Sharpcap / Computer Crash when imaging a star

[VinnyV84]

Hey Robin. I have an GMKTek Ryzen 7 7735HS Mini Computer up to 4.75GHz 32GB DDR5 RAM 1TB Hard Drive PCIe SSD AMD Radeon 680M. Every time I load Sharpcap using this mini PC over RDP to my laptop Sharpcap will crash when I have a star in my field of view in the camera.

Correction. Windows itself crashes so no pop ups from Sharpcap. Weirdest thing is if I’m running it as a test inside the home it can go for hours no issue. Outside though when I get a star in my FOV and start to focus Sharpcap stops responding and the computer crashes.

[admin]

Hi,

the immediate thing that comes to mind is : are you using the same power supply in both situations? Is the one being used outside powerful enough? It does sound like the computer is crashing when the CPU load goes up as SharpCap starts to process the image for focus detection. If the power supply running the mini PC is poor then the PSU voltage may drop at that point and that could crash the whole PC.

cheers,

Robin

[VinnyV84]

Hi,

the immediate thing that comes to mind is : are you using the same power supply in both situations? Is the one being used outside powerful enough? It does sound like the computer is crashing when the CPU load goes up as SharpCap starts to process the image for focus detection. If the power supply running the mini PC is poor then the PSU voltage may drop at that point and that could crash the whole PC.

cheers,

Robin

Hey Robin, I am actually using a different power supply. It did not come to mind because even when using with the other power supply i purcharsed; Anker 100W GaN Prime USB-C I had no issues using Windows RDP to stream 4k movies and playing fps intensive graphic games like Call of Duty while using it. I use a 240w USB-C cable with a DC adapter at the end. Links are below.

The stated output of the PSU that came with the mini PC is 19V / 3.42A. The Anker block provides the following stats: 5V⎓3A/ 9V⎓3A/ 12V⎓3A/ 15V⎓3A/ 20V⎓5A (100W Max). Being it goes up to 20V / 5A I figured it was adequate.

Forunately tonight is clear skies - I will give it a go and circle back

In case this helps, in the windows event viewer under system, I made note of the time when it crashed the first time. When I checked my watch; probably a few seconds or so after it happened it showed 8:40PM. Under the logsit showed a Kernel-Power Event ID 125 (Details Below); followed by another "Critical" Kernal Power Event 41 stating the system rebooted without cleanly shutting down.

ACPI thermal zone \_TZ.TZ01 has been enumerated.
_PSV = 0K
_TC1 = 1
_TC2 = 2
_TSP = 2000ms
_AC0 = 0K
_AC1 = 0K
_AC2 = 0K
_AC3 = 0K
_AC4 = 0K
_AC5 = 0K
_AC6 = 0K
_AC7 = 0K
_AC8 = 0K
_AC9 = 0K
_CRT = 383K
_HOT = 0K
minimum throttle = 0
_CR3 = 0K

Anker Details Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4D ... UTF8&psc=1

[admin]

Hi,

event 41 is just the system rebooting after an unexpected shutdown - it confirms that the system crashed but doesn't tell us why.

I had another thought about this though... It would be worth monitoring the CPU temperature while working in case a temperature spike is forcing the shutdown. It's also possible that the manufacturer has overclocked the Ryzen CPU which could be causing the issue. I tried to overclock my recently purchased Ryzen CPU, and it seemed stable under constant load but would reboot in some cases when the load fluctuated between heavy and light.

I would suggest downloading OCCT (https://www.ocbase.com/download), then set it to run a CPU stability test with the settings as highlighted below - I found that very effective at causing the system to crash if it was at all unstable. If that crashes your system then there may be BIOS settings that can be adjusted to either remove a manufacturer overclock or to slightly underclock the CPU for stability...

cheers,

Robin

Screenshot 2024-03-12 155248.jpg (153.44 KiB) Viewed 271 times

[VinnyV84]

Hi,

event 41 is just the system rebooting after an unexpected shutdown - it confirms that the system crashed but doesn't tell us why.

I had another thought about this though... It would be worth monitoring the CPU temperature while working in case a temperature spike is forcing the shutdown. It's also possible that the manufacturer has overclocked the Ryzen CPU which could be causing the issue. I tried to overclock my recently purchased Ryzen CPU, and it seemed stable under constant load but would reboot in some cases when the load fluctuated between heavy and light.

I would suggest downloading OCCT (https://www.ocbase.com/download), then set it to run a CPU stability test with the settings as highlighted below - I found that very effective at causing the system to crash if it was at all unstable. If that crashes your system then there may be BIOS settings that can be adjusted to either remove a manufacturer overclock or to slightly underclock the CPU for stability...

cheers,

Robin

Screenshot 2024-03-12 155248.jpg

Hey Robin, just wanted to report back in. Followed your above advice and downloaded OCCT. I ran the specificed test with the parameters you provided and no crashes at all. I performed almost every other test as well and the PC performed fine yielding no errors or crashing.

However, I do believe your initial advice was the solution. When running the tests I did a test run with the original PSU and then the one I was using when the crashes would happen. I noticed in testing that the difference between the two was the non manufacturer provided PSU was showing on average 4-6 watts higher across the board in testing when compared to the original PSU. Temps on average showed about the same.

Last night and the prior night I tried using the original manufacturer PSU and so far no crashes at all. So looks like problem solved! I'm guessing it wasnt an issue of being underpowered by possibly overpowered with the other PSU I was using?

[admin]

Hi,

glad it turned out that the PC is stable in testing and that running with the manufacturer PSU seems to cure the crashing issue.

I wonder if the other PSU is just less efficient to account for the higher power draw? Or maybe it doesn't control the output voltage as nicely when the load fluctuates or similar. Hopefully it will stay stable with the manufacturer PSU as you get around to using for real!

cheers,

Robin