SharpCap Forums

This is an inquiry to ToupTek camera users, I purchased a ATR3CMOS26000KPA in June of 2022.
After an upgrade from SharpCap version 4.1.11294 neither the Ascom or native drivers worked, I can select the driver but when I go to live view SC makes one frame then freezes.
I had the drivers saved to a folder for safe keeping so I went back to the 11294 SC and installed the older drivers and everything works. I have SC Pro with a lifetime license, not being able to benefit from new features and fixes makes me a little unhappy.
It appears ToupTek made firmware changes to this model that required new drivers and they do not offer legacy drivers or solutions.
I suppose I can continue with the older SC or buy a new camera which I cannot do (fixed income retired and living in a crap economy!)
Any ideas or similar experiences please share.

BR

Hi,

there are a few things you can try, in order from easiest to most complex...

1) Try turning down the 'USB Speed' option on the camera - at one point in the past, ToupTek changed how that was defined for the IMX571 based camera, and maybe the new value range and default is not stable in your configuration

2) If you are running a modern version of Windows (10 or 11), then you don't need the ToupTek camera driver installed for modern ToupTek cameras to work - they will work using a built in driver called 'WinUSB'. Check that this is in use by going to device manager and seeing where the camera is shown - if it is in 'Imaging Devices' then it is using the ToupTek driver, if it is in 'Universal Serial Bus Devices' then it is using the Microsoft WinUSB driver. To change to WinUSB, you would need to do the following :

* Right click device, choose Properties
* Go to driver tab, choose 'Update Driver'
* Select 'Browse My Computer' (not find automatically)
* Select 'Let me pick from a list of drivers'
* The list should include 'Winusb device' - choose that, press Next and OK as required to confirm

Actually, it's best to not use the ToupTek driver with Windows 11 as it is a bit old and not compatible with some Win11 security features

3) Copy the Toupcam.dll file from the working version over the one that is installed by the latest version of SharpCap - that will basically give you the latest SharpCap code with the older ToupTek SDK. This is untested/unsupported, but there is a pretty good chance that it will work


Hope this helps,

Robin

Thanks for your reply Robin,
I followed you instructions and the camera is now on the winusb camera 3.0. Installed the latest SC and copied the toupcam.dll over the installed version, both the ASCOM and native drivers crashed.
SC sent the crash report both times. Reinstalled the older SC and the ASCOM driver and dll back to normal everything works. Now what?

BR

Hi,

from the sound of it, you did option 2 and 3, whereas the intention was that you do one of them, but not both - the idea is that either one of them could cure the problem (with option 2 preferred).

If you have another PC available, it's probably worth testing on that - just install SharpCap (no ToupTek drivers or ASCOM unless already installed to keep it simple). Getting things working on another PC would give us confidence in the hardware (camera, cable, 12V power supply) and also that the software can work correctly. Then the trick is to find the crucial difference between the not working and working machines and resolve it - that part can be tricky!

cheers,

Robin

Greetings Robin,
I finally got back out to the observatory, your option number two was the fix, I now have SC latest version and the camera performs perfectly.
As an added treat I have all the cameras functions which were not available using ASCOM.
Thanks again for all your help, I'm so glad to have my SharpCap back!!!

BR