Thank you for your help. I am back home, and the skies have been cooperative. I am afraid I have a camera that is dying and is now nearly dead. What used to be an intermittent problem has now become almost constant - where the camera seems unable to transfer images to the image capture software.
As you suggested I try, I started out not using the cooler. From the moment I connected the camera to my laptop and started SharpCap, SharpCap indicated that every frame was being dropped. I closed SharpCap and opened ASICAP. ASICAP indicated there were no frames being captured at all -- fps, total frames, and dropped frames were all zero. I plugged the cooler in and started it up and suddenly both SharpCap and ASICAP started showing frames being captured. However, this did not last for more than a minute or two. The situation returned to SharpCap indicating every frame being dropped and ASICAP indicating that no frames were being captured or dropped.
I brought out two more USB cables, one being the cable that came with my 224MC camera and the other being an older USB2 cable. I also brought out another laptop. I tried each USB cable in each USB port in each laptop, camera cooler on and camera cooler off. I tried fast and slow USB bus speeds, high speed and not high speed, various formats, and gain/exposure settings. Nothing made any difference. Occasionally, (seemingly randomly as I could never find a way to reliably reproduce it), the camera would start working for a short time, but then soon stop working again. The power LED light was on the whole time, and the camera was recognized at all times by both SharpCap and ASICAP. ( did not run these programs simultaneously. When switching between them, I would shut one down before starting the other one.)
Again, my 224MC camera functioned properly connected to either of the USB3 cables and either laptop. After bringing everything back inside, this time the issue did not resolve itself. A couple of times the camera started working again, but not for more than a minute or two at a time. Unless you have any other ideas, I believe I have a defective product that is less than a year old. It was purchased from High Point Scientific. I would like to know how I can get it replaced. Thank you.
} Well, of course, just after I wrote this, the camera started working again and seemed like it was going to keep working. I actually put it in the freezer for a half hour to try to simulate being outside in the cold in case that's what is causing the problem, but after getting it out it still works.
It worked for about 3 or 4 minutes, but stopped working again for a few minutes, then started working again using ASICAP. I switched over to SharpCap and it stopped working and continued to not work when switching back to ASICAP. This intermittency is very frustrating. It makes the camera unusable on evenings where it behaves like this, but my fear is that If I send it in for repair or replacement, it may not display this behavior (at least not right away). Most nights (at least in the past), the camera would not exhibit this behavior at all. But on some nights, it did. Tonight it was significantly worse, especially in that it was not working right from the beginning, but I don't know whether that means it is likely not to get better, or if it may work fine tomorrow night.
