224MC - issues with latest Windows drivers and FireCap

bratislav

Hi,

I've been using my 224 color planetary cameras for a while. Recently I had to update ZWO drivers (to v3.0.0.3) as I bought 1600pro. I haven't had chance to use 224 again until last night, but there seem to be a major problem. Previously 224 ran flawlessly, hitting nearly 300 frames per second in 400x400 subframe window and running well over 130 frames/sec at full resolution. Now it cannot get anywhere near those numbers. During capture (with new drivers) , it randomly pauses, and I can see that frame count in FireCapture just freezes at some number and doesn't update for several seconds, Then it continues, but again erratically, not writing data, or doing so at very slow rates. I've been getting numbers like 6 frames per second, which is ridiculous!!!

Camera is definitely seen as USB3 device by FireCap. The numbers reported in preview mode definitely look 'real' (that is at 400x400 it reports 296fps as Max and 294 as "current"), but when it starts recording numbers are much lower than that. I have i5 laptop, using RAM disk for destination drive, and see the same issue in both FireCap 2.5 and latest 2.6. Changing USBtraffic or Thread priorities under Performance tab make no difference.

Note that SharpCap actually runs OK, and I am hitting close to predicted numbers (nearly 300fps at 400x400 ROI). Of course I can use SharpCap, and I do so (having no other option), but there are several features that FireCap has that I like, and interface is, well, different and being unfamiliar I make many mistakes.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Bratislav

Support@ZWO

Hello

Looks like the camera and driver is works normal. Only possibility is some settings in Firecapture cause low FPS issue.

Could you feedback this issue to Firecapture？

firecapture（at）yahoogroups.com

bratislav

I will do so. But my point is, FireCapture was working fine with a previous ZWO drivers. This issue arose after updating drivers to 3.0.0.6, FireCap was not changed. My worry is that whatever the issue/conflict may have been introduced could affect other programs as well.

Bratislav

Sam@ZWO

actually we didnot upgrade our driver code for a long time

each update we just add new camera support

so new driver won't cause such problem

but we can do a remote check if you need

bratislav

Thanks for the offer Sam, I've managed to get to the bottom of it. It was the combination of Java update and some settings in FireCap that fixed the issue. At least I've learned that FireCap has debug mode (very helpful) and can log many things (also very helpful). In a nutshell, Java heap collection was causing those hangups.

Bratislav

Sam@ZWO

That's good news!