Camera connection failure on new pc install

[Andy Clark]

Hey everyone,

I have just installed a new laptop with everything needed, all went well apart from PHD2 reports it is unable to connect to my ZWO ASI290MM Mini.

I've tried uninstalling PHD2 (several times), ZWO Camera Drivers and ASCOM uninstalled and re-installed a number of times to no avail.

Any help appreciated. Screen shot of error attached and debug log uploaded as:
https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_zdpK.zip

FWIW the camera operates just fine on the older laptop I'm replacing and works fine also on this new laptop from SharpCap.

Thanks.

Andy.

[Dale Ghent]

The exception and the error message associated with it is coming from the ZWO ASCOM driver when PHD2 tells the driver to connect to the camera:

17:02:04.260 00.000 3468 Connecting to camera [ASI Camera (1) (ASCOM)] id = []
17:02:04.260 00.000 3468 Create ASCOM Camera: choice 'ASI Camera (1) (ASCOM)' progid ASCOM.ASICamera2.Camera
17:02:04.646 00.386 8612 putprop: [80020009] Exception occurred.
17:02:04.653 00.007 3468 Alert: ASCOM driver problem: Connect:
(mscorlib) Input string was not in a correct format.
17:02:04.879 00.226 3468 Throw from C:\cygwin\home\agalasso\projects\phd2\gear_dialog.cpp:1093->DoConnectCamera: connect failed
17:02:04.879 00.000 3468 Status Line: Camera Connect Failed

So, whatever the problem is, is coming from the ZWO ASCOM driver. You can try using the direct driver for ZWO cameras in PHD2, if you scroll down to the bottom of the driver list and choose ZWO Camera instead of "ASI Camera (1)", which is the ZWO ASCOM driver.

As for the error message, this generally comes from a program that is not properly parsing a sringy floating point number, where the decimal separator is a comma instead of a period. Perhaps your newer laptop is set to use a locale that uses a comma as the decimal separator? If so, then this would indicate a bug in the ZWO ASCOM driver where it is not using the invariant culture when parsing stringy floating point numbers into proper float/double data types. This type of programming mistake is fairly common in the ASCOM driver world and would generate errors like the one seen in your log.

/dale

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[Andy Clark]

Hey Dale,

Thanks for replying.

Good call on the culture locale string usage, but everything I have and do is in en-uk, comma's as decimal separators make me wince as I am a software developer who's run into that one on many occasion so isn't a factor in this case. :)

It's got me stumped atm as this is literally a new laptop, I've installed my standard list of software which I've done a number of times without issue. Whatever it is it's persistent as I've uninstalled all ASCOM platform and related ZWO drivers a number of times so far.

On the usage of the direct driver at the bottom of the list, the problem I have with that is that it only lists "ZWO Camera" right? Singular, with me having two cameras installed I can't tell it which one to pick and I believe it tends to pick the 6200 ofc. Is there are way to direct it to the 290MM?

I've not kept upto date with the state of things but is PHD2 still open source available on github? I could take the leap of debugging this, but if it's going to be in the bowels of the ZWO ASCOM driver that's probably not going to get me much further right?

Thanks again.

Andy.

[Dale Ghent]

You can use the built-in driver in the PHD2, and it's generally advisable that one does; you're just missing where to select the camera to use if you have multiple cams from the same vendor connected.

If you have > 1 ZWO camera connected, you will see an additional icon in the PHD2 hardware manager where you connect to the equipment. On the row where you set the camera driver with its Connect button and all, you ought to see an icon that looks like it has some arrows on it. Click that to choose which ZWO camera you want PHD2 to connect to. The one you choose is remembered by your PHD2 hardware profile.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/93c90e39-d81d-42b4-a8cc-6ff5782af0bfn%40googlegroups.com.

[Andy Clark]

Great, I'll see if I can see that, I expected there to be something but I've clearly missed it.

Thanks again.

[bw_m...@earthlink.net]

Another way to go about it is simply to create the configuration profile with only the guide cam connected.  That will bind the PHD2 configuration to the specific model of the camera and it will connect to that regardless of what other models are connected.  That all assumes that the ZWO drivers work as they should.

 

Regards,

Bruce

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/b95cd930-2343-4e76-926b-d6f0e825726fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Andy Clark]

Thanks Bruce, I'll spend some time on the weekend looking for possible solutions and/or workarounds.

[Andy Clark]

I've manged to spot the double arrow button which does clearly say in the tooltips that it allows selecting between multiple cameras. When using that to select the ASI290 all appears to function as expected so I can now hopefully move on.

I'm going to continue to attempt to debug the ZWO ASCOM error, I've generated some dmp files today from it but not managed to get anything more than the current info that there's a string in an unexpected format. I'll let you know if I get anything useful out of this.

Thanks again.

Andy.

[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Andy.  I don't know how familiar you are with the ASCOM world so I'll offer a suggestion.  ASCOM "drivers" aren't drivers in the traditional Windows sense inasmuch as they run at the application level, not the device level.  They're really just applications that support COM and then interface with the device.  The ASCOM platform includes a 'profile' storage mechanism that driver authors can use to store their configuration information, and the platform release includes a profile-display tool for viewing or modifying the profile info.  I don't know whether the ZWO programmers used this - they're not required to but it's pretty commonly used.  Since you're getting the error at the time of connection, that would be a logical time for the driver to be retrieving info from someplace like the config profile.  On most systems, the Profile Explorer is located here:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\ASCOM\Platform 6\Tools\ProfileExplorer.exe"

Maybe that will help you track down the problem. 

