ASIAIR+ & 6200MM = Exposure Failure

nagamati

Is there anyone using the same combination as I am? Most famous image using this combination seems to be the screen shot of the "Exposure Failure" message :-)

ASIAIR+
6200MM for main
292MM-Mini
EAF
AM5

The 292MM-Mini seems to be doing mush better than 6200MM. The latter seems to be frequently throwing this errors. It almost is a sure thing if I take a shot at 2-bin.

I have tried many brands of 12V DC power supplies 10-15A, separate power supply for AIR+ and 6200MM, various brands and length of USB 3 cables, etc. like people said in this forum but they don't really make any difference. Once it gets into this error, the only way to recover is to power down everything and restart.

I'm hoping to use this combination for remote imaging but as it is rightnow, the combination is flakey at best.
Is there a trick? This seems like a software problem between the two devices.

Thanks
--Ron

enaiman

nagamati I have the same camera and no problems at all.
Exposure Failure errors are very often related to the power supply for the camera. If the power is not enough it will lead to such problems.
Try to feed the camera from a separate power supply - just the camera only - and see if you still get thee errors.

wvreeven

Adding to enaiman's excellent reply:

I have an ASI6200MM and an ASIAir and it works for me very well as well. I did notice that I need to plug in the power supply and connect the camera to the ASIAir before switching on the ASIAir. If I don't do that then the camera doesn't respond well. Once it is in that state, I need to power it down and wait at least 10 minutes before trying again. The same applies to my wife's ASI2600MC as well.

And this is the case for StellarMate or other Raspberry Pi devices running Linux.

On my MacBook I don't need to connect the camera and then start my MacBook. As long as the power has been plugged in, the camera works.

nagamati

Thanks everyone.

I'm 100% positive that it's not a power supply issue. ASIAIR is slaved off AM5 side power port, and AM5 was powered by a 12V/10A power brick while the camera has its own 12V/5A power brick - fed to AC wall outlet if I'm home or an ECOFlow Delta Pro AC port if I'm out in the middle of no where. Switching AC adaptors to other brands doesn't make any difference. Niether does feeding 12V direct from Ecoflow 12V port via splitter cables.

I do noticed that later in the evenings once the ambient cool down to mid-40s/30s (I'm in SoCal) that the problem went away but that is usually after numerous power cycling of these devices. I can repeat this problem everytime I take this bundle out.

I'm going to go back to using a Windows PC to control everything for awhile like I have been doing for years (CCDNagator + TheSKyX + Maxim/DL). It's a shame, ASIAIR workflow is very good and totally replaces all those Windows Apps which frankly seen very little enhancement/changes for years.

enaiman

nagamati Now that you mention the ambient temperature - to which temperature are you tryiong to cool the camera? What is the cooler usage? You are trying maybe to cool it too much and the cooler works 100% all the time?
If that is the case, maybe the power supply for the camera is not enough for such usage.
You could try to set a higher temperature limit to the cooling and see what happens, or turn off cooling all together to see if it makes a difference. Also try another power adapter for the camera (preferably one which was successfully tested).

w7ay

nagamati ASIAIR is slaved off AM5 side power port, and AM5 was powered by a 12V/10A power brick while the camera has its own 12V/5A power brick - fed to AC wall outlet if I'm home

Do not power the ASIAIR from the mount. Give the ASIAIR the cleanest power possible.

If you use more than one power supply, make sure you have a heavy ground braid (or heavy wire) that connects the ground returns of the multiple power supplies' together. The closer you do this to your instrumentation, the better. This will prevent the ground returns of the USB cable from acting as the ground return for DC power.

Do not use the USB hub in the camera. Connect your accessories to the ASIAIR, or to a powered hub that is connected to the ASIAIR. For testing, remove all accessories from ASIAIR other than the camera.

Try some snap-on ferrite chokes on the USB cable. There are USB cables that come with such chokes already built in -- they look like a cylindrical bulge near one end of the cable. The problem is that sometimes, depending on the conducted EMI, the chokes can make the problem worse, so you just need to experiment. There are chokes for different cable diameters at Amazon. Just look for "snap-on ferrite choke."

If you are using the third or forth generation ASIAIR (both are called "plus," so saying "plus" does not uniquely identify the model -- the older ones use the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, while the newer ones use the Rockchip), see if you can remove the antenna, and terminate the SMA antenna output with a 50 ohm SMA terminator (make sure it is a 50 ohm terminator and not an SMA short), and connect the ASIAIR though Ethernet instead -- this will help diagnose whether your problem is RFI related.

At the least, even if you don't replace the antenna with a 50 ohm terminator, try the Ethernet route to see if matters improve -- your problem must just be related to a poor data link between the the ASIAIR and the tablet.

In any case, keep the camera cable as far away from the ASIAIR antenna itself.

Chen

nagamati

enaiman -20C, with the ambient temp, that was about 50% cooling power or less for the entire session. Once it reached the -20C target, it didn't take full power to keep the temp at the target. And just to eliminate any power supply adaptor rating issue, at one point I was running the entire setup off a lab-grade bench power supply and the same problem occurred regardless.

One more piece of info, during one of the session when I had this problem, I purposely turned off cooling because it was not an essential thing while I was just focusing and polar aligning. I thought the problem would go away based on various threads I saw about power supply being the culprit; it didn't. I think power supply may contribute to the problem on a use case or two but it certainly red herring in most cases.

enaiman

nagamati Unfortunately I don't have any more meaningful advice for you - just make sure you have the latest ASIAir version installed.
You should open a support ticket with ZWO.

nagamati

Thanks @Chen

There is no way for me to know if my ASIAIR+ is a CM4 based or a Rockchip-based. I've just got it from Agena late last November after a long backorder so I would suspect that it's the Rockchip version given CM4 had been really scarce since COVID started.

