protect 183c dropping all frames during capture

[Woldsastro]

Apologies if this is recurrent in the comments! There seems to be an issue I can't fix - the camera driver is up to date; I reinstalled the altair capture package. I use Sharpcap 4.various, and the software initially recognises the camera and gives me a live view in RAW8 format. However, when I move over to RGB24, or set up a ROI, the camera freezes to a still view and all captured frames are dropped. Stop/restart of Sharcap reconnects the camera before it crashes again once I try to start a capture sequence. Weirdly, the camera calibration routine in sharpcap was happy enough to run normally.

I have tried several USB cables and several different ports on my laptop, and I have reinstalled sharcap and altair capture. I've tried rolling Sharcap back to earlier v4 releases. I'm not especially technical and would be very gratefully for any fixes. The camera was fine last winter, but after a very expensive "dropping it into a patio" moment, Altair fixed it and possibly installed an up-to-date chipset. Could this be the issue?

[admin]

Hi,

I haven't seen any other reports of problems like this with the 183 Altair cameras. I have a couple to test with and I have just checked that they both work fine in the latest versions of SharpCap.

I wouldn't expect a repair to cause any sort of problem like this - presumably if something needed replacing then Altair would have replaced with the latest version of the electronics, which would already be used in recent models. We haven't heard of users of recent models of the 183 having problems like this, so that seems to rule out the repair causing the issue.

I would suggest turning down the USB speed setting in the camera controls on the right to the minimum to see if that helps - while it will reduce frame rates, turning it down can increase stability. Also remove any extension USB cables if you haven't already and make sure the camera has 12V power.

It's also worth trying the same test in AltairCapture to see if that works OK or not.

thanks,

Robin

[Woldsastro]

Thanks for your very speedy reply Robin - I will have a try with your suggestions as soon as possible and get back to you.

Mike