Sharpcap crahes with ASCOM Touptek ATR2600

[schat]

Hello and good day!

Since the last release of Sharpcap, I have been experiencing a problem where Sharpcap crashes as soon as I select the ‘ASCOM Touptek Camera’ and confirm the ASCOM settings dialog. The ‘Camera Controls’ UI is briefly displayed with Binning 3, and then the crash occurs immediately.

- Yes, I do not want to use the native driver (toupcam.dll) because I also use CCDCiel and I need the same image dimensions (unfortunately, ASCOM and the native driver differ in this respect...).
- CCDCiel and NINA can be used with ‘ASCOM Touptek Camera’ without error

Environment/Info:
- Win10
- Camera
> Touptek ATR2600M
- ASCOM
> Platform 7.0 Update 2
> was also reinstalled
- Touptek ASCOM driver
> ‘ToupTek Astro and ASCOM Platform Driver 2025-08-09’ from their website
> same version is within Sharpcap install dir
- Sharpcap
> Version: 4.1.13621.0
> Was also reinstalled
> The native driver can be used without errors


What can be done?

Best regards, Axel.

Exception Info from Eventviewer (-> Windows Protocols/Application):
Entry #1:

Application: SharpCap.exe
CoreCLR Version: 8.0.1925.36514
.NET Version: 8.0.19
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: exception code c0000005, exception address 00007FFE068DD037


Entry #2:
Name der fehlerhaften Anwendung: SharpCap.exe, Version: 4.1.13621.0, Zeitstempel: 0x68760000
Name des fehlerhaften Moduls: toupcam.dll, Version: 59.28926.0.0, Zeitstempel: 0x686e698d
Ausnahmecode: 0xc0000005
Fehleroffset: 0x000000000099d037
ID des fehlerhaften Prozesses: 0x%9
Startzeit der fehlerhaften Anwendung: 0x%10
Pfad der fehlerhaften Anwendung: %11
Pfad des fehlerhaften Moduls: %12
Berichtskennung: %13
Vollständiger Name des fehlerhaften Pakets: %14
Anwendungs-ID, die relativ zum fehlerhaften Paket ist: %15

[admin]

Hi,

do you know the last version that worked correctly? That would help track down what change might be responsible for this. My guess would be that the last version to work correctly would be 4.1.13447 and that everything from 4.1.13484 onwards has the problem, since 13484 introduced a new version of the ToupTek SDK, which seems the most likely cause of the problem.

Windows has a limitation that you can only have one copy of a DLL loaded into a single application. SharpCap has its copy of 'toupcam.dll' and the ASCOM driver has its copy somewhere else on the disk. Because of the way ASCOM works, the SharpCap copy *always* gets loaded first, which means that the ASCOM driver always ends up using SharpCap's copy rather than its own copy. Usually this is OK, but maybe there has been some update recently to the SDK that means the two versions are no longer compatible.

You could try to deal with this by one of...

*) Updating the ASCOM driver if there is an update - that might just cure the problem

*) Going back to an older version of SharpCap 4.1 before the latest ToupTek SDK update

*) Copying the 'toupcam.dll' from an older SharpCap, or from the ASCOM driver install folder over the SharpCap copy

Hope this helps,

Robin

[schat]

Thanks for elaborating on this, Robin. In the end of july it worked. The current drivers are installed (Touptek Ascom). But I will give it a try the next days and test with some older versions. Let's see what's possible and I will give an update.

Axel.

[schat]

I have now found out that the last Sharpcap version that works for me is 4.1.13360.0 together with the Touptek ASCOM version (57.27993.0.0) that I downloaded from Touptek in May this year.

From Sharpcap version 4.1.13383.0 (version info: ...Updated ToupTek SDK...), errors occur.
All other Sharpcap versions run into errors, and even updating the Touptek ASCOM driver from August 9 to version 59.291176.0.0 did not help (ultimately, I only noticed this because I hadn't done any updates for some time).

However, since I can now take pictures again with Sharpcap version 4.1.13383.0 and the Touptek ASCOM driver from spring, that will have to suffice for now. I will see if the problem can be fixed with updates in the future.

By the way: keeping older versions of Sharpcap available for download is indeed very helpful. Thank you for that.

Regards, Axel.

[ABrickhouse]

After replacing my computer with another one with same performance, I could not get the drivers to work on my ATR2600 cam. So I went back to the 4.1..13383.0 version and wow it worked. Ops, the camera will take image and then stop. So like you start with setting to take 10 images it will stop at 7 or so. Live view will also stop after a few image.s

Help.
Aubrey

[admin]

Hi,

if you are getting intermittent failures like that, the first place to look is the USB connection and USB speed setting...

* First, try turning down the 'USB Speed' setting of the camera - for deep sky it can be best to set this as low as possible to get the maximum reliability. If you want high frame rates (solar/lunar/etc) then you would set a high value. This change may well correct the problem

* Next test by removing any USB extensions or hubs - just a single USB3 cable back to the computer - the one that came with the camera, usually about 1.8m long. If that makes everything work then the extensions/hubs/longer cables are the likely cause of the problem

There are more tips on troubleshooting potential USB issues here - viewtopic.php?t=349

cheers,

Robin

[ABrickhouse]

I finally got my Toup Tek ATR 2600 working with older releases of SharpCap 4. All goes well except in the live stacking. When I run the live stacking it seems to stack ok but when I increase the size of the image, there are a lot of faint stars Red and Blue that are not stacked. The move around and form a pattern but are not stacked like the larger stars.
Any idea of what is happening?

Aubrey

[admin]

Hi,

it sounds like you have a selection of hot/warm pixels in each image. As the image drifts slightly, SharpCap detects and aligns on the real stars, which means the hot pixels get scattered around in the stack. The best way to deal with them is to either use dark frame subtraction, or SharpCap's hot pixel removal feature (which is available in the dark frame subtraction dropdown as an extra option), or both...

You can also reduce the impact in the final image by using the 'colour noise reduction' feature in SharpCap, which can be set up to largely remove the colour from them without affecting the rest of the image too much.

cheers,

Robin

[schat]

Just for the records: the current versions of Sharpcap and Touptek Ascom works again and no errors occures. Nice.

Best regards, Axel.

[admin]

Hi Axel,

glad to hear it is OK now - I wonder if that is down to the same version of the toupcam.dll being in both SharpCap and the ASCOM driver now? Or at least versions that are basically compatible with each other. Maybe I should rename my copy of the DLL to avoid the clash - I will have to test that to see if it helps or introduces new problems.

cheers,

Robin