Everything seems to have stopped working

Discussion of using SharpCap for Deep Sky Imaging
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psy1280
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Joined: Wed Oct 24, 2018 4:52 pm

Everything seems to have stopped working

#1

Post by psy1280 »

For the past four outings I’ve met nothing but one failure after another. Most of the time I am unable to stack frames. The other night after successfully stacking two frames I went inside for a bit…came out an hour later and no other frames were stacked! All were ignored. I didn’t see anything abnormal, i.e., too few stars, etc.

There were a few times I had ignored frames, dropped frames, and zero frames loaded, zero ignored. I know from past discussions with Robin that it seemed my USB connections were at fault. This past incidence I tried a shorter, active repeater cables, and finally tried directly connecting my laptop to the camera’s cable (this was the two-frame acquisition mentioned above)

I’ve also had some strange SharpCap issues. The other night in question, after slewing to a target, I tried using the slew controls in CPWI and although the scope slewed…the image on ShapCap wouldn’t move. After more than a few re-boots, SharpCap did respond to the slew command.
My question is this: Assuming I’m having connection issues (???), what would be a way to “enhance” my ability to obtain images, i.e., ASIAIR; a mini computer at the mount; etc., etc.

After a few years of moderate success, things have constantly and inexplicably deteriorated. I have totally lost confidence in my rig. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


Celestron SCT 8”
AVX mount
Using CPWI; Phd2;
HyperStar f/2
Connected directly to house current

Thank you,
Joe
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Re: Everything seems to have stopped working

#2

Post by admin »

Hi Joe,

just picking up on the 'the mount slewed but the SharpCap image didn't move' - that is pretty much a sure sign that images are not flowing reliably from the camera to the computer. You will most likely see the dropped frame count go up in the bottom left corner instead of the previewed/captured frame count. This could also have been your problem with live stacking not working.

If the dropped frame count is rising then it is a camera=>computer problem, if the 'Ignored' frame count in live stacking is going up then there is a problem with stacking/alignment/etc. In the latter case, check the Live Stacking 'Log' tab which will contain info about why each frame fails to stack.

It's a shame that using the shorter direct cables didn't really seem to help. If I were you I would test again with the short cables and check to see if you are getting dropped frames (cable shortness didn't help) or ignored frames in live stacking (cured one problem but ended up hitting another)

cheers,

Robin
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