Desperate: how can everything fail at once?

[psy1280]

If anyone has any suggestions, please, please let me hear. I am absolutely paranoid about my next time under the stars. This is crazy...how can everything fail at once? I've been doing this for well over a year and the debacle last night was simply mind boggling (Note: the night before everything worked fine).

Note: the only error messages are attached below

1.) My problems began when SharpCap wouldn’t recognize my camera (ZWO ASI294). It did, however, recognize my mini 120 throughout.
2.) In fact, sometimes the mini 120 was listed twice in the SC camera selection box. (sometimes after rebooting SC it didn't recognize either camera, just listed "Camera 1 and Camera 2")
3.) Most of us know the sound a USB cable makes when you plug it into a laptop. Well, that sound kept going on and on without me doing anything??? I couldn’t stop it.
4.) I spent a two hours turning off my mount, rebooting my sharpcap and computer (numerous times), unplugging and re-plugging all USB cables (eliminating extender chord and plugging directly into the laptop), trying different USB ports,…on and on. Then magically, somehow (after two hours and all of the above), SC recognized my camera (no idea why???).

Plate Solving: Okay, now I finally had a working camera in SC. Time to give plate solving my very first try. Using Stellarium, I tried to slew to my first object…disaster. The OTA was almost pointing down to the ground! After a few attempts I decided to forget my plate solving attempt (which was the goal of last night)

Plan, “B” WiFi (actually this was plan “C” since I also attempted to align using CWPI. This attempt also had my OTA pointing to the ground instead of on my target, which was Deneb)
I pulled out my ipad and got Skysafari to connect with my StarSense on the Celestron app. I started an auto align (which worked fine two nights ago!), I got the first two stars aligned when I got an error message saying that the Wifi could no longer recognize my mount. Once again, rebooted, changing USB ports, etc., etc. No luck. Tried the SkyPortal app and it too could not connect. (the Celestron WiFi App was selected on my laptop)

I sincerely appreciate anyone who has managed to read through all of this...kind of scary, huh?
Joe

[admin]

Hi,

so I think the camera issues are definitely rooted in the fact that you were continually hearing the 'USB connection' sounds. The error screenshot that you have posted ties in with that - the camera was obviously detected but by the time SharpCap tried to open it, the camera had disconnected again. Normally I'd say that sort of problem (connect/disconnect) would come down to one of the following

* Bad USB cable or dirty connections
* Lack of power to USB camera (camera gets enough power to be identified, but then goes over power limit as it tries to initialize, repeatedly)
* Camera or computer hardware problems.

Given that things got better, I'd suspect one of the first two.

Telescope pointing to the ground - check that your time zone is correct and that your location is set in your mount ASCOM driver. Also check that the starting position of the telescope matches the actual position.

Wifi connection issues - can't add much help I'm afraid. I use a good old fashioned cable

cheers,

Robin

[psy1280]

Robin,
Your response is most helpful. When things go crazy, it's always nice to know these forums are only a morning away.

Thanks again,
Joe