COM Problem with PHD2

59 views
Skip to first unread message

BigDan

unread,
Nov 17, 2025, 2:49:49 PM (12 days ago) Nov 17
to Open PHD Guiding
My astronomy club has a telescope rig in a remote area.  It is an Edge 14 at 2737mm F/L after reducer, with a ZWO ASI 2600 MC Duo on it.  I have guided with the Duo previously.

The other night, I started to run a calibration near the Equator.  The stars looked nice and sharp.  PHD2 kept cutting the connection with the camera, and giving me this alert message:

18:43:21.136 00.000 888 Alert: Error reading image:
A COM Error occurred. There may be more info in the Debug Log.
18:43:21.354 00.218 888 OnExposeComplete: enter
18:43:21.355 00.001 888 OnExposeComplete: Capture Error reported
18:43:21.356 00.001 888 StopCapturing CaptureActive=1 continueCapturing=1 exposurePending=0
18:43:21.357 00.001 888 Status Line: Waiting for devices...
18:43:21.362 00.005 888 Status Line: Stopped.

That is from the Debug log.  Some sort of COM error.  I'm using the ZWO driver identified as ASI Camera (1) (ASCOM).

I don't understand how this could be happening.  

We are running the equipment on a generator.... I'm wondering if electrical problems could cause this.

Attached are the logs.  I really don't see anything in the guide log.... probably because the camera kept disconnecting before I could get through a calibration.  It's strange because I was able to get good star images before it dsconnected.

If you can shed any light on this, please let me know.

Regards,

Dan
PHD2_DebugLog_2025-11-15_183824.txt
PHD2_GuideLog_2025-11-15_183824.txt

Dale Ghent

unread,
Nov 17, 2025, 3:06:45 PM (12 days ago) Nov 17
to open-phd...@googlegroups.com

The answer is earlier in the log file, at 18:39:24, immediately preceding the first instance of the COM error report:

18:39:24.262 02.850 3244 invoke imagearray: [8007000e] Not enough memory resources are available to complete this operation.

So there was not enough free memory for the ASCOM driver to allocate memory to work with or hold the frame.

You may instead want to try the ZWO driver that's built into PHD2. You'll find it down at the bottom of the camera driver selection list in PHD2's hardware profile manager as "ZWO ASI Camera". If you have multiple ZWO cameras on your system, be sure to select the guide camera from the diverging arrows icon that will appear to the right of the menu after selecting the driver.

/dale
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open PHD Guiding" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open-phd-guidi...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/400af04d-bc76-4a96-a629-48f7fcb43ee8n%40googlegroups.com.
> <PHD2_DebugLog_2025-11-15_183824.txt><PHD2_GuideLog_2025-11-15_183824.txt>

Bruce Waddington

unread,
Nov 17, 2025, 4:37:16 PM (11 days ago) Nov 17
to Open PHD Guiding
Just to amplify the point here - you are connecting to the wrong camera.  The guider on the Duo has a sensor size of 1920x1080.  The camera you connected to with PHD2 is the imaging camera which has a sensor size of 6248x4176, a 26 M-px camera.

Bruce

BigDan

unread,
Nov 18, 2025, 10:19:33 AM (11 days ago) Nov 18
to Open PHD Guiding
Hell.... I tried avoiding connecting to the wrong camera driver.  I thought ASCOM would be the way to go.  I will try the driver at the bottom of the list.  Thanks.

Bruce Waddington

unread,
Nov 18, 2025, 11:09:46 AM (11 days ago) Nov 18
to Open PHD Guiding
If you update to our latest dev release, 2.6.13dev8, you can use the new-profile-wizard to create a new PHD2 profile.  The dev8 release includes a feature in the wizard that will make it easier to specify which camera you want to use for guiding.


Bruce
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages