183MC-Pro weirdness with SC 4.1.12025.0 (64-bit)

[MarMax]

I bought a new ASI183MC-Pro a couple weeks ago and I've experienced some strange things. After opening the camera in SC and everything appearing correct it has stopped working 2-3 times. The first time I noticed this was while taking a flat frame so I disconnected and reconnected the camera and it worked again. The next time was while attempting a 120 second dark at gain 0. This happened twice were in the middle of capturing darks where the 1st time it stopped stacking new frames and was stuck on 5/10 even though the camera continued to run with 120 second exposures. So I disconnected and reconnected the camera and tried again and the 2nd time it would not stack any frames.

There are five logs from yesterday that I zipped together. Hopefully they will show something.

[admin]

Hi,

I think the first thing to try here would be to see if the problems are being caused by USB data transfer related issues. These can arise from using long cables, hubs, extensions or high values of the 'Turbo USB' setting. There are some hints here on things to try to help check if there are USB issues and how to deal with them : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=349&p=1556#p1556

The logs mainly show the camera stopping producing frames with no specific errors, so there is little to pick out from them.

thanks,

Robin

[MarMax]

Thank you Robin. I'm using the exact same hardware and cables with a 294MM in Unlocked Bin1 and an 2600MC pro and have not seen the problem. I would think the data transfer to be equivalent. I'll run through all the tips and see if something needs an adjustment.

I am using a full USB set up. Powered hub, active cable to the laptop and the shortest possible cables to each device. This has been used over a year with several other cameras without issue. It's the 183MC that seems to be finicky.

EDITED to add that when I was not able to capture darks with the 183MC the camera was connected directly to the laptop. I'm not sure what log that was. So I had the issue directly connected as well as with the hub.

Mike

[admin]

Hi,

OK, odd that the 183 fails to work when other high resolution cameras are fine. Do you have another PC you can test on? I have seen some cases where a particular PC or laptop (or even particular USB ports) just don't get along well with some cameras.

cheers,

Robin

[Borodog]

Robin,

FYI a few nights ago the frame rate on my ASI183MC also dropped to zero for no apparent reason. I've rarely had any problems with the camera. The camera was connected, there were no errors, the frame rate just fell to 1 and then ultimately 0 and stayed there. I closed and reopened SharpCap and all was well again.

[admin]

Hi Mike,

if it happens again, you can check the log and look for entries like

Code: Select all

Warning	19:38:18.227459	#30	Fetching still frame from ZWO camera failed with ExpFailed, exposure is 120000, timeout is 146000						in bool SharpCap.Cameras.ASI.ASICameraProxy.GetFrameData(int timeout, BufferFrame frame, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
Debug  	19:38:18.227564	#30	Finished ZWO Exposure of 120000ms, gotFrame = False																		in bool SharpCap.Cameras.ASI.ASICameraProxy.GetFrameData(int timeout, BufferFrame frame, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
Info   	19:38:18.227740	#30	Dropped frames : 2 of type ZWOTimeout																					in void SharpCap.Base.DroppedFrameLogger.Count(DroppedFrameType type, int count)

These indicate that the camera is not sending frames to SharpCap for some reason. It would be interesting to know if closing and re-opening the camera (without closing SharpCap) is enough to get things working again. If that does help then I could perhaps write some code that could recover this sort of situation automatically.

cheers,

Robin

[MarMax]

I'm in the middle of an EAA session and the 183MC is doing it again with the same warning message in the log file. The problem is it's in the middle of a live stack. Since I don't know if I can pause the stack and close/open the camera and then restart the stack I just canceled and closed the camera and restarted SharpCap.

My guess is you can't close a camera in the middle of a live stack. If it does it again I'll try it and see what happens.

[MarMax]

I'm in the middle of an EAA session and the 183MC is doing it again with the same warning message in the log file. The problem is it's in the middle of a live stack. Since I don't know if I can pause the stack and close/open the camera and then restart the stack I just canceled and closed the camera and restarted SharpCap.

My guess is you can't close a camera in the middle of a live stack. If it does it again I'll try it and see what happens.

[admin]

Hi,

you are right that closing and re-opening the camera will reset the stack, but there are a couple of other options that might do the trick

1) Use the 'Reconnect Camera' option from the camera menu - that might be sufficient, although it doesn't quite reset everything that close/reopen does. It may pause live stacking, but not reset the stack

2) Pull the USB cable from the camera and then reconnect it! SharpCap 4.1 is designed to attempt to recover from USB disconnect/reconnect - it's not 100%, but it does succeed with a pretty good success rate. If the camera has glitched and is not delivering frames then you haven't got much more to lose...

3) Change exposure - say half it and then immediately double it again. This may be enough of a 'kick' to get the camera back into action

If you find anything that works to get it going again in software (rather than a cable pull), do let me know so I can work out if I can automate the recovery.

cheers,

Robin