difference even did something ZWO has said to try to others that have had this split frame issue on their forums and flashed a specific firmware to the camera. the camera in daytime works fine and never drops out even slewing the mount around and running the cooler on the imaging cam and such while doing so but the more i used it and as it got dark sharpcap even started having issues with it as well as PHD and every single dither would cause it to drop out on me which it wasn't doing last night. for kicks i connected my old imaging laptop up right now and am up and running guiding and dithering with all the same software and drivers on windows 7 without a single problem at all 8 dithers in. the more i read about this issues and i'm not the first one to encounter it with asi120's is they have issues with newer PC's and the only solution is buying the improved -S version that fixes these issues unfortunately i guess.

Dwayne

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[Andy Galasso]

Well, at least it seems like the issue is understood, for what that is worth -- incompatibility between the camera and the new PC. Thanks for reporting back.

[steve]

On 25/09/18 06:22, Dwayne Maxwell wrote:

the only solution is buying the improved -S version that fixes these issues

Hi
There's a 120 clone you may wish to consider before splashing out on the -s version. A sensitive guide camera with a normal shape at a sensible price:

https://es.aliexpress.com/item/T7C-T7M-Astro-Camera-Astronomical-Astronomy-Planetary-High-Speed-Electronic-Eyepiece-Telescope-Digital-Lens-Guiding-photograph/32811962129.html

and the official normal shape model from zwo:

https://es.aliexpress.com/item/ZWO-ASI120MM-Mini-Monochrome-Astronomy-Camera-ASI-Planetary-Solar-Lunar-imaging-Guiding-USB2-0/32888468202.html?spm=a219c.search0104.8.54.4b074466Kp2YvW&transAbTest=ae803_1&priceBeautifyAB=0

HTH and clear skies