Connecting multiple ZWO cameras

[wcblack7]

Here's the usbtreeview of my set up.
Thanks again!
Bill

usbtreeview-wcblack7.png (22.31 KiB) Viewed 2627 times

[turfpit]

Thanks for this Bill. Your machine has the Renesas 0.96 USB3 controller. This is the same chipset as my Lenovo W510. The W510 will not complete a RAW12 5000x3000 frame from an Altair 183C camera via the USB3 port (it will via a USB2 connection). Disabling the USB power suspend doesn't work for me (I think I tried it in the past). I will have to live with a USB2 connection. This was tested on 32-bit & 64-bit SharpCap, my problem is consistent and specifically related to the Lenovo W510 USB3 chipset.

Glad your problem was sorted. Thanks to Carl for the original suggestion.

Dave

[celkins]

Hope you can read it ok?

USBtree.png (56.54 KiB) Viewed 2610 times

I find that things aren't reliable if I connect a camera to the Renesas controller - things like timeouts downloading frames, random hangs...

Carl

[turfpit]

Got that Carl. You are struggling with Renesas v1.0, things are rough here with Renesas v0.96. Useful to confirm that particular chipset is troublesome.

Dave

[skithebird]

Hi Robin! My USB connections seem to be working without issue using a Lenovo laptop, Windows 7 Pro and SharpCap V 3.2.6441.0. So far anyway. Both my ZWO cameras (ASI178MC and ASI183GT) are listed under Cameras. I can switch between them, but can only get one camera working at a time. Despite reading this thread, I can't seem to find the way to get them both working and displaying at the same time, which is what I need to do. It seems this is what Bill was trying to do, and that he was doing it successfully, except for the USB issues discussed. I have each ZWO camera connected via USB3. But so far I haven't been able to get two "camera control panels" and two live displays running concurrently (one for each camera). What must I do to get into this two-camera mode of operation? Can this be done within SharpCap, or must I launch two SharpCap session? Thanks!

[skithebird]

FYI. I opened a second incidence of SharpCap and now have each ZWO camera working independently on side-by-side screens. This will work of course. But I'm still wondering if there's a way of doing this within a single incidence of SharpCap.

[admin]

Hi,

running SharpCap twice is the only way to achieve this – the program is very much designed around talking to one camera at a time, so there's no way to open to cameras in the same copy of SharpCap.

Cheers, Robin

[skithebird]

Thanks Robin. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing something. The two-incidence solution seems quite robust. Thanks again. Bob

[admin]

Hi,

just one more thing to mention is that with the upcoming version 3.3 of SharpCap, you can use commandline options to completely separate the settings or two or more copies of SharpCap. For instance if you run SharpCap from the command line like this

Code: Select all

SharpCap.exe /instance=2

You will end up getting a version of SharpCap that can configure separately to your normal instance (I think only the license key is shared between the two). This means you can set up the normal instance perhaps to control one camera, the mount and a filter wheel and the second instance to control the other camera and a second filter wheel but not to try to talk to the mount.

This is very much new functionality and could do with some testing – if you're interested you can find the download links for the latest beta versions in the beta testing forum.

Cheers, Robin