HEQ5 "loses interest"

[DaveS]

Sorry, I can't put it any more technically than that.

I'm running my HEQ5 from CduC via EQMOD and ASCOM 6 sp1 on a Win 7 i5 laptop through a 4 port USB hub. All my ports are USB3. Ports are used for Trius 694, QHY5 II, Mount via EQdir, and gamepad. SX filterwheel is on its own USB port for power.

At first in a session things are looking good. unpark, goto an alignment star make correction etc. I can even goto a target.

But then things go downhill. When I asked it to go to another target the 'scope was pointing nowhere near where it should, then I found the gamepad I was using had no effect. I then asked EQMOD to park the 'scope, whereupon it said "parking" but nothing happened.

Checking in Devices and Printers shows everything present and correct.

So I don't know. I'm not even sure if the problem is hardware or software. I have taken care to balance the rig in both RA and Dec so as to not overload the motors, and the mass is well below the rated maximum for imaging with a fairly short moment arm.

Options I see are to clean out all the relevant software, run ccleaner and defrag the boot drive, then carefully re-install all the drivers and software, but I know I'm quite capable of making a pig's ear of that, or else stripping down the HEQ5 with the same caveat.

I'm not expecting someone to come up with all the answers, but a pointer in the right direction would help,

[Earl]

is the usb hub powered?

[DaveS]

No, but I don't recall any problems when I was using a DSLR. The Trius, of course, has its own power supply.

If you think a powered hub would solve the problem I could drop into PC world tomorrow morning.

[Earl]

its quiet often a problem, one to cross off the check list

[Bizibilder]

Either that or a dodgy cable or connection somewhere.  Go back to basics and get each element running correctly before adding another - you should find the culprit.

[DaveS]

Thanks, will do.

One thing that occurred to me, when I was running the DSLR I had a long lead to the hub then short leads to the DSLR, QHY5, and mount. I can't remember if I had the gamepad on the hub or plugged into the laptop. Something else to check.

[JamesF]

I'd very much favour using a powered hub.  Laptops can't supply that much power to USB devices, so making sure the hub has its own power supply eliminates one possible source of trouble.

I've also found that some USB devices don't always play nicely with others when they're on the same hub.  If your laptop has more than one internal USB hub it may make sense to connect the mount to one, because mounts do seem to be intolerant of other things trying to use the USB bus at the same time, and connect everything else to a different hub.  I've found that in some arrangements my camera, guide camera, mount and gamepad are totally reliable, but in others they fall in a big heap fairly rapidly.  Splitting off the high priority hardware (the mount) onto a separate bus seemed to provide the most reliable arrangement.

James

[Tinker1947]

Depending on the way you have your set-up, i used to be plagued by bits dropping out, not working ect ect, so far my cure has been a Mother Board with enough USB slots on the rear to handle my requirements it has 8 in total, couple of USB 3's the rest USB 2, it might be a bit over kill but at the moment it seems to have cured the drop outs and the not working today bits.......

[DaveS]

Thanks JamesF and Tinker1947

I only have 4 ports on my laptop, so have to use an external hub.

If the mount and wheel are on their own ports that just leaves two for everything else. I may need two hubs

[JamesF]

It may well be that the laptop USB ports are not all on the same internal USB hub, so if you can work out which is which and put the mount on one and the external hub on another that might help.

James

[Bizibilder]

The other thing I have done is, once everything is working, to label the USB ports/hubs so that I always assemble things in exactly the same configuration every time.  So far (touch wood!) I have a totally reliable system.

[JamesF]

Yes, that's a very sensible approach I think, Roger.

James

[wuthton]

Depending on the way you have your set-up, i used to be plagued by bits dropping out, not working ect ect, so far my cure has been a Mother Board with enough USB slots on the rear to handle my requirements it has 8 in total, couple of USB 3's the rest USB 2, it might be a bit over kill but at the moment it seems to have cured the drop outs and the not working today bits.......

This is what I did. I've been through three powered usb hubs all of which caused intermittent problems.

I bought (all used from Ebay) an Intel Atom m-itx board, 60gb SSD and put it in a tiny case. I run this headless via remote desktop on the laptop.

[Macavity]

Yes, it is an odd one? I can run the mount for DAYS over a complex 30m *dedicated* USB extender.

Via powered HUB, random dropouts (to the mount) still occur when I engage the USB focusser etc.

I am rather resigned to having a *dedicated* "channel" (USB extenders, whatever!) to the mount.

Re. "dropouts", "Keep Calm and etc."? lol. I find these frustrating situations are often recoverable

by just disconnecting / reconnecting via EQmod. The mount "keeps on trucking" in the interim...

