Can't get TEC Cooling to work under ASCOM control of ZWO ASI

bill the sky guy

Hello everyone,

I have started to try to use the ASCOM platform to control my camera, mount etc.

I have the ASI094MC camera, and when I run it native on my Macintosh everything works fine controlling from the “Nebulosity 4.1” program.

However, when I try to access the camera from Nebulosity4 on Windows 10, the camera will connect but TEC refuses to turn on. If you push the “ON” button, it just turns itself back off a second later, which of course makes the camera useless…

Has there been an update to the ASCOM driver for this camera in the last month?

Any ideas? I need to get this working in a week or so…

Bill Gwynne

billtheskyguy.com

Support@ZWO

I received your email. We tested, the cooler function is works well under win10.

Please check the version of nebulosity and ASI ascom driver, keep it newest.

bill the sky guy

Ok, thanks for your quick reply!

I've done some further testing and here's what I've come up with:

I'm using the latest beta version of Nebulosity 4.1.8, Windows with the latest version of your ASCOM driver from the ZWO website.

•When I connect to the ASI094MC camera using the Native driver the Thermal Cooling works as it's supposed to.

•When I connect to the camera via the ASCOM Camera driver in Nebulosity it pulls up a dialog box that has a pop-up menu that has two different versions of my camera. It doesn't matter which one I select; I get connection to the camera ok, but the cooling does not work.

I downloaded your ASICAP capture program and the cooling works as expected with that software so I think we can rule out a hardware issue with the camera. (I should keep Anti-Dew selected always, yes?)

So it appears that this is a software issue and since this only happens under an ASCOM connection protocol it seems logical to assume that your ASCOM driver has a bug or some kind of incompatibility with Nebulosity 4.1.8.

I will send a copy of this to Craig at Stark Labs and see what he thinks as well.

I suppose I could always run Nebulosity in native mode (non ASCOM); do I give up any capability there?

Bill

Support@ZWO

I will ask our engineer for help.

chad

Hi Bill，

I could repeat it.

But I test it on MDL, it works well. So I am not sure what happened too~

I will ask the author of Nebulosity4 for help.

If we reach a goal, I will answer this post at here.

Thanks

Chad

bill the sky guy

Ok, thank you for looking into this.

I have 2 questions:

What is MDL?

and…

If I just run Nebulosity using the native driver instead of running under ASCOM, do I give up any significant capability?

I am just starting to use ASCOM so I'm still unsure how it all all my software works together in that software environment.

Bill

willb

Bill the Sky Guy wrote:
Ok, thank you for looking into this.

I have 2 questions:

What is MDL?

and…

If I just run Nebulosity using the native driver instead of running under ASCOM, do I give up any significant capability?

I am just starting to use ASCOM so I'm still unsure how it all all my software works together in that software environment.

Bill

MDL = MaxIm DL, a well established image acquisition and observatory control program from Diffraction Limited in Canada:

http://diffractionlimited.com/product/maxim-dl/.

The authors of MaxIm DL were, and still are, heavily involved in writing and maintaining the ASCOM platform. MaxIm DL was one of the first Windows based observatory control programs and is still used widely in professional and amateur observatories across the world.

Using the native driver in Nebulosity has no disadvantage over ASCOM other than a restricted range of other manufacturers equipment that may be used as part of your ‘system’. With ASCOM, virtually any manufacturer that supplies an ASCOM driver will allow you to ‘mix-and-match’ different manufacturers products into a working system. Using the native drivers restricts you to only those devices that the author of your acquisition program has written his/her own native drivers for and if the device manufacturer introduces new features or bug fixes these will generally be available much earlier in the ASCOM driver while you may have to wait quite some time for the author of your acquisition program to include new features and bug fixes in the corresponding native driver.

HTH

William.

Support@ZWO

WillB wrote:
Bill the Sky Guy wrote:Ok, thank you for looking into this.

I have 2 questions:

What is MDL?

and…

If I just run Nebulosity using the native driver instead of running under ASCOM, do I give up any significant capability?

I am just starting to use ASCOM so I'm still unsure how it all all my software works together in that software environment.

Bill

MDL = MaxIm DL, a well established image acquisition and observatory control program from Diffraction Limited in Canada:

http://diffractionlimited.com/product/maxim-dl/.

The authors of MaxIm DL were, and still are, heavily involved in writing and maintaining the ASCOM platform. MaxIm DL was one of the first Windows based observatory control programs and is still used widely in professional and amateur observatories across the world.

Using the native driver in Nebulosity has no disadvantage over ASCOM other than a restricted range of other manufacturers equipment that may be used as part of your ‘system’. With ASCOM, virtually any manufacturer that supplies an ASCOM driver will allow you to ‘mix-and-match’ different manufacturers products into a working system. Using the native drivers restricts you to only those devices that the author of your acquisition program has written his/her own native drivers for and if the device manufacturer introduces new features or bug fixes these will generally be available much earlier in the ASCOM driver while you may have to wait quite some time for the author of your acquisition program to include new features and bug fixes in the corresponding native driver.

HTH

William.

Thank you for your reply!