ZWO Camera Conflicts

[Bart]

I have been trying to help my brother get his setup working properly. He is using an older style desktop with Windows 10 and we have most everything sorted but the guide camera and the guiding.


One of the issues seems to be conflicts with the ZWO drivers and which camera to choose in which software. We have even tried the ZWO Ascom fore the guide cam and the native ZWO driver for the imaging camera. The cameras are an ASI1600 mono and I think an ASI120(like a QHY5) guide cam.



The other issue is getting the guide cam to work reliably and consistantly in PHD. At the moment, if we get it to connect, it may work for 5 minutes then just give a white screen or it may go straight into a white screen, no adjustment stops it and brings it back. Sometimes even rebooting will not make it work.


Would love to know if anyone else has/had this issue and possible remedies? We have tried pretty much everything we can think of so any suggestions would be appreciated.

[jahnpahwa]

Yep, going through exactly the same thing now. Have just refreshed my drivers, waiting for a clearish night to test it. Its a bummer, being so closr and thishurdle will not relent!

[gregbradley]

Well I would certainly want to find out how this works out. I sometimes use a ZWOASI183mm and was thinking of getting an ASI290 mini guider.

I run my 183mm using the Sky X X2 ZWO driver from the ZWO site. What program are you using to run the camera?

Greg.

[muletopia]

Bart
For what it is worth, I have used a ZO120mm as my guide camera for a couple of years with no problems. But my computing environment is different.
An old Lenovo laptop Win 7 pro 64 bit and guiding with PHD2. Sharpcap also has no camera problems with this set up. The guiding setup is demanding on the camera as it is off axis at a focal length of 2415mm.


Just a set up that works


Cheers
Chris

[luka]

You could try running ASI120 without connecting the ASI1600 and see if you can get it to work first.

Also which version of ASI120? The original ASI120 had issues with random "broken images", just google "ASI120 split frames". From memory the issues were present on anything newer than Win7. If I remember correctly ZWO even recommended not using those cameras for guiding. The newer -S version does not have those problems.

[Sunfish]

I had the old 120mm for guiding and it was a pain. Very sensitive to everything. Worked better from a USB hub and requires perfect focus to see anything so I think speed of transfer is an issue. I could not see the stars it was guiding with on the screen often but you could see it was working.

The newer Asi120mms I have now is much better. Some software seems to randomly go into weird exposure mode with looping on ASI cameras. Setting the exposure exactly for looping seems critical.

[Bart]

It sounds like a pain in the A...tribute.:D


He only purchased it recently, as little as a few months ago, from Bintel, I think. Where does that put it for the split frame issue?


He is ready to chuck in the towel and I'm trying to convince him to let me have a play with it over the next full moon cycle so I have something big and bright to work with using the oag to check focus and operation.


He also has a QHY5 that gives a white screen in PHD although that has never had the USB speed set in ezycap as per QHY suggestions and we seem not to be able to reach focus with it when we do get it working.

[Camelopardalis]

The first ZWO cam I bought was a 224. Then a 1600. Subsequently a 178, a 290 and now a 183. I often have 3 plugged in at a time (main imager, guide cam and all-sky cam)

In PHD you just select the camera from the drop-down menu after selecting ZWO Camera.

In other software, you just select the camera from the drop-down list in the ASCOM settings.

[jahnpahwa]

Yeah, there are enough people making it happen that there is something silly stopping it here. As I mentioned in my other thread, I can guide no worries in PHD with the 120mm mini, can image no worries with the 1600mm in APT but putting them together means the 1600 hangs up and will not transfer.

Adding to the insanity is that I can loop exposures on the 120 in phd while imaging with the 1600 in APT while I have them connected at my dinner table, but each time I've attached it to the scope, it has failed... bizarre.

If/when i get it sorted, I'll report back for sure. No way is throwing in the towel an option! Its going to be GREAT :thumbsup::thumbsup:

[The_bluester]

Jump in to the ZWO settings in the ASCOM driver, it might be worth a try reducing the USB utilisation limit on the 1600. I cant recall if you can do the same for the guide cameras but it you can, do that as well.

[jahnpahwa]

Thats a promising-sounding piece of advice! Cheers!

[Bart]

That sounds like a good tip.



How many are using the giude cam through the imaging camera, as opposed to a hub and who goes direct to computer?

[The_bluester]

My focuser and guide cam are both through the hub on my ASI294 and have never given me any trouble since I put the lot on a USB3 port on a little faster machine than I used to have (About a year ago)

[Startrek]

Guide camera direct to laptop ( 5m USB3 cable )
No issues at all , connects and runs perfect every time

[jahnpahwa]

Have tried both :) Currently going direct, guide to PC.

