QHY178c and 247c – lots of troubles

[brushpilot]

I was initially having the small problem of neither camera showing up in Live View when launched. I would have to go to Still Mode and make a Framing Shot and then go to Live View which would then work (usually) but sometimes needed further 'tricking' by loading a Capture Profile.

I decided to uninstall Sharpcap 32 and 64 - reinstall both and also to get the latest all-in-one SDK from QHY.

Now Sharpcap does load the 247C in Live View but the sliders don't work. If I try to increase exposure I get the whirly ball and then the notice that Sharpcap is not responding.

Bug reports were sent in via the usual dialogue.

Any thoughts? I'm in a descending spiral of software doom...

[admin]

Hi,

I haven't got any direct experience of the 247C, but I have a 178C here (uncooled) and a cooled 174M, and they both work nicely for me.

I guess best to start with the basics

* Latest QHY drivers installed?
* Latest versions of SharpCap 4.0 or 4.1 to ensure you have the most up-to-date QHY SDK?
* No hubs or USB cable extensions - short cables of less than 3m for USB3 (Ideally test initially with the cables that came with the camera)
* Turn *up* the USB traffic setting for the camera for increased stability/reliability (as opposed to turning it down for increased frame rate).

There is more help for problems that can be caused by USB reliability issues here : viewtopic.php?f=18&t=349&p=1556#p1556

Another thing to try is to open the camera with <CTRL> held down. This stops SharpCap from restoring the camera settings from the last use, which might help if you have inadvertently changed some settings that are leading to the problem.

cheers,

Robin

[brushpilot]

Hi Robin,

I did uninstall and reinstall both Sharpcap and the latest QHY SDK and that is when my trouble started. The behaviour I was trying to correct was the absence of Live View when the camera is selected, plus a few freezes that happened now and then.

Other than that, the cameras were behaving well within Sharpcap up until the reinstall.

My USB3 cables are only 18" but I did swap them out with the provided ones.

I have left the USB speed controls at whatever the software placed them at. I'll fiddle a bit with that but I don't think that is an issue as I never changed them previously when the programs were working.

The main manifestation is that everything is so sloo-oow. When Sharpcap (and EZcapture) loaded a camera it took a long time and in the case of Sharpcap often just froze and quit. Sliders either don't work at all or cause a freeze. When I did a framing shot, it took 26 seconds for the exposure. I walked away from the computer at one point and came back to find that a camera image had appeared but then promptly froze with out any live update possible.
Since EZcapture wasn't behaving either I'm inclined to think that the latest drivers and latest Sharpcap are having issues.

When you say that Sharpcap comes with the latest SDK from QHY, why would I need to install the latest QHY drivers as well. Confused on that issue as I'm not a Windows guy. When I install the QHY all-in-one which things should I be installing from the vast list? Very confused on that list as well. I want the WDM driver and my camera drivers but unsure of the rest as it looks like it is trying to install Sharpcap as well as everything else.

Thanks for your patience with a newbie,

Brian

[admin]

Hi Brian,

OK, drivers and SDK first...

The drivers provide a way for Windows to recognize the camera and a channel for communication to and from the camera. Without them, you would have an 'Unidentifed Device' or similar in Windows Device Manager and no detection of the device in SharpCap.

The SDK uses the communications channel provided by the drivers to actually take control of the device - send it messages to set exposure, gain,etc , and to download images.

For the camera to work properly, you need both to be working and not to have any issues or bugs.

If you are seeing issues with both EZCapture and SharpCap and the issues are similar, then it does sound like there could be an issue with the driver or the USB hardware connection, or in theory the hardware (but unlikely to be a hardware fault with 2 cameras at once).

If you haven't already, try different USB ports on the same machine, and if possible a completely different PC - if you can get good results on a different PC using the same hardware and cables then you have rules out a hardware issue.

Unfortunately, at this stage it is a bit of a case of trial and error until you find the thing that needs changing to go between the 'broken' and 'working' states. All I can add is to only change one thing at a time between each test and keep track of what you have tried!

cheers,

Robin

[brushpilot]

Hi Robin,
I just realized that I never closed this thread with the solution to my problem.
1) Running both cameras simultaneously is a bit of a stretch. Doable, but testing was done in daylight conditions, hence high frame rates were possible and that bogged the data stream.
2) The non-intuitive way that USB speed is displayed had me assuming that the lowest, to the left, setting was the slowest – NOT!
3) I'm running CAT6 ethernet cable from the scope computer to the router and I thought the final 6 foot run to the inside computer from the router was the same but due to the almost invisible dot matrix printing on the cable I mistook a 5 for a 6 – it was CAT5 which throttled the throughput some.

When I went to Windows Task Manager and saw realtime data transfer speeds I was able to use the USB sliders to maximize the frame rates without choking the data stream.
I would highly recommend the Task Manager to others experiencing similar troubles. No guessing and you instantly see the effect of your new setting.

Thanks for the help,
Brian

[admin]

Hi Brian,

glad to hear that you got it sorted. The QHY way of 'lowest USB Traffic is fastest' is a bit anti-intuitive (and the other way round to other brands where highest is fastest). I think the theory of it is that you are adjusting how much USB bandwidth the camera should leave available for other uses, so setting zero uses maximum bandwidth and setting a high value uses as little as possible.

cheers,

Robin

[Govanus]

Hello. I have the same problem with my QHY5III178M and QHY5III290M after updating SharpCap Pro. I tried different USB cables, different settings, the latest camera drivers, I have a powerful and modern laptop with several USB 3.0 connectors. Nothing helps, live view periodically does not function and the FPS drops very much, and then it freezes completely. This problem forced me to buy two new cameras, Player One Neptune-M and QHY5III678M and there are no problems with them, but nothing was fixed with the previous cameras, they work when they want. Before the update I had no such problems and everything worked fine. I once recommended the QHY5III178M to a friend of mine for shooting the full solar disk, but today he wrote to me about the same problem. What's really the matter? Cameras or software?

[admin]

Hi,

the most significant difference between the two versions of SharpCap as far as communicating with QHY cameras is the different version of the QHY SDK - 4.0 contains a version from May 2023, 4.1 contains a newer version from October 2023. This is the 'qhyccd.dll' that is installed in the SharpCap install folder. Newer versions of that DLL are created from time to time by QHY to support new models and potentially to fix bugs - however, updates can also introduce issues sometimes.

I just did a review of the code changes on the SharpCap side relating to QHY cameras between the two versions, and for normal usage of the cameras there are very few changes.

You could try copying the qhyccd.dll from the 4.0 install folder to the 4.1 install folder (must be the same bit-version of SharpCap - either both 64 bit or both 32 bit). Then run SharpCap via the .exe file in the install folder (running via the Shortcut when the dll is copied will probably trigger the installation to 'repair' itself and put the 4.1 version of the DLL back).

I have the QHY5III178C here and find it runs fine for me - as do the other models that I have here - if I encountered issues like those you are seeing in my development/testing, I would take the time necessary to fix them.

If the whole of SharpCap is freezing up then it would be worth sending any bug report or freeze report if you are prompted to send one and let me know that you have done so to enable me to find and check the report. If you do not get prompted to send a report, the next best thing is to check the SharpCap log from the frozen run - that may contain information near the end that is relevant to freezing up. You can find information on how to locate SharpCap logs here : https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.1/#The%20SharpCap%20Log

cheers,

Robin