It all ends in tears? note to self - take baby steps

h0ughy (David) · #1 21-10-2010, 08:06 AM

Well what a most interesting evening it was last night. For the first time I had the G11 connected up to the PC fully controlled with Starry night pro 6, had the DMK21 going in PHD guide 12.2 and had the camera fully controlled with canon remote software. It started working brilliantly, especially considering that the computer had a complete heart and lung transfer where I had to upgrade the motherboard to a new one and now have 4 gig on board with a AMD Phenom 9350e processor and a 512meg graphics card. I took shots of the moon in daylight again, Jupiter and then for fun found and imaged Fomalhaut in daylight. Then my daughter came up to remind me I had to help her with her home work – and she accidentally bumped the usb hub at the back. That’s when it all went south. Starry night locked up, PHD locked up, I rebooted twice and tried PHD – it was working like a wet paper bag, same deal with Starry night. Then to make matters worse the Gemini driver was unresponsive and the mount was now no longer setup properly, and I had to slew it manually back to the CWD position and start from scratch – only to learn that the encoders gave it some ridiculous setting and it slewed the wrong direction. By this stage it was 8.30pm – I was getting very frustrated. Manually slewed to a few stars and aligned, then checked on the moon and Jupiter that it was at least slewing somewhere correctly. 9pm – now I am fed up, phd will now work only when starry night or the camera control software is not active. I might uninstall PDH and go back one installation to version 11.something. I did have the camera software working when I had starry night running. But I must say that starry night is buggy – you can be doing a screen drag to a spot and it will come back with an error and shut down. I must have sent a heap of notices to Megasoft last night as well. So tonight i will be redoing most of the software - bet it will be clear and when i finish it clouds over.....

All I wanted to do was test out the system – get a few happy snaps then go comet hunting for Hartley this morning. Here I sit broken hearted – paid a penny but only____

Omaroo (Chris Malikoff) · #2 21-10-2010, 09:25 AM

Did you remember to help your daughter out?

What OS is the machine running David? I'm running that last copy I'll ever bother running of XP on my little imaging/guiding laptop. Every time I take it outside and accidentally swap USB ports between guide and imaging cameras from the last session it gets itself into all sorts of bovva. Stupid XP = physical port dependence. Geez I hate it.

h0ughy (David) · #3 21-10-2010, 09:26 AM

win XP sp3

h0ughy (David) · #4 21-10-2010, 09:27 AM

she left after she realised she started it

Octane (Humayun) · #5 21-10-2010, 09:38 AM

Just pull the USB hub out and unplug everything from it. Reboot the machine and insert one device at a time into the hub. What's likely happened is that COMM ports have been reassigned to your devices.

Keep an eye on Device Manager and note down what the new ports are for each device and re-enter that information into the Gemini driver, etc.

Has happened to me plenty. Some ports are favoured over others sometimes. If it doesn't work on 5, try 6, and so on.

H

Octane (Humayun) · #6 21-10-2010, 10:10 AM

lolll, her homework is now in pieces in the next door neighbour's pool.

H

Quote:

Originally Posted by h0ughy

she left after she realised she started it

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #7 21-10-2010, 10:26 AM

Same thing happened to my puter at Astrofest.
Stupid usb port thingy.
Just go back in time with System Restore, worked for me.

allan gould · #8 21-10-2010, 12:09 PM

Same thing happened with my USB hub at Astrofest except the damned thing had the good grace to actually die on the spot.
Was that the USB hub that I then borrowed off you?
I hope you gently informed your daughter of the consequences of her actions and that it was only the incredibly strong bond of love and affection between you that stopped you from ripping out her entrails for the dog to play with

.

mithrandir (Andrew) · #9 21-10-2010, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Octane

Just pull the USB hub out and unplug everything from it. Reboot the machine and insert one device at a time into the hub. What's likely happened is that COMM ports have been reassigned to your devices.

Keep an eye on Device Manager and note down what the new ports are for each device and re-enter that information into the Gemini driver, etc.

Has happened to me plenty. Some ports are favoured over others sometimes. If it doesn't work on 5, try 6, and so on.

When you've got it working label all the ports and cables and always plug them in the same port and the same order.