Paul, I checked over both of the ASCOM drivers yesterday, both USB speeds are set to 40, which I gather is about as unobtrusive as they can be. I wonder if i should crank the 1600 up to let it beat out the guider and achieve transfer.

Tonight we finally have some clear skies and I'll give it a bit of a go.

[Sunfish]

I have had three asi cameras connected at the same time. Two imaging and one guiding and that worked ok.

It may be a dumb obvious question but is the correct camera being selected in PHD with the branched tab icon when connecting? You can accidentally have the imaging camera selected. And of course with the old 120 MM you want the USB speed to be slower.

[jahnpahwa]

Not a dumb question at all, Ray! (or perhaps it is, but is right at my level, regardless :) )

I did end up grabbing a few successful 5mins guided subs the other night! I think it was at least partly down to selecting the camera with the branched tab.

Why hadn't I done that before... I had been switching the imaging camera in APT to the ZWO driver and using ASCOM camera 2 for the guider in PHD2, which was the correct camera assignment in the ASCOM profiles. This was failing. What worked was keeping the imager as ASCOM driven in APT and selecting ZWO camera in PHD2, THEN the branch to ensure the guider was the one it was using.

I'll crank the USB on the 1600 up to 50 just to give it an edge, too. Thanks for that tip!

I'm again waiting for good weather (Canberra has been hopeless for over a week now) to go through an entire sharpcap alignment, phd calibrate THEN image routine.

(sorry for the thread hijack, by the way... but hopefully this is helping us both/all)

[Sunfish]

Good to hear someone is taming the zwo. It is not obvious and I have learned to hate little flashy icons. Give me a command line and a list of tasks any day.

In other systems the answer is to connect the guiding application and guiding camera first before connecting the imaging camera.

[The_bluester]

Now that you mention it I recall having issues a couple of times when using APT in conflicts between the guider and imaging camera. I don't recall having the same trouble in SGP. The issue in APT is likely to have been finger trouble on my part, it was 18 months ago and I cant recall, but I can remember occasionally finding PHD trying to connect to the main imaging camera.

Do you need to manually start PHD2 using APT or does it open it for itself when you connect the equipment? I know SGP can be finicky if it does not open PHD for itself.

I have never had the issue using Voyager, firstly it uses the native ZWO driver for the imaging cam connection and second you do not open anything for yourself except for Voyager. You hit connect and it connects to the camera, opens PHD2 and connects the equipment, connects to the mount, opens and connects to your planetarium program if you use one etc.

[jahnpahwa]

Yep, I've been connecting the guider first, focussing it using PHD2. When I start APT it connects to PHD2 automatically. Something I'm a bit wary of is then throwing sharpcap into the mix, too. I still polar align visually with the hand controller on the heq5pro, but i'd like to get away from that and perhaps leave the cameras in place between sessions.
Still all a bit unproven, though... still waiting on a decent sky to go through the whole process!

Maybe I'll take a look at voyager once I have the workflow locked down.... sounds dreamy!

[Sunfish]

I also use KStars ecos. So start PHD2 first and connect the camera. However once that is done, Ecos takes over PHD2 and will continue to stop and start as required and dither. I have only used Sharpcap and PHD2 separately as I am too mean to pay for the pro version . Works ok like that.

[Stonius]

What Luka said above^


The problem is that the ZWO drivers make you choose *which camera you want *inside the driver itself. The program only sees the one driver, unlike with ASCOM which will differentiate the two cameras in the dropdown.



My Suggestion; trash all your PHD profiles and start again (they only take a few minutes to set up anyway). Don't run any other software. Don't have your imaging camera plugged in, only the guide camera.


Go through and set up your profile/s (click the little divided arrow symbol to check it's looking at the correct camera).


After that, close PHD and try plugging in the imaging camera. Open again, see if the profile connects to the correct camera.
Then try it with your sequencing program (SGP/Voyager) connecting to the imaging camera at the same time.


I had the same issue a week or so back and this is what solved it for me.


Cheers


Markus

[N5SE]

You also need to disable the USB power saving mode for the Windows 10 computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeXGMl5jYc

[Bart]

Great reading, guys. I will try all of these suggestions if I need to as tonight is the night I am going up to the obs to help my brother.



I have asked him to dump all the drivers and clean out the registry and then reinstall only the drivers he needs. I am going to try the step by step approach, one camera at a time and I am taking my USB 3 capable laptop as a spare computer to test the cameras on separately.

[whzzz28]

Just spent the last few hours working on my ASI1600MM and 290MM.
New PC build, trying SGP for the first time.


Couldn't get the 1600MM to cool. Logs showed a generic error that the cooler would not start.
TEC Change: Failed to set cooler temp! Aborting...



