SharpCap freezes or stops working

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BlueAstra
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:56 am

SharpCap freezes or stops working

#1

Post by BlueAstra »

I seem to be having a little trouble with Sharpcap and my camera. The problems occurred in the heat of battle during imaging sessions so probably didn't get as much diagnostic information as I should, but this is basically what happens:

I'm running Sharpcap 3.1, a Zwo 224C camera, new USB 3.0 cable, with an Intel NUC computer (i5-7260, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD). I connect to the NUC via remote desktop running on an iPad Pro. I've attached some error logs from recent events. Basically I find that everything is normally running fine and displaying a live image, but occasionally Sharpcap will freeze and I have to close it down and restart it. Then everything is fine again. I've also noted that it will freeze sometimes if I change the binning value, or capture region. I think it also froze once when I was playing around with trying to connect an Ascom mount. I've enclosed a couple of logs. The issues occur at least once every session.

A couple of other things, if I select the night colours the main window goes red, but if you select menus or start capture they are in original bright colours. Also, is there a switch to toggle this mode on the main window? Also, I'm using Sharpcap on an iPad with an Apple pencil, and I find the region selection for camera resolution very difficult, if not impossible to carry out, with the pencil. I can select a smaller sensor area, but cannot move it around in the small box.

Graham
Attachments
CameraException at PInvoke.Altair.AltairCam.CheckHR(Int32, System.Reflection.MethodBase, System.Object[])_line 907#93657.error.zip
(15.22 KiB) Downloaded 130 times
AccessViolationException at PInvoke.Altair.AltairCam.Altaircam_PullImage(PInvoke.Altair.SafeHAltairHandle, IntPtr, Int32, UInt32 ByRef, UInt32 ByRef)_#50816.error.zip
(13.64 KiB) Downloaded 140 times
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admin
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Re: SharpCap freezes or stops working

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

both of your attachments are bugs relating to Altair cameras, so probably not relevant to your current issue - they both look like what you see when the camera has (unexpectedly) stopped responding to the PC. To be honest though, the symptoms you are describing sound similar - that the ZWO camera has stopped responding - sometimes this leads to an error and sometimes the program gets stuck trying to send a message to the camera (change resolution/exposure/gain etc) that never completes.

I recently updated the ZWO SDK used in SharpCap, so depending on exactly which version you are using (3.1.5180 - new SDK, 3.1.5174 and below - old SDK) I'd recommend either upgrading to latest (to see if the new SDK helps) or downgrading (in case the new SDK is breaking things).

Night mode - yes, this is rather a nasty hack in the current versions of SharpCap dating back several years. I have just re-written it for SharpCap 3.2, so watch out for that. I have also made some changes to the selection area movement - dragging it with shift gives finer control - although I don't know if this will help your use case much.

cheers,

Robin
BlueAstra
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Oct 19, 2017 9:56 am

Re: SharpCap freezes or stops working

#3

Post by BlueAstra »

I'm running 3.1.5125.0 at the moment. To be honest the problem seems to occur with both cameras (ZWO 224MC, Altair Hypercam 178M), although I tend to use the ZWO camera more. I'll try the upgrade at my next session.

Graham
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Re: SharpCap freezes or stops working

#4

Post by admin »

Hmm,

thinking further, have you gone through the USB troubleshooting steps - in particular turning down USB speeds, removing extension cables, etc? The symptoms you describe sound a bit like the 'Turbo USB' setting being too high on the ZWO cam.

cheers,

Robin
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