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Touptec Mono - Dropping Frames

Posted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 9:24 pm
by Stub Mandrel
This afternoon I happily took 24 5-minute and 24 2-minute darks with a Toupcan Mono while having PHD2 running on the other camera (ASI120MC), no trouble.

This evening, Sharpcap drops every frame except the first unless the duration is 7.5 seconds or less.

Exactly the same settings and wires, only difference is that I'm outside. I even had the mount tracking this afternoon.

I'm despairing. My laptop seems to have become totally unreliable.

I'm capturing 7.5 second subs, as it only seems to drop less than half of the subs. 15 second subs the most I got was three before it refused to get any more, 15 dropped. It even gets to odd 30-second sub - but only ever reliably loads the first capture. On short exposures - a second or two or less it captures every frame. It just doesn't make sense to me - it was working 'rock solid' on 5 minute exposures this afternoon.

Re: Touptec Mono - Dropping Frames

Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:17 pm
by admin
Hi,

Which driver are you using for this camera? The direct show driver or the Ascom driver? If it's the direct show driver then the dropped frames count comes direct from the driver and some sort of communication problem must be happening between the camera and the driver.

Cheers, Robin

Re: Touptec Mono - Dropping Frames

Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 6:40 pm
by Stub Mandrel
Hi Robin,

For some reason Outlook is blocking every email I get regarding sharpcap so i didn't see a notification of a reply, my apologies.

I always use the ASCOM driver which is the GPCAM one for this camera.

I have similar problems with the ASI120MC, both are incredibly unstable.

I also see the ASI freezing in PHD2 as well, but far less frequently so it may be a change in W10.

Re: Touptec Mono - Dropping Frames

Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:19 pm
by turfpit
Stub
Outlook is blocking every email I get regarding sharpcap
Google outlook safe senders to fix.

Dave

Re: Touptec Mono - Dropping Frames

Posted: Sun Oct 13, 2019 8:54 pm
by admin
Hi,

There have been some reductions in the stability of the older ASI cameras with the recent updates to the drivers and the SDK – particularly with the 16-bit bit depth causing problems. Most people manage to get them working with suitable adjustments to the USB cabling and the Turbo USB settings, but I had a particular PC that just refused to work with the ASI 120 MC – it would detect the camera fine but no matter what I did I couldn't get an image out of it. The same camera with the same cable would work fine on a different PC.

If you are using the Ascom driver then I would recommend that you first update to the very latest version of SharpCap and then if the problem still persists please turn on the additional logging option at the bottom of the first page of the settings, then open the camera and test and send me the full log after the problem occurs if it does. With the very latest versions pretty much all the communication between SharpCap and the Ascom driver is recorded when the additional logging is turned on (as long as it turned on before you open the camera) so whatever is going wrong should be revealed as much as possible anyway.

Cheers, Robin