Error creating new dark library at 4.5s exposure.

[George Hart]

I encountered a problem building a new dark library for my ASi120mm mini (ASCOM driver) using v2.6.13

I set 1s - 6s as the exposure range and PHD2 would say it lost contact with the camera for 15s when it tried the 1st 4.5s exposure.

Breaking the dark library building into two ranges, 1s - 4s and 4.5s - 6.s worked fine.

Logs uploaded here: https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_7xi5.z

Regards, George

[Bruce Waddington]

This isn't a PHD2 problem, it's a timeout between the ZWO camera driver and the hardware.  It could be a one-time event.  Alternatively, if you're seeing a lot of camera timeout problems during guiding, you need to trouble-shoot that using the trouble-shooting section of the PHD2 User Guide.  You have several options at this point:

1.  Loop camera exposures for an extended period of time and see if you get additional timeouts.  If so, track down and eliminate that problem. Use the camera exposure time you normally would for guiding

2.  Determine that you probably can't afford the luxury of taking guide exposures longer than 4 seconds and just rebuild your dark library with a maximum exposure time of 4 sec.

2.  Upgrade to the latest version of your camera driver and the latest PHD2 2.6.13dev7 development release: https://openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/  and try again.

Regards,

Bruce

[George Hart]

Thanks Bruce.

[sarg314]

I just had this same problem when trying to make a profile for my new ASI122MM guide camera.  The library making program got to 4.5 sec. and timed out.  I then changed the min exp. time from 1.0 to 4.5, left max exposure at 6.0 sec and clicked "start" again.  I did not click "reset".   It completed with no problem.  My question is do I now have a complete dark library from 1.0 to 6.0 sec., or is it just from 4.5 to 6.0 sec. ?  Is there a way I can check? PHD2 is accepts any exposure time I select between 1.0 and 6.0 with no complaints about not having a dark library.  I found the PHD2_dark_lib_1.fit (made today) and PHD2_dark_lib2.fit (for my old QHY guide cam made 14 months ago) files but can't interpret them.  I note that the one made today for the ASI camera is only 1.8KB long while the older file for the QHY is 6.0KB.  . . . if that means anything.

[Bruce Waddington]

Since you started with a new dark library, it only covers an exposure range from 4.5 to 6 seconds.  If you want to fill in the exposure times below that, open the Dark Library tool and tell it you want to modify the existing library using an exposure range of 1-4 seconds.  Obviously, none of this should be happening, it sounds like you never figured out the underlying problem.  At this point you should be running 2.6.14 with the latest ZWO camera drivers.

Bruce  

[sarg314]

I am not the person who started this thread.  I thought it appropriate to use it - to reply to it - since the problem is identical. Sorry if that's a faux pas.

This looks like it's a problem with ZWO cameras.  

Thanks for the info, about the dark library. I will try to modify it. 

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Tom Sargent

[Bruce Waddington]

Ok.  Yes, it's always a bad idea to hijack someone else's thread - always start a new one.  This is a problem that seems to be associated with ZWO cameras and also seems more likely to happen when the driver software and camera SDK software used by PHD2 are out-of-synch.

Thanks,

Bruce

[sarg314]

OK, I'll remember that.  

Also, "extending" my dark library with the dark library tool was easy. I think my dark library is OK now.  The length of the file looks right too.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/255b3ebc-f9b4-4414-a4d7-97ae4e856057n%40googlegroups.com.

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Tom Sargent

[Bruce Waddington]

Yes, your dark library should be fine and will cover the full range of the exposure times you want.  The Dark Library tool was specifically implemented to allow these modifications and extensions.

Bruce