If the COM port number gets too high some software won't recognise it. If that happens I unplug all the USB devices, go to device manager, show hidden devices, delete all the COM ports, reboot and plug the USB cables back in, starting with any that demand small COM port numbers.

eg The external hub is always in the right rear port. The Atik 16ic goes in the front right port. The QHY8 goes in the left port. The wireless receiver for my mouse never leaves the external hub. The USB-serial for the Gemini goes in the one next to the mouse. That leaves me 2 ports for devices that don't care what port they are in.

h0ughy (David) · #10 21-10-2010, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by allan gould

Same thing happened with my USB hub at Astrofest except the damned thing had the good grace to actually die on the spot.
Was that the USB hub that I then borrowed off you?
I hope you gently informed your daughter of the consequences of her actions and that it was only the incredibly strong bond of love and affection between you that stopped you from ripping out her entrails for the dog to play with

.

you know me - always have a spare (it was a brand new unopened one)

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #11 21-10-2010, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by h0ughy

you know me - always have a spare (it was a brand new unopened one)

A spare daughter??? Brand new unopened???
the mind boggles with what you keep in that dog house.

h0ughy (David) · #12 21-10-2010, 02:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

A spare daughter??? Brand new unopened???
the mind boggles with what you keep in that dog house.

oh no way broke the mold on that one.....she is untouched and breathing

avandonk · #13 21-10-2010, 02:38 PM

Yep that is why I have a laptop for the guiding, laptop for the camera and a beaut little 12 year old IBM lappy running DOS for the Mel Bartels EQ6 mount. My mates son retrieved it from a binning at his work and you would swear it was made yesterday. He loaded DOS and Mel's software in by floppy disks. Runs better than the younger desktop that used to do this task.

As others have said not only is comm port allocation a problem, my Canon 5DH can saturate a USB 2 port when downloading images.

If h0ughy ends up with Beowolf cluster in his observatory it is not my fault!.....

Bert

h0ughy (David) · #14 21-10-2010, 04:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avandonk

Yep that is why I have a laptop for the guiding, laptop for the camera and a beaut little 12 year old IBM lappy running DOS for the Mel Bartels EQ6 mount. My mates son retrieved it from a binning at his work and you would swear it was made yesterday. He loaded DOS and Mel's software in by floppy disks. Runs better than the younger desktop that used to do this task.

As others have said not only is comm port allocation a problem, my Canon 5DH can saturate a USB 2 port when downloading images.

If h0ughy ends up with Beowolf cluster in his observatory it is not my fault!.....

Bert

mmmm well i might leave the camera control on the PC, transfer the guiding to the Acer one and see what happens from there

acropolite (Phil) · #15 24-10-2010, 08:00 PM

I know the feeling, the older you get the less fun it is tracking down buggy hardware and software; it's just a waste of valuable time (too many toys too little time).

I've run in to that USB issue as well. The boss at work has a habit of downloading from one of his cameras and not removing safely, locks the port up, nothing will work untill it sees the camera again I only found the problem by accident when I spotted him downloading from his camera on a port that wouldn't work for anything else.

h0ughy (David) · #16 25-10-2010, 02:28 PM

Well I am partially fixing the problem – building another phenom 9350 system with 4 gig in a cube case that just fits in the space left in the portable desk. I will run windows 7 64 bit home premium – it will work with guiding and image taking – then that leaves the other to run the Gemini and starry night. There, more hardware and I don’t even have to change the monitors LOL. Got another UPS and red backlit keyboard and another wireless mouse – after all it was raining over the weekend. I have put the hardware together – just need to load the OS and the programmes. Got a 3 licence pack of AVG for $25 – so I can do both pcs in the observatory

marki · #17 25-10-2010, 08:49 PM

You do not have to delete the ports in device manager as you can reasign them manually to what you desire and they will stay put. Windas does kick up a fuss with its usual scare screens but just ignor it and change to suit needs. Force the computer to use the higher comm port numbers.

Mark

TrevorW · #18 25-10-2010, 10:35 PM

" The Joys of an Astro Imager" Episode XXIII starring

Houghy with his dickie USB hub that gave up the ghost after a nasty accident with a teenager, Trevor with PHD that is out of control and won't be told,
JJ , H and the rest of the crew who will come to their rescue

richardo (Rich) · #19 26-10-2010, 01:39 AM

We all feel your pain Houghy!
I've had the dog come in and upset a couple of cables and things stopped working.
Guess you can't kick your daughter ... !

I'd like a dollar for the amount of computers I've rebuilt/ gone through, upgraded, reformatted over the past 9 years out in the observatory when things go crap..... and lots of times it's been after the hour of midnight and not unusual to have to work the next day... lucky I always have spare m/b's, HDDs, ram, psu's and lots of patience.

Think H is on the right track.
Some of those hubs can cause a lot of grief and lock up the ports...
Some times it can be PID devices that block other usb devices.. can be a real pain.

You'll get there I'm sure... if it was working once, then you should be able to repeat it....

White Rabbit · #20 05-11-2010, 08:48 AM

Best thing I ever did was to image my drives for my astro laptop.

Reformat, install everything up date everything, make sure everything is working as you want it, then clone the drive.

Next time you have a problem just install the drive image and hey presto you are back to your computer in 30min with no bugs.

Acronis, is the best software I've used for this.

Cheers.