Last night was my first night with my new Asiair Mini. Imaging cam was 2600MC, guide cam was 174MM. Imaging scope was an AT60ED and all went wonderfully. The system guided my iEQ30Pro really well, images were recorded, wine was drunk in my recliner inside. Cool.

Tonight, I swapped out my C8, which necessitated moving the AAMini further from the cameras. And, so, longer cables. Everything worked fine EXCEPT the guide cam wouldn't send an image to the AAMini. I got a message that Image Refresh Failed because either 1) The camera works abnormally; 2) The USB or HUB port connected to the camera is abnormal; or 3) the cable connecting the camera is too long or damaged.

I read online that power can be an issue. So I powered everything directly. AAMini was powering nothing. I swapped cables around. The cable orginally in the guide cam worked fine with the imaging cam. I swapped cables in ports on the AAMini. The imaging cam and mount worked fine in all 4 ports. I plugged the 174MM in my laptop and used sharpcap to verify that the camera works (and I'd spent a few hours imaging the sun earlier in the day with the 174).

Anyway, I'm stumped. Has anyone seen this error and solved it? I feel like I've checked everything that could be wrong: ports, cables, camera. But it worked the night before. Any help appreciated.

Well, no one seems to know anything but I thought I should keep the story here in case someone searches.

I dismounted the asiair this afternoon and connected the 2600MC (imaging) to the asiair. It was seen and controlled and sent images to the asiair with all four ports. Using the same cable, I connected the 174MM (guiding) to all four ports. Same thing, it worked. I then used another cable to reconnect the 2600MC. Both cams worked. Then I connected the mount. All worked. I could not recreate the error in my garage.

In any case, I moved things around so that the Asiair was closer to the cams and I used two short cables to connect both cams. All went well. I polar aligned, synced, and imaged. During the third sub, I noticed that the guide cam was set to 1s exposures. I'd meant to use 3s. I stopped between subs and reset the guide cam to 3s.

Image Refresh Failed

OMG.

I then reset the exposure to 1s (I scrolled all the way to 0.001 first on accident but I read later that that might be important if you're having this problem). With the exposure set to 1s, it all is working great.

Any ideas why a 3s guide exposure wouldn't work?

a year later

Thanks for posting your findings, I was tearing my hair out last night trying to get my asi174 to function as a guide cam. As per your findings, a 1s exposure worked. This is quite a limitation as a small refractor doesn't grab that much light. I'll try binning the camera.
I tried to connect a asi220 but asiair didn't recognise it.
I think ZWO should sort out a longer exposure time.
Cheers
Gordon

    gordonewen The limit of guide camera exp time in ASIAIR should be 5s, and we released the limit to 10s in the newest beta version now.

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