X2 Driver

mcgillca

Hi - I've just purchased an ASI 1600MC-Cool (original version with ST4).

I've been using it with the X2 driver on a Raspberry Pi. Firstly, I am impressed at how easy it was to use the driver - nothing to load, just worked out of the box.

A couple of things though:

a) There are a much larger number of settings - not just offset (brightness) and gain, but also white balance for two of the colour channels, a gamma setting, options for binning and controlling the data transfer rate to ensure you get an image. Is there any documentation for these settings (e.g. one of default values for the colour balance is over .9, the other and gamma 0.5. Is there a reason for that?).

b) The setting did not seem persistent - when I changed the values, they would reset to the defaults next time I started the programme. This is also true for the window's version. Can these be made persistent?

c) I could not get the ST4 port to work using the X2 driver on the PI or on Windows (it did work using the ASCOM driver however). Do I need to do anything to get this working?

I am also having problems with strange swirls on the images - I'm still investigating - if I can't get anywhere, I'll post and seek advice.

Thank you very much,

Colin

yang

about the settings, the software manual could help you:https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/

In our next version's x2driver the setting will be saved, I'm woking on it.

ST4 port problem: which interface do you use to control it on Pi? since on Windows you can

use our ST4 ASCOM driver, but on Linux/MacOSX there is no ASCOM driver.

mcgillca

yang wrote:
about the settings, the software manual could help you:https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/manuals/

Thanks for the link - I looked at them, but could not find any description of what WB_R etc actually were - they appeared as controls in images, but with no descriptions. Could this be added to the manual?

yang wrote:
In our next version's x2driver the setting will be saved, I'm woking on it.

That's great - will look out for the next release.

yang wrote:
ST4 port problem: which interface do you use to control it on Pi? since on Windows you can

use our ST4 ASCOM driver, but on Linux/MacOSX there is no ASCOM driver.

I am using your X2 interface - can that not control the ST4 port? It looks like you only have to implement one method to make this work:

virtual int CameraDriverInterface:

Is this not included in your X2 driver? if not, could it be added?

Thank you,

Colin

yang

There is a brief description below each control in our x2 camera driver, if it's hard for user to understand, I consider making it more detailed.

I'll add the CCActivateRelays interface.

mcgillca

yang wrote:
There is a brief description below each control in our x2 camera driver, if it's hard for user to understand, I consider making it more detailed.

I'll take a look and let you know.

yang wrote:
I'll add the CCActivateRelays interface.

That would be great! Thank you!

Colin

yang

Hi, please try this new version: http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/TheSkyX_ZWO_ASICamera_170224.tar.gz

if there is any problem please tell me, thank you.

mcgillca

Thank you very much for the prompt update.

I've tried the driver - two things:

a) The settings still don't seem to be persistent (at least the USB bandwidth is not, which is the one I tried and need to change regularly). I've looked at the descriptions in the driver - they only really tell you the name, not what it really does, nor give you any advice on how you might want to adjust the settings.

b) The activate relays is now working - when I press the camera relay buttons on the take photo tab, the scope moves as expected. However, there is a problem in the guide calibration routine. When I try this, TSX takes the initial photo, then starts to move the mount at the guide rate as expected. At this point, it should wait for the calibration move to complete (it guides the mount for the time you set, say 30s, then takes another image to calibrate how far its moved). However, TSX immediately takes another photo and says that the mount has not moved far enough. In the meantime, the mount continues to move at the guide rate but indefinitely.

I wondered if TSX expects this to be a synchronous action (i.e. its waiting for the guide to finish), but you have set it up to be asynchronous? Either way, there is a problem with the calibration routine (which is kind of vital to be able to guide :) ).

Happy to test out another version if needed.

Thank you very much,

Colin

mcgillca

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yang

I have asked Software Bisque for help about CCActivateRelays and I'm waiting for their reply, if there's a new version's plug-in I'll let you know.

mcgillca

yang wrote:
I have asked Software Bisque for help about CCActivateRelays and I'm waiting for their reply, if there's a new version's plug-in I'll let you know.

Thank you! I will look forward to it.

