Very low framerates with new Dell laptop

jairo_amaral

Hello, I'm an engineer and astrophotographer from Brazil.

I've been using my ASI120MC for years with superb results; I even bought an ASI120MM for specific tasks. However, my old computer lost its HD, so I bought a new computer: a Dell inspiron 15 series 7000, with 1 TB HD, 8 GB RAM, and a 4 GB video card. I updated all the drivers recommended by the Dell site, and I updated the ZWO driver for my ASI120MC.

However, my ASI120 cameras are now intermitently freezing and droping frames, no matter the capture software I use: FireCapture, SharpCap or the ZWO capture software. Changing the USB speed didn't help. Making sure I used the 2.0 USB port didn't help either. It must be some incompatibility issue.

Could you please help me to find out what is happening?

astrozed

Hi, I’m far from a power user of ZWO cameras but had used previous ZWO cams in the past.

The one thing that always helped for me was in FireCapture under the Settings and General tab, increase the Heap size until it’s about half of your physical memory size and then click on use RAM Buffer (it says experimental but always worked for me).

After increasing the Heap size restart FireCapture so the new setting is applied.

Also hit the test button next to Use RAM Buffer to test it.

Also of course adjusting ROI to smaller size can help with frame rate, plus also lowering the USB traffic setting to 90 under the More tab which is on the top FireCapture Control tab.

Try those and see if any improvement, for me the Heap size and RAM buffer change worked wonders in the past.

Support@ZWO

set the USB traffic to 80-90, turn on high speed mode.

jairo_amaral

Hi, Astrozed and Sean.Wang, thank you for your replies.

I've already tried all of that. I keep the USB high speed activated by default, and I tweak the USB rate at any sign of lost frames. And from heap size to RAM buffer, I used every trick I knew about FireCapture after I asked the author Torsten Edelmann himself. Furthermore, this is happening with every capture software on my Dell laptop, yet the cameras still work wonderfully in every other laptop I borrowed to test it.

That's why I guess this might be some driver or port incompatibility and came here to ask.

I overheard the firmware could be changed. Is there anything else I could try?

astrozed

Yeah if you’ve tried all of that and are still have persisting issues seems like a Windows version/driver issue.

Maybe try uninstalling and then reinstalling drivers and check for latest ones or even maybe use drivers that had worked in your former PC.

Also any issues with other devices connected to same USB ports to rule out that?

Hope you get it worked out.

jairo_amaral

I've seen no issues with other things on the USB ports, which are my pendrives and my external HD.

I've contacted Dell itself and tested them using virtual assist. They said that the USB ports are perfect and all drivers are up to date, but they "don't warrant compatibility with third party hardware", so they won't help me at all.

I'm frustrated to no end because of the money I wasted on a computer many times faster than my old one, and now I can't use any of my cameras on it, as Dell couldn't bother to make it backward compatible. Guys, be warned: if you buy Dell, you might get a nasty surprise.

I can't believe this is happening only with me. If there are more people having a bad time with this, is there any hope of they becoming compatible again with new drivers from ZWO, Dell and even Windows?

Sam@ZWO

this is hardware compatible issue

our USB2.0 cameras are too old

please use our USB3.0 or Mini cameras if you have such issue

jairo_amaral

Hi, everybody.

I discovered what the actual problem is.

I also have a camera from The Imaging Source, which has the very same problem on my Dell laptop, so I contacted them and reported the same case. When I emphasized that I had poor frame rates even using the 2.0 USB port on my computer, I was told that it could be caused by the Intel CPU switching into idle mode. They suggested I use a free "Processor Idle State Manager" during the capture, meant to minimize this switching, and now I can reach 60 fps at 640x480 resolution with all the cameras (and even with 3.0 ports). I still can't use 30 fps at 1280x1024, but it's an outstanding improvement. Now I can keep using the cameras for planetary images, and as I know the source of the problem, I can even research it further.

I thank every one of you for your input, and I hope this information is valuable for you too.

Support@ZWO

That's great! never thought that would be the problem, you are genious.