Help with Camera Disconnects?

[amister]

Hi, we recently moved our Alcor camera and SharpCap application (and accompanying scripts) to a new compute platform for more cpu and memory resources. We noticed since moving to the new compute that our camera is becoming disconnected every few moments, and it requires restarting SharpCap application to recover, until the camera disconnects again.

We've checked cabling and the hardware side and see no issues, was wondering if there is anything in the logs (see attached, camera shows as ZWO ASI6200MC) that stand out as a starting point for troubleshooting...

Thanks!

[admin]

Hi,

according to the log, both the camera and the hub are disconnecting from USB and then reconnecting again. If you had sound available on the PC then you would hear Windows making its 'device disconnected' and then 'device connected' sounds as this was happening.

This is very likely to be a cabling issue - long cable runs, hubs, etc are all the enemy of reliable operation. The best approach is a systematic one - go back to a single USB3 cable from the PC to the camera and check that everything works reliably (even if you can't actually get the camera to the telescope in that configuration). Then add back extensions/hubs/etc one thing at a time and test each time to see if it is still reliable or you have broken things by the last thing you added.

Other things to do are

* make sure the camera has 12V power
* Use powered hubs where possible as they are likely to cope better than unpowered ones
* Use a USB3 capable hub for this sort of camera - it may draw too much power from USB for a USB2 hub
* A single USB cable run (between computer and hub or between hub and device) should be less than 4.5m for USB2 and probably less than 3m for USB3 for reliable operation.

There are more ideas in this post on troubleshooting USB issues : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=349&p=1556#p1556

cheers,

Robin

[amister]

thanks for the reply, we'll go back and look at this from a cabling perspective.

Thanks!