driver problem

benni

Hi,

I am using an ASI 1600 mmcool. I had problems making flats with the ccd flats aid tool of astro photography tool.

The problem was that suddenly, after some time, he camera appeared busy, yet no image was made or downloaded.

I tried everything: From a different usb cable to a different usb speed. The problem only went away after I checked the box "disable min exposure check". A post in the apt forum suggests that this is a driver problem with the ascom driver.

after checking this box, apt then worked flawlessly....

chad

Hi Benni,

Can you tell us which application do you use? We will check it.

Thanks

Chad

benni

Hi, thank you for your answer. If you could check this out it would be nice.

unfortunately, the problem happened again...

Well I only get this problem with the ccd flats aid in astrophotography tool which you can download here for free....

https://ideiki.com/astro/Default.aspx

I use windows 7 and the newest ascom drivers for the asi 1600 mono cool

I use the ccd flats aid tool there to create a flats plan for all 8 filters...

Often sometimes, the camera will work for a time but then, say during the h alpha filter, just say it is busy and hang in the process. Clearly there is a hang somewhere and the camera only works again when I disconnect it from apt and restart apt.. This is unfortunate as it takes time to warm the camera up and cool it down again... this still works fortunately..

Some other people have this problem as you can see here

http://aptforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=802

http://aptforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=846

It never appeared to happen during imaging on my pc. But this maybe because deep sky imagng is always longer than 10 seconds. On my pc it only occurs during flats aid, where the application roams through different exposures in order to find the optimal time, or during taking flats which often take very faat exposure times....

settings are usb lowest speed setting. And I use a rather long usb 3 cable... but it should be within the usb3 specs (2 or 3 meters, I guess).

benni

I suspect that this problem simply is connectes with the capacity of the computer. Perhaps the camera wants to send an immage immediately but the pc is a bit busy, or the cable creates problems with the signal, creating a milisecond delay or a single pixel that is wrong... and this model of the asi has no memory buffer i think...

And instead of making an error message or simply begin to go to the next image, the camera hangs immediately...

This would somewhat explain why it does not happen during 10 seconds exposure but only during fast flats...

benni

now i made flats with an usb 3 cable of 1.8m lengh. everything worked.

Apparently the problems only occur with a 3m cable.....

chad

Hi,

Good news!

One possible reason: As the length of the USB cable increases, the resistance of the wire increases, resulting in unstable connection. Especially when the high-speed signal begins to transmit, it is more likely to fail.

Thanks

Chad

benni

yes but the camera should not crash then but perhaps put out an error message and leave the rest to software since it just happens sometimes... perhaps the driver can measure somehow if the connection is stable enough... I do not know but it is not happening always with the long cable, just sometimes...

chad

Hi,

In this case, it hard for the camera to give out a result. As we know, we use the USB to communication between PC and camera, and the USB support the hot-plug, it means when the data is lost, it doesn't just mean that the connection is unstable, it could be disconnected. Another situation, unstable connection cause a short re-connect between camera and PC, for our camera, power restart means a reset operation, in this situation, the camera is fresh for the system.

Now we have tried many ways to solve this kind of unstable problem, but there still have some situation could not fit. In a word, the problems need us work together to solve it.

Thanks

Chad

benni

what i know is this: when the camera crashes with this long cable and just produces no output, i still can disconnect. But then i also loose access to the cooler and the entire thing heats up uncontrolled. But i can then reconnect. Before disconnecting, i thus must choose to click on the warming aid in order to heath it up. this still works. Then i can reconnect and cool it down...

perhaps one may add a function restart without loosing access to the cooler... that would help a bit...

chad

Got your mean.

When the problem occurs, you just want to reconnect the USB port without reconnect the external power. Am I right?

Sorry, this is not working right now. According to our design, Part of the firmware is independent of running, as long as there is power, it will always run, not controlled by USB. So if you want to restart the camera, you have to reconnect the external power and USB at the moment. Maybe we can improve it in the future.

Thanks

Chad

benni

Hi,

I just wanted to note that some while ago, I have upgraded to windows 10. The problem then went away.

Only under Windows 7, I had these strange disconnects.

kimrichards

I have similar instability which I am trying to troubleshoot. Do u have a recommended maximum length for USB3 cable?

chad

Hi Sir,

Many users have the same problem as you, and hope that we will give the longest wire length.

However, this is really difficult to have a certain value.

As we know, The wire has resistance, and it is affected by the material of the wire, the cross-sectional area, and the length. In this way, although the wires are all USB3.0, the resistance of different wires is different. So if it is the same computer, the lengths that different wires may allow are also different.

Is it finished? no。

Computer is the most important equipment in our system. So the computer also have a big factors. Even for the same computer, for desktop computers, the performance of the front USB port and the rear USB port will generally differ. There are usually a little differences in voltage and supply current. In addition, some system settings, as well as different computer manufacturers, are potential problems.

For most of the USB device, these differences don't cause too much problems, and they are all within acceptable limits. But for us, because the camera needs to maximize the performance of the USB, these little differences will have big different results.

As for Benni's problem, I think it should be a problem of OS system settings.

Thanks

Chad

benni

I think, well my thinkpad,

officially, it does not support windows 7. But I ran Windows 7 nevertheless on it.

Then I had the problem with the wire. This could have been be a small incompatibility with the chipset. Or something with the driver. I do not know.

It appeared to occur mostly during winter at temperatures below zero.

Now its summer, with windows 10 it did not occur again. lets see if the problem comes back when the temperatures go down below zero....

chad

Yes, it is very difficult to determine the cause.

I remember there is a user and he always meet the problems with camera failure.

After he started his shooting plan every night, the camera will stop running after running for 2 or 3 hours. Sometimes, the camera will run normal all night.

He used to think it is the problem of camera's hardware, and send it back, we checked, it works normal. And we also did a production test. but when the camera is send back to him, the problem is still at there. He complained to me. And we tested all the doubt point, such as temperature, USB connection, power supply, etc. But all of them do not the reason. These tests have not made any progress until everyone is very anxious.

Until one day, he found that the problem seemed to be related to his surveillance camera. He use this surveilance camera to watch his system. Every time, when he opened this camera, the USB will have problems afterwards and our camera will not work. After he changed the camera for surveillance, everything was fine.

Now, personal computers are so many, it is impossible to have two personal computers with the same hardware and software. For us, most of the time, we only could help you to test if the camera itself is normal.

Thanks

Chad