Good luck,

Bruce

[Brian Valente]

>>> PHD2 reports it is unable to connect to my ZWO ASI290MM Mini.

I'm somewhat surprised by this ongoing discussion. The 290mm mini is probably one of the most popular guide cameras used with PHD, countless people use it with the ascom driver and/or zwo native driver without error. I have at least 4 telescope setups with this camera and use it with PHD2 without error. 

I really wonder if something is going on specific to your system

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Brian Valente

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[George Shoup]

Remember a year or so ago when you helped me with a similar issue on a Win 11 laptop?

It turned out the internal Win 11 virus and malware protection was preventing a proper install of the ZWO drivers.

Unfortunately the install appeared fine with no error messages.  I contacted Dell to fix the problem.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/CAJa45i7o%2BUg6_vufO%2BgfL3gLLbWKBVQztBkWQLmgj91pqzyiJg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Andy Clark]

Just to be clear on the manifestation of the issue, it's not related to the ASI290, if I attempt to use that ASCOM driver for the ASI6200 on that pc it produces the same error. It is from within the ASCOM driver so makes sense.

As to what the value is which is causing the issue and where that's coming from is still to be determined.

[Brian Valente]

>>> Just to be clear on the manifestation of the issue, it's not related to the ASI290, if I attempt to use that ASCOM driver for the ASI6200 on that pc it produces the same error.

That makes it even more puzzling and imo points to something specific in your setup.  There is an ungodly number of zwo cameras out there being used successfully with PHD2 and ZWO's ASCOM driver.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/386079ba-c125-4d7d-8b5a-ca1d3e4cafbfn%40googlegroups.com.

[Andy Clark]

I have no doubt at all that this is setup specific, I've used the drivers and same setup on multiple machines without encountering an issue like this, it's still interesting to me to find out the route cause as currently there appears to be no way to 'fix' it at least by means which an end user might have at their disposal.

I'll continue to attempt to figure out the finer details.

[Brian Valente]

>>>  it's still interesting to me to find out the route cause as currently there appears to be no way to 'fix' it at least by means which an end user might have at their disposal.

Yes, please do keep us apprised of your progress/solution

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/e0ad2adf-38ea-4c95-8e24-514b7a68284dn%40googlegroups.com.

[Andy Clark]

I've not had chance to look into the issues with the ZWO camera driver so far. But I have noticed something where currently in the Advanced Settings Camera Tab, it states Binning is set to 1 (I've not changed this from 1), when looking at the guide logs it states:

"Pixel scale = 3.32 arc-sec/px, Binning = 2, Focal length = 360 mm"

I believe this is causing some scaling issues when guiding as the RMS appears to be around double what I'd expect.

Are there any other configurations / settings I can look at to try and explain why the UI shows Bin of 1 but the guide logs say bin 2?  I'm using the native camera driver which offers no additional properties outside of 8 or 16 bit, this is set to 16 bit.

Thanks.

Andy.

[Brian Valente]

Please submit your guide and debug logs Andy

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[Andy Clark]

Done, thank you!

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_N5fw.zip

[Bruce Waddington]

The guide log shows you started out with binning = 1 and then went to binning = 2 at 19:14:19.  How can we know when you took this screen-shot?  Honestly, I think you're going about this all wrong.  You're trying to trouble-shoot basic functions while having an imaging app in the background banging away and simultaneously changing crucial things like binning.  You should create separate config profiles for binning rather than trying to do it on the fly in the Advanced Setting dialog.  Changing the binning level changes *everything* in terms of guiding, you might as well have switched to a completely different camera.  I think you need to get back to basics:

1.  Build separate config profiles for bin=1 and bin=2 operations - give the profiles names you can keep straight and create a dark library for each profile.

2.  To build the profiles, connect only the guide camera - not the imaging camera.

3.  Put your imaging app on the shelf and commit yourself to spending some time under the stars running PHD2 manually.  Connect to the equipment by hand, being sure that PHD2 is connecting to the camera you actually want to use for guiding. Use the little 'fork' button next to the 'connect' button to see the vendor id for the guide camera.

4.  Let PHD2 auto-select stars and do some guiding, all under manual control and with no imaging

5.  When this is working, go ahead and connect your imaging camera and make sure the cameras stay connected correctly.  If you suddenly see an alert message that your dark library is incompatible with the camera, you will know that the ZWO software has switched cameras on you.

6.  Only after you can do this repeatedly and reliably should you then consider running your imaging app and getting back to what you want to do.

Good luck,

Bruce

[Andy Clark]

Ah, ok, so I'm adding some confusion to this as you are correct, in that example I had changed the bin to 2. That was a one off thing which was led by finding out that the binning was already showing up as bin 2 when it's not bin 2 in the UI and me attempting to figure out what the heck was going on by manually switching the UI to match the logs.

I still maintain that settings in PHD2 say Bin 1 and the logs say Bin 2, I'll dig out one of the previous logs where I'd not changed it.

Agreed on the points above mind, as I'd done pretty much exactly that as this is a totally fresh new PC install (albeit somehow the ZWO ASCOM camera drivers are still broken). I did some more debugging on that last night, I can confirm that any attempt to call the connect API within ASCOM for any ZWO camera results in the same bad string format exception. Getting actual info on the args for the exception site is proving difficult. Will get back to that another time.