SharpCap Forums

Hi,
I am running Sharpcap 3.2.6062.0 and Win 10.0.18362 and connecting to PoleMaster. For whatever reason, I am only seeing a white screen and not stars from PoleMaster. Sharpcap used to work but for some reason not now. PoleMaster works fine with its own Polemaster software. Please see attached file that show a picture of what I mean.

Is there a setting that I forget or unset in Sharpcap? Or is there a bug?

Thanks!

cytan

Hi,

Is there a brightness/black level/offset control in the image control section (can't quite see in your screenshot as it would just be off the bottom of the screen). If there is and it's not set to minimum then try turning that down. I've seen some cases with qhy cameras where turning this up and selecting a high gain tends to give the sort of whiteout image that you are seeing.

Cheers, Robin

Hi,
There's no extra image control that I see. See attached pic.

I think I've found the problem: there is a Sharpcap regression. I went back to 3.2.6020.0 and PoleMaster displays correctly. Going to 3.2.6062.0, PoleMaster displays incorrectly.

However here are other experiments that I did:
Notation:

• Old Sharpcap: 3.2.6020.0

• New Sharpcap: 3.2.6062.0

• Reset: Disconnect PoleMaster USB cable and then reconnecting USB cable

Experiment 1:
1. Reset
2. Connect with new Sharpcap fails to get data from PoleMaster and thus see white screen.

Experiment 2:
1. Reset
2. Connect with old Sharpcap gets data and displays correctly.

Experiment 3 (new Sharpcap may have an initialization problem?)
1. Reset
2. Connect with old Sharpcap and it works with PoleMaster. Now switch to new Sharpcap. Display still works.
3. Reset
4. Connect with new Sharpcap fails to display again.

Experiment 4:
1. Reset
2. PoleMaster software connects and displays correctly. Exit PoleMaster
3. Connect with new Sharpcap. White screen again.

Anything else do I need to do to check that it is indeed a regression?

cytan

Hi,

Thanks for continuing to investigate this. I think the most likely cause would be that the qhy SDK was updated a couple of times between those two versions and I imagine that one of the update has brought in the bug that you are seeing.

Here's a way that you can confirm that and potentially work around the issue too. First install the version that works and go to the installation folder and take a copy of the file called qhyccd.dll. Put a copy of this file somewhere safe in your desktop or in another folder. Then upgrade to the latest version of SharpCap and once the upgrade is complete copy the version of qhyccd.dll that you took into the SharpCap install folder. Then give everything a try and see if it works as expected. Effectively what you've done then is to take the very latest version of the SharpCap code but to put the qhy SDK back to the version from build 6020. If it works then you can leave it that way if you want, but do let me or qhy know that there is this new problem.

Cheers, Robin

Yes, the problem is with qhyccd.dll. I copied the old version (3.2.6020) over the new version (3.2.6062) and Sharpcap 3.2.6062 now works with Polemaster.

I’d prefer that you report this bug to qhy because you have more details of the sdk than I do.

Thanks!

cytan

I had exactly the same problem with a new Polemaster just purchased 7/31/19. I solved it by changing from SharpCap 3.2.6062 back to 3.2.5986, but I was able to use the latest version (150915) of the QHY drivers.

Of special note; I would get pop-up message regarding "Adjusting USB traffic control" when selecting the Polemaster camera with 3.2.6062, which did not occur with 3.2.5986.

mwg3656 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 05, 2019 5:56 pm I had exactly the same problem with a new Polemaster just purchased 7/31/19. I solved it by changing from SharpCap 3.2.6062 back to 3.2.5986, but I was able to use the latest version (150915) of the QHY drivers.

Of special note; I would get pop-up message regarding "Adjusting USB traffic control" when selecting the Polemaster camera with 3.2.6062, which did not occur with 3.2.5986.

I think your observation points to an initialization difference between 3.2.5986 and 3.2.6062 as well as a change in qhyccd.dll initialization. Anyway, since we don't have access to the source code, it'll be up to the developer to track this down.

cytan

Hi,

Thanks for checking out the different version of the SDK. I have passed a report onto the developer at qhy who updates the SDK and hopefully they will be able to get a fix into a new version sometime soon.

Cheers, Robin

Hi,

Please could someone test what happens when you turn down the gain value with the latest SDK? Qhy have suggested that perhaps a high gain value may be the issue causing the whiteout of the image, and I'd like to get back to them with hard data as to whether that does help or not.

Cheers, Robin

admin wrote: ↑Thu Aug 08, 2019 3:52 pm Hi,

Please could someone test what happens when you turn down the gain value with the latest SDK? Qhy have suggested that perhaps a high gain value may be the issue causing the whiteout of the image, and I'd like to get back to them with hard data as to whether that does help or not.

Cheers, Robin

Here's the screenshot with gain set to the minimum value of 1 and the screen is white.

Experiment 1:
Reset
Gain value about 60. White screen.
Gain value turned down to 1. Still white screen.