ZWO ASI6200MM - Problem with LiveView

[twichma]

Hi,

for the last few months I have had trouble activating the LiveView acquisition mode when using my ZWO ASI6200MM. The current state is that I can only acquire images in single shot mode - I can click on the LiveView button - the LiveView will start as expected, but the timer will keep on running beyond the allocated time, and no image will actually be shown. In the past, this issue seemed to be intermittent (I could start the session in LiveView. At some point I would switch to Single Shot mode [for example, when using a sequence], but later could not re-activate the LiveView).

I am using the latest versions of the ZWO SDK and of the SharpCap program. Anything else I can do?

Thanks!

Thomas

[admin]

Hi Thomas,

the most likely thing to help is turning down the 'Turbo USB' setting (it may be on auto - switch it to manual and then turn down the value). This tends to reduce the frame rate at short exposures but helps with stability and reliability. It's also worth checking your USB connection - if you are using a long cable run it can cause this sort of problem (more than 3.5m with USB3 in my experience - longer than that, put a hub in the middle).

Hope this helps,

Robin

[twichma]

Thanks for looking at my message, Robin. The USB setting is already on its lowest possible rate (neither Turbo nor Auto), and the USB connection actually involves a hub at this time. However, I will try another hub over the weekend - hopefully that ends up being more reliable. It is interesting to me that the LiveView used to work just fine - it somehow appears to have changed recently (with no apparent change in my setup). Could be just aging hardware, I suppose.
Thomas

[celkins]

Have you updated Windows, recently : I found that one of the recent Windows updates seemed to cause USB transfers to go slower - don’t ask me why, I can’t see any sense to this, but that’s what I found… I had to turn my USB setting down by 10 points to keep stable image transfers

[admin]

Hi,

certainly an update to Windows USB drivers could in theory do something like this, using a different USB port could also be the cause if you are setting up your mount each time rather than leaving everything connected (although that tended to be more problematic in the early days of USB3 - haven't seen that sort of thing much recently).

Another thing to check is if you have updated SharpCap... If you look on our downloads page (https://www.sharpcap.co.uk/sharpcap/downloads) you will see that certain updates list a 'new ZWO SDK' - that brings in new code from ZWO themselves that SharpCap uses to control the camera. While these updates are usually reliable and just add support for new models or fix issues, it's just possible that one could cause this sort of problem to appear - try going back to versions just before an SDK update (ie 4.1.13901 just before the update in 4.1.13925; 4.1.13651 just before the updaste in 4.1.13685, etc).

cheers,

Robin