I use NINA for my acquisition software and the ZWO ASCOM driver for my ASI2600MM Pro camera. The issue I am having is the integrated dew heater control. The issue is that I setup a session and let it run, the at the end of the night, NINA parks my mount and turns off the cooler slowly (warms the camera). The issue is that while the cooler turns off, it appears the dew heater stays on. If my imaging session ends at 2:30 am and I might not go to cleanup my rig until say 10 am, the dew heater appears to be running that whole time. I have come out to find my camera cooling fins and shell very warm to the touch. Looking in NINA I have found my camera sensor in the high 40s C, approaching the 50 C max operating spec. My fear is that running into the max operating temp could damage my camera or help induce the "pad oil leak" issue.
There is an ASCOM setup option for that driver to turn the dew heater on and off. My assumption was this was a default state and the software (NINA) could turn it off at the session end. Turns out this is the only way to control the dew heater when using the ZWO ASCOM driver in NINA. To manually change the ASCOM driver setup setting.
I posted questions on the NINA Discord and was told that the ASCOM standard does not offer dew heater control options and that ZWO would have to do something in their ASCOM driver, say to automatically turn off the dew heater when the cooler is turned off.
Additionally, the people at the NINA Discord indicated that the ZWO Native driver does have dew heater control, but that the ZWO API does not indicate that the dew heater should be turned off when the cooler is off and therfore, they currently don't shut off the dew heater when they turn off the cooler at session end. Currently I would have to generate a custom, advanced sequence to deal with the cameras custom dew heater control.
Is the dew heater warming the camera sensor to 50 C an issue? If so, could the ZWO ASCOM driver be modified to automatically turn off the dew heater when the cooler is shut off? Or at least have an option for this to be enabled in the ASCOM driver setup?
Should your API be modified to indicate to developers on how to handle the dew heater when the cooler is turned off?
I would hate for someone to damage their expensive camera because they didn't know they had to manually shut off their dew heater or write some custom sequence.
Thanks!
