Hello all,
I recently purchased a new ZWO 1600MM Pro (mono) camera along with and EFW, ZWO guider, and ASIAir. I currently own several CCD cameras from SBIG along with a QHY-168C one-shot color camera. I wanted to see how the monochrome CMOS sensor cameras work and I decided on the 1600MM monochrome model from ZWO. It arrived a few weeks ago and we finally had a few clear nights here in Michigan where I could try imaging with this new camera.
I have been imaging the night sky for 50+ years and started using CCD imagers after building my first CCD camera in 1994. Sorry for all the detail but, I wanted to let everyone who reads this post that I am not new to imaging.
I have used several image capturing programs over the years but today I only use two on a regular basis, The Sky X with its camera plug-ins, and Sequence Generator Pro. I also own Nebulosity v.4.1 but only use this software to align and stack images. Now the reason for this post:
My computer is a Windows 10 laptop and have installed all of the recent ZWO drivers from the ZWO website. After setting up my ZWO 1600MM Pro camera in SGP I was able to take a few test images and things seemed to be working properly. While focusing the camera or trying to take a series of images the image downloads would hang after taking around 5 - 8 images. I restarted the software, checked the camera and software setting and tried several times with the outcome, download hang.
I checked posts on the Internet regarding this issue and found that many users replaced USB cables and hubs to correct this issue. After trying several different USB cables and hubs, along with connecting the equipment directly to my laptop's USB ports and not into a USB hub, my camera still hangs on downloads. This is what I have discovered so far:
The 1600MM Pro will connect to both SGP and The Sky X, it appears to take the image but hangs during the downloads. I tired using Nebulosity and my camera will not connect to it at all. I received the message "Cannot find ASI camera" or something along those lines.
My friend owns a ZWO 1600MM (Non-Pro version) and using his camera I can connect to both SGP and Nebulosity and downloads work fine using all of my observatory USB hardware and cables. However, his camera still will not download an image while using the Sky X. I have adjusted the bandwidth settings to their lowest value and the downloads still will not work under The Sky X.
Before I return this equipment to the vendor for I refund, I was hoping someone may have a fix for these issues I am having with my ZWO 1600MM Pro camera? I may have received a defective camera, not sure. It is troubling to me that my friends ZWO 1600MM camera works on all of my software except The Sky X as I do use this software to control a Paramount ME.
Thank you in advance for your help!
Jeff
