SharpCap Forums

Hi Robin,
I was setting up my telescope a couple of days ago and needed to upgrade to the June 18th edition of SC 4 64 bit. I´d previously been using the SC4 64 bit version that expired on June 15th.
After updating I was no longer able to connect to the FocusDream focuser (it had been connecting fine to the previous SC version).
After numerous tests, I suspected something had happened to the FocusDream ASCOM driver during the SC update, because I was no longer to connect with older versions of SC 3.2 and SC 4 32 bit I had on my computer. So after uninstalling and reinstalling the Focus Dream ASCOM driver, I am now able to connect with SC 4 .0 7888 32 bit, but still not with SC 4 7897 64 bit version.

In addition, I can connect my PC to the FocusDream device if I use the native FocusDream control panel )from Astrogadgets.

I´ve run the ASCOM diagnostics and all appears to be OK
I´ve attached the error message and the log. These logs were generated using the mount and camera simulators, but I see same problem when connected to the mount and my ASI 294MC camera
Telescope-mount = SW 14" GOTO Synscan Dobson
Laptop Windows 10 on Lenovo Legion 5 with I7 and 16 GB RAM
ASCOM 6.5 SP1 platform

Hope you can help, and thanks for a great program!
Mike

Hi,

if you are seeing that error on 64 bit and not on 32 then the most likely cause is that the FocusDream driver is only setting itself up for 32 bit applications. This could be because of a limitation in the driver, or it could be that the developer forgot about the possibility of 64 bit apps, or it could be something caused by uninstall/repair/reinstall.

My first suggestion would be a complete uninstall, download latest version and reinstall of the focusdream driver just in case that helps.

If you still get the same message then it is most likely that the driver is not designed for 64 bit. You could check this with the driver developer, but you can also probably work around the issue - choose 'Device Hub Focuser' in SharpCap, then configure that to talk to your focus dream. That basically makes a separate (32 bit ) ASCOM application run to manage the 'device hub focuser'. SharpCap talks to this 32 bit application and the application will happily talk to your 32-bit only ASCOM driver.

hope this helps,

Robin

Thanks Robin... I contacted Alex at Astrogadgets.... he quickly sent me a 64 bit driver.. its now working.... it appears the driver I was previously using, (even with SC4 64 bit version was 32 bit driver). I've no idea how that was working with SC 64 up until now. Bottom line - user error not SC error Thanks again for developing SC.
Mike

Hi Mike,

glad you got it sorted

Also no idea how it could of worked before... weird!

Robin