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Crash capturing darks

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 3:50 pm
by galljj
Robin

I had a crash last night when trying to capture some darks. The report is attached.

Best
John

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 8:37 pm
by admin
Hi John,

what model camera are you using and are you using the most up-to-date version of the Toupcam DirectShow driver? It looks like memory is being corrupted and I can't break it at the moment when trying the same thing with other directshow driver cameras.

cheers,

Robin

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 1:16 pm
by galljj
I'm using a Rising Tech IMX224. I thought I was using the latest, but found out that they issued a new set of software over the summer. I'll give that a go and get back to you.

John

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 2:50 am
by galljj
Well, the new software was two steps forward, 3 back ! I did a reinstall of their drivers and capture software (basically ToupSky rebranded), and now

1) their software recognizes the camera, but doesn't display any image

2) Sharpcap now locks up completely when I attempt to capture darks. It doesn't spit out a bug report, nor can I get it to respond to any or all mouse clicks, so I can't get at the log. And when when I Alt-Tab through open applications, the screen shows up, but does not then display when i release the alt-tab button. No amount of clicking on the SC button on the bottom of the page restores the window.

I think I'll go back to the older versions to see what happens.

Maybe it is my PC, which wouold not be the worst thing in the world.

john

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 2:51 am
by galljj
I should mention that this only happens when attemting to capture darks - SC is otherwise fully functional.

j

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 3:34 am
by oopfan
I too have encountered total lockup of SharpCap and even the Windows 7 operating system. It happened two nights ago. After shutting down the laptop by holding down the power button, and then rebooting, SharpCap would still not capture images. What I learned is this: shutdown the laptop AND also disconnect the USB cable to the camera (ASI120MC) -- then reboot and reconnect. That gets SharpCap working again. I think that the camera gets into some weird, funky state that SharpCap is unable to reset. I have experienced this behavior before whenever I change several camera settings in rapid succession.

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 8:55 pm
by admin
Sorry for the delay - I started a reply to this and then lost it when I shut the whole browser down without meaning to :(

A crash of the whole computer is a smoking gun pointing at a bug in the hardware driver that comes from the camera manufacturer - with modern versions of Windows it's pretty much impossible for a non-admin program like SharpCap to bring the whole system down on it's own. Of course SharpCap can send commands to the camera SDK which then triggers the bug in the driver that causes the crash, but it's very much an indirect thing.

It certainly sounds as though somehow your camera ends up in a 'crashed' state and that the camera driver is probably stuck waiting for a response from the camera that never comes. I've seen problems like this where I have had to unplug and re-plug the camera to get it working again, but have not seen a windows crash associated with it.

@galljj - Looking at your crash report again, it looks like the error is occurring inside the ASCOM focuser driver you are using. Perhaps it would be worth testing either with that completely deselected or having unchecked the 'Connected' check box in the focuser UI to temporarily pause it.

cheers,

Robin

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2017 11:44 pm
by oopfan
Thank you, Robin. I just looked and I downloaded and installed "ZWO ASI Cameras driver Setup V2.0.1.3.exe" on 28-Mar-17. Looking at the ZWO website now, they are up to V3.0.0.1. I will install that tomorrow. I am heading out now for a night of imaging. Yeah!

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 10:39 pm
by galljj
Updated everything, incluing new ascom focuser driver. All seem to work. The new focuser driver fixed a recent problem with the focuser ( SC couldn't drive it at all).

Still experiencing system lock up when trying to capture darks. But now I figured out where the log files are kept - attached is a copy.

j
Log_2017-09-17T18_13_38-1828.log
(31.11 KiB) Downloaded 125 times

Re: Crash capturing darks

Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2017 7:03 am
by admin
Ok, so from that log I can see you starting to capture a dark at about 18:15:34 and the capture being completed a fraction of a second later and then nothing interesting happens until you close the program about 30 seconds later.

I think that the message that the capture is complete is somehow not getting through to the capture dark code, but I can't see why just yet. What settings do you select in the Capture Dark dialog? I'd like to set mine up just the same to see if that helps cause the problem.

cheers,

Robin