Camera didn't capture 1sec frame within 16sec, disconnected

[Suzanne Beers]

Good morning PHD2!

  I imaged last night for the first time with my new ZWO ASI120MM Mini guide camera.  I switched after 5 years of using an Orion SSAG Pro because the SSAG was becoming very unreliable - disconnecting in the middle of a sequence for no reason (and it's unsupported with new ASCOM drivers because Orion has gone out of business).  

  I use an Orion 60mm guide scope on all my telescopes. 

  Last night I was using my Askar FRA600 on my Rainbow Astro RST-135E mount.  

 

Last night with the ASI120MM Mini the guiding was fabulous - way better than it has ever been with the SSAG Pro!  But, on two occasions when I checked the status of the SGPro-controlled sequence (first time at about 23:40 and the second time at about 01:00) I had an error message stating: 

"The camera could not take a 1 second exposure within 16 seconds and has been disconnected.  PHD2 will attempt to reconnect."  

When I saw it, the camera had reconnected and the guiding was good, so I don't know exactly when it occurred.  

Can you help me understand if there's something I need to change in my setup to avoid this disconnect/reconnect from occuring??  

Thank you so much for the help AND for your amazing product!!

Suzanne

[Suzanne Beers]

I should have attached the link to the logs when I started the message...then perhaps I wouldn't have forgotten to send it: https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_CPyx.zip

Thank you again for the help

[Bruce Waddington]

The problem was happening roughly every 5 minutes so it's worth pursuing.  The most common cause is the USB cable.  Sometimes all it takes is applying some contact cleaner and reseating the connections at both end of the cable.  Other times, you might need to replace the cable.  It would also be worth verifying that you don't have a cable routing problem that results in "tugging" on the cable.  If you're using a USB cable that came with the camera, that's probably a good candidate for replacement, those are fairly infamous for having low quality.  There's a fairly lengthy section in the Trouble-shooting section of the User Guide that talks about testing for these kinds of problems - most of that testing can be done during the daytime.

Good luck,

Bruce

[Suzanne Beers]

Thanks Bruce!

  I am using (the brand new cable) that came with the brand new camera.  

  The five minute interval seems suspicious to me - I was taking 5 minute subframes for most of the night (the first ~2hrs were 10 minute subframes).  I've been having data download issues with the ZWO ASI6200MM imaging camera - ZWO recently troubleshot that issue by remoting into the camera and installing new firmware and FPGA software.  That seemed to have solved the issue I was having with the ASI6200MM (randomly long data download times and some instances of every other subframe not being recognized as valid data).  Do you think that the download issue could still be lingering and be the culprit here?

  I'm running the USB cables to a powered USB hub, then through a Cat6 cable to a powered connection to the laptop.  The powered USB hub at the telescope is on the pier...and I always make sure I supervise the initial move to the target to make sure no cables are snagging.   

  I'll check out the troubleshooting section, but please let me know if you think it's possible that the imaging camera is causing a conflict...ZWO has been very responsive in helping me through that issue and I think they would like to know if there was still an issue (especially with my new ZWO camera!) 

Thanks!

Suzanne

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[Bruce Waddington]

I would say the two problems are probably related but it's not clear what the source of the problem is.  For example, there could be a problem with the USB throughput on your computer or maybe there's a bandwidth setting for the main camera that should be used to reduce USB traffic.  Certainly, USB congestion can create the kind of timeout problem you're seeing in PHD2 now.  Rather than speculating, it would be better to do some simple testing.  In the daytime - like right now - start PHD2, connect to the camera, and start looping 1-sec exposures.  Don't connect the imaging camera or anything else.  If PHD2 runs for a long time with no timeouts, that points you in the direction of a USB traffic problem relating to the imaging camera.  If you see PHD2 timeouts when nothing else is attached, then you know it's an isolated problem between PHD2 and the guide camera.  With regard to the cable, I was trying to say you may have a brand-new (poor quality) cable.  That has been s widely reported problem.  If you need to see the frequency of PHD2 camera timeouts, open up the (large) debug log file in a text editor and do a search for 'alert'.  Make sure you're looking at an alert for a camera timeout. The first fields on the text line show the time of day.

Good luck,

Bruce

[Tom van Peer]

I once had a 'new' USB cable that worked but turned my camera into a USB2 device and made my PC using USB2 speeds as well. Just imagine how long it would take to transfer a full frame 50MP image over USB2. It took me a while to find that out...