ASI120MM output problem

ratchet

(edited to be more concise)

I have an ASI120MM operating in a remote solar observatory that was working fine since purchasing a few months ago, but now will not display video.

DirectShow produces a black screen. SharpCap reports a non adjustable exposure ~1.2s.

FireCapture does not show an image and errors out after a minute.

SharpCap (app control and ASCOM) never shows an image. Reports 0 fps.

AMCap produces a black screen. Appears to be DirectShow.

PhD connects to camera then errors out similar to FireCapture.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled all software. Same problem exists.

Any ideas? Does it sound like a hardware or software issue?

The camera was attached to a Lunt 60mm Ha Scope with blocking filter, and my internal camera can verify the equipment and cables are still intact, so I don't think anything could be fried.

Thanks,

Robert Nowell

Sam@ZWO

Hi Robert

we also got your email about this question and replied in your email

Admin

Thank you! I replied to the email just now. I was going to send the camera in for repair but found that it works in my home computer. I'll leave this thread open and post the fix once I find the problem. It must be something to do with installing dxtory. http://exkode.com/dxtory-features-en.html

Ratchet

ratchet

Just to update this thread: Our ZWO ASI120MM camera is working fine. I think the problem was related to one of our programs setting a dshow mode that the camera could not support, and somehow the OS remembers the previous dshow settings which propagates to other software. For example, I can set my capture properties in SharpCap, close the program, and open OBS to start a feed and the dshow camera settings are retained. I believe DXtory was messing with the settings causing an invalid mode. Removing DXtory and rebooting fixed the problem at the observatory.

Now I just have to get OBS Studio to read dshow directly from the ASI120MM. It apparently does not like RGB8 or perhaps the way the ZWO camera sets its parameters. The OBS log states ZWO failed to initialize. Is this the only output from the ASI120MM? ffmpeg only lists RGB8, so I am guessing so. I would guess that most astro video cameras are raw only.

In the meantime I am trying to get ffmpeg to convert RGB8 on the fly and stream directly to Youtube. I may need a faster computer for this depending on my bitrate :-)

I have temporarily mounted a Microsoft Lifecam as a streaming solution so we can finish testing. It is suboptimal. The ASI120MM even though not the top ZWO camera is still much better!

LifeCAM dshow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDF0COPpyz4

ZWO screencap (no work with OBS yet; ~1fps; we are having USB latency problems due to # of equipment)

https://youtu.be/447aL-lRHGI?t=12m44s