Colin

yang

Please try this version: http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/TheSkyX_ZWO_ASICamera_170301.tar.gz

mcgillca

That is fantastic!

The calibration and relays all work now as expected, and the driver remembers every setting.

I haven't tried this under the stars yet - will have a go next time the skies clear, but everything I can test indoors works very well.

Thank you very much.

Can I ask - i currently have one camera, but am thinking about buying a second - it looks like the driver is set up for multiple cameras. Can I use the X2 driver to specify one camera for the guider, and another for the imaging camera?

Thank you again - very impressive and prompt response!

Colin

yang

I'm glad it works!

Yes, it supports selecting one camera as imager and another as guider, you need to selecting camera in setting dialog box before connecting

mcgillca

Hi - I did buy a 120MM-S to use as a guide camera. I'm having problems using the X2 driver.

When I use the X2 driver, I get regular timeout errors (I was testing with a shot every 4 seconds, and a delay of 1 s between every frame), despite setting the USB bandwidth to 40%.

I tried it on my desktop windows machine and it was worse! On the windows version (older version of the driver) I got a timeout every time I tried to use the camera.

If I used the ASCOM driver, however, I got no timeouts whatever.

Any suggestions?

Thank you,

Colin

yang

It works on my computer, can I remote control your Windows computer through TeamViewer and see what's the problem, you can send your ID and password of Teamviewer by email to me directly

mcgillca

yang wrote:
It works on my computer, can I remote control your Windows computer through TeamViewer and see what's the problem, you can send your ID and password of Teamviewer by email to me directly

Thank you very much - I have sent you a PM.

I also tried last night on a different Windows 10 computer - same result for both USB 2 and USB 3 connections: I can connect to the ASI-120MM-S, but not take any images with the X2 driver even with the bandwidth set to 40% - I just get a timeout error. No problems with the ASCOM driver.

I get an occasional timeout with the 1600MC, but generally this works fine with the X2 driver.

Colin

mcgillca

Hi Yang - are around to help with this today?

Coln

mcgillca

I've also been experimenting on the Pi.

PHD2 works very well, and allows me to take images all day with the ASI-120MM-S - so this is definitely something that is a problem with the X2 driver.

Its a bit odd - the occasional timeouts (say every couple of minutes) with the X2 driver on the Pi occur towards the end of taking an image. On the Windows platform, its as soon as I try and take an image.

I did suggest a possible solution to Richard Wright.

A couple of years ago, I had a similar problem with the ASCOM driver for Atik - as I remember, the issue was that TSX polls the camera very regularly as the time for end of the exposure draws close - this was causing lots of requests for the status of the camera, which caused the issue. - see post below.

http://www.bisque.com/sc/forums/t/26191.aspx

Richard was not hopeful that this was the problem, but it might be worth conferring with him to see if this is a problem.

Coiln

mcgillca

Well, I sorted out the Windows 10 problem.

I had been using the latest build of The Sky X - I had assumed that would have the latest driver, but it doesn't.

I downloaded the latest driver for Windows and that fixed the issue.

Just the Raspberry Pi issue to sort now.

Colin

mcgillca

Dear Yang,

Hi - I've been discussing this with Richard Wright at Software Bisque. He investigated and found that the timeout occurs at the end of exposure period. At this point, The Sky X asks whether the exposure is completed very often (10,000 times a second) - apparently this is required for AO and other applications.

Richard found a bug in TSX where this actually happened even more often than planned - he supplied me with a test version of TSX where this had been corrected, but I still get the timeouts at the end of exposures.

Matt Bisque says that if these requests are overwhelming the system, the right way to deal with it is to add a sleep command:

Mathew Bisque on SB site wrote:
if TheSky is calling, say CameraDriverInterface:(), too frequently for your needs, the recommended/expected way to throttle this back is by calling SleeperInterface:(nAmount) at the top of the function in question. By doing this, you can effectively set the rate the function is called. There is no real penalty to the user interface since these operations are on a different thread and the SleeperInterface:() is an efficient wait state.

See - http://www.bisque.com/sc/forums/t/26191.aspx?PageIndex=2

Could you build a version with say a 100 ms sleep in this interface to see if this solves the timeout issue? Happy to test.

Thank you,

Colin