Good point about RF interference being something to try to eliminate. I mounted my ASAIR on the side of my RedCat 51 with antenna pointing forward while all the USB cables are pointing to the back. I'm a HAM so plenty of chokes around the lab. I will substitute it with a USB cable that already have a choke; but it's a bit longer. Running an ethernet cable and avoid WiFi all together is already in my to-do list to get to in order to get a better transfer rate.

About not using AM5 side power jack to power ASIAIR+, I thought that is what it is for; given the proximity to the mounting base. However, I'm already rigging a new 14AWG main power bus so splitting it two ways or three and feed each device directly is easily done.

As for the not using the camera's hub, it is unavoidable because I need to use if for the EFW (ASIAIR+'s 4 ports are already used up for 6200MM, 290MM-Mini, EAF, and AM5).

w7ay

nagamati As for the not using the camera's hub, it is unavoidable

For testing, try removing them. This will see if they are the source of your problem. ZWO's USB interfaces (seems to be copy-and-paste from one device to another) have always been problematical -- starting (especially) with the original ASI120 camera. I don't think they use micro-stripline techniques with their USB 3 implementation.

I have a ASI183 whose USB hub never even worked out of the box, but I don't care since all of my OTA setups have their own USB hubs. And as long as I take the camera to the dump when they become obsolete, instead of passing them on to someone else, it won't disturb other prople either.

The USB connectors that ZWO use themselves are also of poor quality, and requires a lot of strain relieving to work when the devices are moving over the night. Many other camera manufacturers also use locking 5.5/2.1mm power connectors (my QHY533M and an SBIG ST-8300 have them, for example), so with ZWO's devices you also need to strain relieve the power connector of ZWO's cameras. But I don't think that is your problem.

I'm a HAM

73 OM/YL DE W7AY dit dit.

(Been playing with radios, since 1959, even before I started playing with telescopes in 1963.)

Chen

nagamati

73 OM DE KM6YMK & HS1LD. Thanks again for the advice.

w7ay

nagamati HS1LD

Sawasdee krub.

(Sae) Chen

BluJeans

Two nights ago I experienced the exact same "Exposure Failure" incident on my ASI6200MM. What's strange is that the day before (i.e. three nights ago) I had used the camera without any problems at all. The only change that I made between the two sessions was to add a field flattener into the image train. I did not tear anything down in between sessions so all of the exact same cables, etc. remained in place. My system is all ASI... ASI AirPro (bought a couple of years ago), ASI EFW, ASI EAF 5 volt. I run the Air on an iPhone and all software is up to date. I even tried deleting the app and reinstalling it.

I image with two very similar systems (except for the OTA's). My other system uses the ASI6200MC and EAF. I tried swapping camera's. When I replaced the ASI6200MM with my 6200MC, (and everything else such as cables, etc remaining the same), that setup worked correctly, however when I put the ASI6200MM onto the setup where I used to have the 6200MC, the EXPOSURE FAILURE error followed the camera. As such I seriously doubt that the issue is cables. But just to be sure, I also tried other USB3.0 cables. I've owned my ASI6200MM for about a year now and have used it many, many times using my current setup.
In researching this problem, I did find that ASI appeared to have a similar problem with their ASI120MM-Mini camera. There is now a firmware update on ASI's website for the ASI120MM-Mini camera, but no firmware updates of any kind at all for the ASI6200MM (or MC) camera.

Nagamati - sorry... I'm not a HAM 🙂 so no coded messages please! Have you been able to reach any satisfactory resolution with this issue?

nagamati

BluJeans

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing the same problem I 'had'. There were a couple of changes I made at or around the same time so it's hard to figure out what really solved them but do pay attention to Chen's suggestion above.

When I use ASIAir and iPad, here's the combination. My cable bundle is tied down and secured to a place so that telescope movement doesn't result in movement of USB plugs at ASIAir. I also keeps USB cables away from Wifi antenna to avoid RFI that Chen was suggesting. After I have done all of these, I have yet to see the exposure failure even once.

USB 3.0 cable: I went with shortest cable of a reasonable quality with shielding - i.e. not a flat USB cable.
USB 3 Top-port - 6200MM - It makes a difference between the top and the bottom; possibly when cable moves.
USB 3 Bottom-port - 290MM Mini
FW - USB at 6200MM
USB 2 Top-port - EAF
USB 2 bottom-port - AM5
Cat8 (way overkill but I run 10GbE while at home) ethernet to ASAIAir from a travel MiFi router - image download is now also much faster. When I use without an ethernet cable, Wifi works.
12V DC 20A bench power supply, directs to a DC distribution box (borrowed from my ham rig https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/pdn-ps4-plus) , the from there to ASIAir+, AM5, and 6200MM. Not all power supply can actually deliver the power rating it says on the label but ham's powersupply will. When I'm travelling, then I use Ecoflow River 2 Max 12V output port feeds the distribution box - no AC-12V to convert back and forth.
Let the active cooling cool the camera down and settle before I start doing anything like focus, polar align, etc.

When I don't use ASIAir but going with old school SkyX + Maxim DL Pro on a small form-factor PC and a Pegasus power box , then it doesn't matter what cable, power supply, or how I wire them. 6200MM always work fine and I can focus, and polar align while the camera is cooling down to save time....