Using the ASI1600MC-Cool ASCOM driver with Sharpcap

saguaro

I have installed the ASCOM platform, the ASICamera ASCOM Driver, and the ZWO ASI Cameras Driver (in that order) from your website.

In SharpCaps's Camera Selection menu, I have been choosing the first listing for my 1600MC-Cool, as in this screenshot:

sharpcap small.JPG

Does this choice use the ASCOM driver for this camera? Is that the best choice for getting all the camera controls?

My Camera Selection menu in Sharpcap (latest version 2.9.2999) looks different than shown in this post:

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/546906-asi1600-sharpcap-lots-of-hangs/#entry7543876

and I've been told that I don't have the ASCOM driver for the camera, since it's supposed to be listed near the bottom and is called "ASI Camera 1" and "ASI Camera 2". I have no such choices available.

Can you please help me determine if I have the ASCOM driver installed and am I correctly choosing the ASCOM driver in Sharpcap? Thanks.

saguaro

SharpCap developer Robin Glover has just posted a reply to my inquiry about this issue on the Astronomy Shed SharpCap support forum here: http://www.astronomyshed.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=28702&p=193347#p193316

He confirms that the highlighted choice in my screenshot above is in fact the best choice for allowing SharpCap to talk directly to the camera.

However, he also confirms that my Camera Selection menu is not displaying the ASCOM driver choice for this camera (I would see a section "ASCOM Cameras"). But he also says that I wouldn't want to choose it as it provides less control of the camera.

In the meantime, I have been successfully using the camera with SharpCap, but SGP is not able to find it (probably due to the ASCOM driver issue I'm having).

Can someone from ZWO please respond with some help in troubleshooting this issue (why the ASCOM driver for the camera is not appearing in SharpCap and it is not found by SGP)?

I'm using a new Win10 Pro Alienware laptop (just released 1 month ago by Dell). I can provide my ASCOM logs if that will be helpful. Thanks.

saguaro

Problem solved!

I remembered that I had gotten an error "an error occurred during profile migration" during the ASCOM Platform installation. I went to the ASCOM Yahoo Talk forum, and low and behold, someone had just been troubleshooting this issue. It turns out that I had to make some permissions changes to the ASCOM section in the Registry Editor. Once I made the changes, the ASCOM driver for the camera magically appeared in SharpCap, and now SGP finds it as well.Here is the thread on the ASCOM Yahoo forum that has the fix that worked for me.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ASCOM-Talk/conversations/topics/36569?reverse=1

Apparently this issue is affecting other Win10 users and needs to be addressed by the ASCOM developers.

Sam@ZWO

that's good news!

al bates

saguaro wrote:
I have installed the ASCOM platform, the ASICamera ASCOM Driver, and the ZWO ASI Cameras Driver (in that order) from your website.

In SharpCaps's Camera Selection menu, I have been choosing the first listing for my 1600MC-Cool, as in this screenshot:

sharpcap small.JPG

Does this choice use the ASCOM driver for this camera? Is that the best choice for getting all the camera controls?

My Camera Selection menu in Sharpcap (latest version 2.9.2999) looks different than shown in this post:

http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/546906-asi1600-sharpcap-lots-of-hangs/#entry7543876http://www.cloudynights.com/topic/546906-asi1600-sharpcap-lots-of-hangs/#entry7543876

and I've been told that I don't have the ASCOM driver for the camera, since it's supposed to be listed near the bottom and is called "ASI Camera 1" and "ASI Camera 2". I have no such choices available.

Can you please help me determine if I have the ASCOM driver installed and am I correctly choosing the ASCOM driver in Sharpcap? Thanks.

Try this

https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/

saguaro

Thanks, Al, but the problem was due to a bug in the ASCOM platform installation on my new Windows 10 laptop. All ZWO camera drivers were correctly installed, but not accessible from capture programs such as SGP and SharpCap.

During ASCOM platform installation, the profile migration error occurred, and permissions were not being set correctly by the ASCOM installer, so the drivers were not accessible to the capture software. This issue was noticed by others with new Windows 10 laptops, but apparently only affects some users. The error also occurred to some other users with different ASCOM camera drivers installed, so it isn't specific to ZWO camera drivers. But I posted it here just in case it helps other ZWO users.