[DaveS]

Well, I've just come back with a four port powerd hub. There was a 7 port one but I didn't want to overload things. Now to sort out my USB connectivity.

Soething else I found was that I had to connect the filter wheel after everything else or it wouldn't be found. The COM port numbers also have a habit of changing between sessions.

[JamesF]

The COM port numbers also have a habit of changing between sessions.

That's something else that seems to happen if you plug a device into a different USB port.  I can't claim much knowledge about this as I'm really not a Windows person, but what appears to happen (at least on Win7) is that the OS creates some sort of association between the device and the USB hub/port it sees it connect to.  Only if you reconnect it to the same port do you seem to reliably get the same COM port.  If you're using an external USB hub, that quite possibly means you need to connect the hub to the same port on the laptop and the device to the same port on the hub.

James

[Macavity]

In the good old days of Windows eXPee, you used to be able to do something like:

http://www.istime.com/istdnn/Portals/0/Documents/Proc%20and%20Instru/Computers/Make%20COM%20ports%20available.pdf

to recover "in use" ports. Whether this works in Win7 and later, I just don't know...

  

[DaveS]

Well, I've tried out connecting the Trius, QHY5 and filter wheel to the powered hub, and everything looks to be working, but as expected I had to plug in the filter wheel separately to avoid error messages.

Now to try to connect the mount, but I really need some clear nights to make sure everything is working as it should. I want to mount the hub on the rig and have a long USB extender lead (Which I have) to the hub.

[DaveS]

Clear Outside is looking hopeful for tonight, so I have the rig set up. I set the hub up to plug directly in to the laptop and have long-ish USB leads taped into a loom going to the 'scopes and wheel, while the mount will plug into its own port. I also took more time to balance it with the USB loom attached, so there should be less strain on the motors, and put marker spots on the saddles to keep my balance points.

Have my Telegizmos cover on ATM as I'm not sure about the immediate weather.

[Earl]

Does the trius have a hub built in?

[DaveS]

Yes it does, but it's not powered, and when I tried to use it last I had even more problems.

[swag72]

Here's another thought that has been touched on already. My mount started to play up, 'loosing interest' was a good description. It would suddenly stop tracking at times, would drop out of connection with the PC etc. I was convinced it was the mount and that there was something wrong with the motherboard or something.

Prior to being ready to consign the whole lot to the rubbish tip I had a brainwave and deregistered all of the COM ports on the PC. It seems that over the space of about 2 years, the PC had allocated all of the COM ports over time and even though everything was telling me that they were right (device manager and EQMOD married up) it was the cause of my problems - I'd replaced the EQMOD cable, the powered USB hub in the meantime but the problems remained - Just another idea perhaps? 

Another thing I have encountered at least 3x is the EQMOD cable giving up the ghost (I now always have a spare) - Again caused the sorts of issues that you mention.

Hope that helps.

[DaveS]

Thanks Sara.

I've just checked the COM ports with the EQDIR cable plugged in. and it comes up as 3, with everything from 4 to 16 being flagged up as "in use". Without the cable plugged in I don't see the COM ports listed in System / Device Manager.

Got everything set up now, ready for this evening. I had to plug the individual USB leads into the hub, as otherwise all I could see was the QHY 5.

[swag72]

If all of your COM ports are showing as in use, I would suggest that clearing them would help your issue.

[DaveS]

Well. I had a go last night with more "fun and games" not.

Main problem was with PhD (So maybe in the Software section?) During calibration I repeatedly got a "Failed due to insufficient movement" error, in different parts of the sky and with different stars in each frame. In between times, of course PHD threw its toys out of the pram and stopped responding.

At least the mount didn't lose interest, but I had it on its own port. The Trius, QHY and Wheel were all on the powered USB hub, together with the gamepad.

Oh, yes and for reasons I can't fathom AstroArt was playing silly wotsits with the capture as I was trying to focus. I think it was repeatedly showing me the same image. Certainly there was no change in star size when I focused. Then it started crashing during camera set-up.

Eventually I shut everything down and rebooted. Got everything running and tried an image of Chi Persei region. Managed to focus (Hooray, AA was actually doing something right for a change) and set up a short sequence of 6 x 30 sec subs (As PHD was still sulking). Managed 2 1/2, at which point Windows reported that a USB device was malfunctioning and was not recognised. It was, of course the hub. All that showed up in Devices and Printers was the QHY

At his point I uttered words that would get me banned if I repeated them here and closed down for the night.

This afternoon I tried setting up again, carefully plugging things in and checking that they showed up, which they did.

So I dunno, I really don't. They say these things are sent to try us (Or Trius?), but in my case I thinks I've been tried and found guilty. Of what I don't know, optimism perhaps?