SharpCap Forums

Hello,

Last night I was imaging with my QHY294C camera. For the third time now, the cooler data would not work in SharpCap. The cooler is definitely on and working, but none of my settings would take. Any suggestions?

Thank you,

Scott

I'm wondering about last night's issues. I'll go through my setup process and then maybe someone can shed some light.

I have two cameras connected to SC from the very start - ZWO120mini for guiding and QHY294C for imaging. When I first setup, I use the ZWO for polar aligning. When done, I simply change cameras in the dropdown. Should I close SharpCap and open again, selecting my imaging camera? Does any of that make any difference at all, or am I experiencing a deeper issue?

Thank you,

Scott

Hi Scott,

you shouldn't need to close down when changing between cameras, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to try it anyway if you are trying to track down a tricky issue.

The first thing to check would be to make sure you're using the very latest version of SharpCap – I sent out a new auto update version a couple of days ago, so you should have seen the update, but if not then please make sure you download the latest version and install that. There have been quite a few updates from QHY recently, so it's entirely possible that one of those could contain important bug fixes related to cooling.

Cheers, Robin

Hi Robin,

I believe I found the problem. I hooked my camera, with cooler running to SharpCap earlier today. The cooler kept cutting in and out and the camera also cut in and out. A few weeks ago, I bought a USB 3.0 extension cable for my camera. So, I've been running the camera cable to the extension and then the extension to my laptop. When I disconnected the extension cable and ran the dedicated camera cable directly to my laptop, all issues went away.

Perhaps these cameras need to run as cleanly as possible to the computer. Have you ever heard of this being an issue before?

Thank you for your earlier response. I appreciate you always helping out.

Scott

Hi Scott,

USB hubs and extension cables are often a cause of problems for these cameras – extension cables are usually okay for USB3 cameras as long as the total cable length doesn't go above 3 to 3.5m. For USB2, total cable lengths of up to 4.5 m are usually okay. To go beyond that you need to introduce a hub or an active extension cable (which is essentially a hub in the cable). Lots of people get configurations with hubs or extension cables to work nicely if, but they also can cause a lot of problems.

You've taken the right approach by going back to basics with just the cable supplied with the camera – you can now experiment with other ways to extend the cable if you need to and you know what to look out for to check whether there are any problems. Unfortunately this often turns into a game of trial and error until you find a way to run the extension that has the required reach and works with your configuration.

Cheers, Robin