294C Pro recognized as Mono

[Brian V]

In the last week SC has been recognizing my color camera as a Mono or a Development camera. I have to restart everything multiple times, unplug connections and restart SC at least 6-12 times before it recognizes it as a Color camera and then it often throws an error stating it cannot connect to. To which I have to restart SC again and hope it recognizes it.
I have tried the repair function of the latest release, no change with that. Unsure if this a bug or something I can remedy.

Camera: QHY294PROC
SC Pro version 4.0.9208.0 64BIT
C8 on AVX mount

[admin]

Hi Brian,

have you updated your QHY system drivers recently by downloading and installing the QHY 'all in one' package? I have the QHY 294 PROC here and it seems to recognise fine with the latest SharpCap, so I am just wondering if your drivers are out-of-date. Note that I personally do not recommend ticking any of the SharpCap related boxes when installing the QHY all-in-one... Just the first option which is the system drivers.

cheers,

Robin

[Brian V]

Thanks, I did that. And SC identified the camera as the PROC . Once I rebooted the system SC identified the PROC as a MONO again and cannot seem to identify it as a color camera. Ive reinstalled the QHY drivers multiple times as well as tried a few different versions of SC. Tried swapping USB ports.

[admin]

Hi Brian,

OK, that's a weird one then. The recognition of the camera comes from the QHY software, so it's not something I can fix in SharpCap. It could be poor communications with the camera, so following on from different USB port, also try a different cable and a different PC if possible to see if that helps.

Otherwise, I think that it would be worth trying some other software to see if it suffers from the same issue. If it happens in multiple pieces of software then we have narrowed it down to something on the QHY side - either software or hardware. If it works in other software then we could see if there is anything related to the version of the QHY SDK software in use - maybe some versions have the bug and others do not.

cheers,

Robin

[Brian V]

I’m believing this is a camera or driver issue. QHYs’ own EZ CAP software is recognizing it as a Mono then throws an error.

I’ll try a different cable and see what shakes .
I also sent an email to QHY and will update the thread with whatever resolution may or may not occur.

[Brian V]

What appears to have been at least currently, is that somehow, some different drivers were installed. I'll attach a screenshot and you can see below the highlighted QHY294PROC are two different Mono cameras. I deleted both of those and EZ CAP and SC both identified the connected camera as the 294PROC correctly.
Have no idea how those profiles got there. Or why the PROC was not defaulted to or even an option to connect to.

https://imgur.com/a/hRDZgN0

Update: The Mono ascom profile came back and caused the same recurring problem. I was able to reboot and SC discovered the PROC, so for the night its working, but the underlying issue I have an email into QHY tech support for.

[admin]

Hi,

OK, so if you are looking into the ASCOM profile explorer, it suggests that you are usign the QHY ASCOM driver to control the camera. That's not really the recommended way for SharpCap, since SharpCap can talk to QHY cameras directly without needing the ASCOM driver. I'd only recommend using the ASCOM driver in SharpCap if you have problems with the direct control of your QHY camera.

To open the camera under SharpCap's direct control, look for the entry in the cameras menu under the 'QHY Cameras' heading.

cheers,

Robin

[Brian V]

I got ya. That's what I do, I look under the QHY Camera, not the ascom control. But it does look like at least to a certain degree, what drivers are present or available in the ASCOM profile explorer directly affect what camera shows up in the direct connect to SC.

Having just checked its the Mono driver profiles are not there and SC still recognizes the camera as Mono, so hopefully QHY support can get in there and see what's happening.

Update: QHY tech support remoted in and did some debugging and stated its a hardware failure of a subsystem.
Sad news, but I appreciate the above par tech support from QHY and the uber quick responsiveness here from Sharpcap!

[admin]

Hi,

good to hear that QHY have found the cause of the issue - I guess that you will be getting a repair/replacement on your camera. Let's hope that your clear skies wait until you have it back again!

cheers,

Robin