PHD2 worked fine with the 290MM though (via ASCOM drivers).

But due to issues below, I changed to ZWO native in the driver list. The first button to the right of the drop down allows you to select what camera to use. Save the profile and it should stick between reloads. It was rock solid for me.



Back to the ASI1600MM though - I tried it in MaximDL as well. Maxim reported "No cooler support". Odd.
Of note, I was using ASCOM drivers in both SGP and MaximDL. Everything looked fine in settings, gain and offset were set and could be changed etc. But no cooler.
I thought it was a bad camera, but then tried the ASIStudio app (native drivers).
And look - cooler works!


Next i noted that in the ASCOM config window, it was reporting the camera as USB2. ASIStudio was showing USB3.


I eventually ran SGP with native ZWO drivers (I could not test in MaximDL, as i have an old version with no ZWO native drivers).
Apart from being prompted every time I start the camera to select a camera, this worked flawlessly.


So I would say be wary of ZWO via ASCOM right now. Interestingly, my old laptop with ASCOM 6.3 works OK, but this new PC with ASCOM 6.4 fails 100% of the time to set the cooler.
Probably driver issues. A few complaints on coolers on Main Sequence forum for ZWO cameras right now as well.



So, I would suggest to try going all native with no ASCOM use for now. But who knows, maybe its just my machine for some reason.

[jahnpahwa]

Yep, as simple as it sounds, it was simply choosing the right camera in the arrow button when using ZWO driver in PHD.


In summary, this is what worked or me the other night, and my sequence.


Mount 1600mm in OTA, polar align with this using Sharpcap. Sharpcap scans for cameras and this was the only camera available as it was the only one plugged in.


Mount 120mm mini in guide scope, start phd2, use ZWO driver there, select the 120mm mini in the arrow button next to the driver drop down. I have two profiles, one for each guide scope I have (50mm FL difference), so made sure i was in the right profile too.


Start APT. Connect 1600mm using ASCOM driver.



Slew to target. Hit the auto select guide star button in PHD2, hit the begin guide button. Take a 4min test shot with guiding, see that guiding is rubbish, total RMS is 6.5 or so and stars are not crispy. 2.0s exposures on the guider here.



Run a calibration via PHD, it takes about ten minutes, but its worth it. After this, total RMS is below 1 for the rest of the night and my dreams are realized.


Mount and imaging camera are connected direct to pc via usb3 (PC using the skywatcher usb dongle, which hasn't missed a beat yet), guiding cam direct to pc via usb2. Windows 10




Reading this thread makes me think that maybe there is no one answer that will work across all setups, but for me, this was good. I hope it can help someone at some point!

[Startrek]

JP,
Don’t know if your aware of it , or maybe you do
In regard to Calibration in PHD2 , you don’t have to calibrate each time you use PHD2 ( which can take 10 minutes each time )
Perform a good calibration near the celestial equator and Just before the north meridian and save it ( auto restore Calibration) in the Brain
Ive been using the same PHD2 calibration for nearly a year now without any issue
Cheers
Martin

[jahnpahwa]

Thanks Martin! Yeah, my plan is to keep using that one for that guide set up, and do another one for my longer guidescope, save them to their respective profiles and reuse (so long as performance is good).

[Startrek]

JP
Yes I have 2 imaging rigs at different locations ( Sydney and South Coast NSW ), so I have 2 profiles and I’ve Calibrated at both locations and saved both in the Brain

Some folk calibrate every time they image ( which I use to do ) but reusing a good calibration is fine , been doing it for a couple of years now

You need to save as much time as possible when nights are clear so “Auto restore Calibration” in PHD2 is a real time saver

Clear Skies

[Bart]

Well, I can honestly say, I don't know, although it was working when I left.


When I got there it was doing its usual white screen in PHD and not much else. I turned everthing off and run my phone cable(USB C) from the guide cam to the hub and diconnected the 1600 as well. When I booted the PC there was no connection as it turns out the hub will not allow data transfer if not powered. I turned on the hub, the PC connected to the camera and installed the driver.


After a short test of connecting, looping, disconnecting, closing PHD and re-opening, all of which worked, I shut it down and plugged the guide cam back into the 1600 and then the 1600 back into the hub and rebooted. Every test there after worked.


All I can think of is that perhaps the driver has never loaded properly and the sequence with which to turn on and open programs, all of which really should not matter in truth.


So, turn on all telescope power points and wait until everthing has received power, say 10 to 15 seconds. Turn on PC and wait until booted. Open PHD2 and connect guide cam and mount. Start looping exposures so that camera is in use then open imaging software and connect the rest as well as planetarium.


We had previously dumped all drivers and we are using native ZWO drivers.



We will monitor the operation and see how it goes.