This camera is full of surprises.
Last night I was doing a dry run on a few tree tops, to test a newly acquired Cablematters 10m USB3 cable. All went surprisingly fine using SGP during frame&focus until after a few minutes the image did not change anymore when focus was adjusted. :
Trying to bring up the ASCOM driver did not work. Moreover, SGP did not respond anymore. A restart of SGP did not cure the problem, cause as soon as I selected the ASI camera, SGP hung again. In windows device manager the camera had also disappeared. Rebooting the computer usually helps. Not this time. The camera was not recognized by windows 10, as before. :?:
Weird. Uninstalled, re-installed all the drivers, native and ascom. No succes. The camera was recognized now by windows, but showed up in device manager, be it with the warning " device did not start" ???
Unplugged the lot and waited for 15 min (while doing some Zen exercises). :
Rebooted the computer and plugged in the USB3 cable. Beep! The ASI was recognized and working correctly (according to windows). Sharpcap did see the camera alright. SGP still did not initially.
Until after a few minutes, ASCOM decided to go along and co-operate and I could make the connection with SGP. After that no more problems. :!:
It occurred to me a few times now that if the camera goes wrong for whatever reason, you should disconnect it completely and wait for it to come to its senses. Kind of reset-function. I guess there is still some charge kept onto a memory chip by a capacitor or so, that needs to be depleted first, to get the camera in a "clean start" condition. Else it persists in its "fail status". Why else would the fan start up some times (not every time) when I only connect the 12V (not the USB) The TEC must have some memory about its status when the camera was disconnected.
Am I right in my assumptions?
Still waiting for a good clear night to put the camera for a real test. :|
Have photographed a lot of tree tops by now
