ASI1600MM capture in Universal Windows Project

evren

Hi,

Using the latest SDK v2 with the C# wrappers, I'm trying to connect to an ASI1600MM camera within a Universal Windows Project using MS Visual Studio 2017. However, when I call ASICameras.Count; I get a count of 0 returned indicating that no cameras are connected. Therefore, if I try to execute ASICameras.GetCamera(0); I get an index out of bounds exception.

I have installed both the native and directshow drivers for the camera and in device manager I can see it without any issue. Also, the camera is detected and streams fine in SharpCap.

Is there something I need to do to initialize and connect to the camera before calling ASICameras.GetCamera(0);? I'm wondering if I'm missing something or doing something incorrect here.

Any guidance and help would be much appreciated.

Best regards,

Evren

yang

ASICameras.Count is the first you should call, all other functions will return error if ASICameras.Count reurns 0.

Can you run our demo writen by C language, because it's easier to find the issue

evren

Hi there,

Many thanks for the response. I got the SDK working just fine in a standard C# WPF app. I am able to get a handle on the camera and then initialise it and start a video recording. All good within this kind of project.

My problem is that I need to create a C# UWP app. Within this kind of C# project, the SDK does not appear to work (i.e. returns a camera count of 0). Having spent an entire couple of days on this trying various things and doing some research, I think the issue may be arising from UWP apps running in a protected environment which places constraints on what unmanaged dlls can be executed. See the Microsoft article below:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt186162.aspx

There is a potential work around, but I don't have the SDK source code to try it out:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chrisbarker/2014/10/08/consuming-a-c-library-project-from-a-windows-phone-store-app/

There is still a chance that this is a smaller issue and I have missed something.

Any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,

Evren

yang

I have no experience with C# UWP app, did you run it on a normal Windows PC and can't work?

can you provide the C# UWP project and the procedure of setup to me, I have VS Community 2015, so I can try to find the problem.

evren

Hi,

That's correct: on a normal windows PC, using a C# UWP project, it does not work. I have created a simple UWP project using Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition for you.

As previously stated, the SDK works in a standard C# WPF project, but not in a C# UWP project (no exceptions thrown).

Really looking forward to hearing back from you and do let me know if I can help in anyway to resolve this.

Best regards,

Evren

evren

I forgot to mention that you need to build this project using the x64 profile.

yang

I enocounter error when I tried to open your project by VS2015 on my Win7, it prompts that SDK (UAP, Version=10.0.14393.0) should be installed, but I cant install it successfullt on Win7, it seems that I have to install VS2015 on Win8/Win10.

evren

Hello yang,

Thanks for your help so far. You are correct that UWP targets Windows version 8 and beyond. Therefore you would need to be running your IDE on one of these versions. From your response, it is not clear to me if you intend to do this or not. Can you clarify if you will be testing on a later windows version?

I think it is important to make the SDK compatible with UWP apps as they will become more and more prominent as time goes on.

Best regards,

Evren

yang

It's better if I can open the project with VS2015 on my Win7, is this possible?

evren

yang wrote:
It's better if I can open the project with VS2015 on my Win7, is this possible?

Hi Yang,

Yes, you should be able to open and build a UWP project on Win 7. You will just not be able to run or debug the app locally.

Here are some Microsoft instructions that may be helpful:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/dn975273.aspxhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/dn975273.aspx

Best regards,

Evren

evren

Hin Yang,

Did you have any luck?

In the meantime, can you please try compiling the SDK with the following options:

/ZW /EHsc

This may resolve the issue or potentially give you some output that hints at why it doesn't work in a UWP context.

Best regards,

Evren

yang

Hi, I have built a new library as your requirement, please try it.

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

evren

yang wrote:
Hi, I have built a new library as your requirement, please try it.

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

Hi Yang,

Many thanks for this. Unfortunately this has not resolved the matter and I'm still getting a count of zero.

It would be really good if you test this out on Windows 10 in a UWP project. So far I haven't been able to identify a solution that works within UWP.

Best regards,

Evren

yang

I find that the calling of "CreateFile (DevPath,...)" in our code is failed, which results in the fail of operation to USB device, currently I have no idea about this.

yang

It seems that it's a permission problem, refer to this article:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot/Samples/CustomDeviceAccessor

I only tried the part "Granting Access to AppContainer Processes", then replug camera, result is the UWP project you sent to me works, camera is detacted and exposure successfully, I use the SDK compiled without /ZW option.

evren

Hi Yang,

Good find, thanks for all your effort. Works for me as well!

Best regards,

Evren

yang

Great! now I'm not sure if it can work on Arm platform's Wondows.

evren

Hi Yang,

I've just hit another issue in UWP. I have been getting a live video feed and have been able to capture images just fine. So I thought I would now integrate my takephoto and videocapture logic and while doing so discovered that I can't stop the video or close the camera. I always get an unhandled exception coming back from the DLL, but as it is unhandled, I can't see what's going on.

Can you have a look? It should be easy to replicate, but let me know if you need anything else from me.

Best regards,

Evren

yang

ok, can you share your project, so I can reproduce the problem in the fastest way

evren

Hello Yang,

As you requested, here is an example project. I have a suspicion that the garbage collector is moving the camera object around in memory and then when you execute stopvideorecording or closecamera, some internal pointer in the SDK is referencing a no longer valid memory location. I might be completely wrong though!

Anyway, over to you. Launch the app, hit start to initiate the video, then hit stop... this is when it crashes on my system.

Best regards,

Evren