Qhy5L-ii Problems - No Image

[Rico]

So I've decided that I need to start guiding and got myself a QHY5L-ii Mono, which I plan to mount onto the finderscope that comes with the SW ED80. I run yosemite with Parallels Desktop and Windows 8. I installed all the necessary drivers from the QHY website, but I can't get an image in PHD Guiding or EZplanetry, its just black. I can only find the WDM driver in device manager, but no other drivers. 

Some help would be appreciated.

[NickK]

Not sure in this instance but I found that Yosemite messes up USB.. It may be the same issue.

[Rico]

I briefly managed to get some response by reducing the fps in ezplanetary and playing with the limite bandwidth, but if I start changing resolution it just stops working. Very frustrating.

[Rico]

Btw, I'm running a 2012 MacBook air with usb3.0 ports

[Rico]

Still no luck, tempted give back this piece of junk. Too buggy for the price 

[Rico]

Am i supposed to see the camera listed under devices and printers in the windows 8 control panel?

[Merlin66]

Could be the USB3 ports....I've read of similar problems with TIS DMK cameras....they needed a USB2.....

[Merlin66]

Rico,

Yes....

[Rico]

I'm starting to think the same. I can't find the drivers in the device manager either. It connects to EZplanetry but very rarely! PHGuide2 ... never... it just causes it to crash.I don't have a windows laptop to try this on

[Thalestris24]

Hi

The camera takes it's power from the usb (obviously!). If you plug the usb cable in with the driver loaded, you should see the red power/data led on at the back of the camera. This led flashes according to exposure time selected in software. If you don't see the led come on then it's likely there is a problem with either the usb port or with the cable.

Um, fwiw my one doesn't work with usb 3.0 (and EZPlanetary). The led lights but EZPlanetary crashes... It seems to corrupt the driver so have to unplug and reboot before connecting again to usb 2.0...

Hope that helps

Louise

[Rico]

Hey Louise, the LED lights up when I connect it. Unfortunately, I don't have a USB2.0 port to try it out either. The other thing is that their website claims that windows 8 64 bit has not been tested let alone windows 8.1 ... so difficult to diagnose where the problem is

[Thalestris24]

Hi

As I say, mine won't work with usb 3.0 even though the led lights... I don't think Win 8.1 should be a problem (though I only have Win 7 at the mo). Dunno what you can do without a usb 2.0 I'm afraid - it seems to be a requirement of the driver...

Sorry I can't help

Louise

[Sandancer10]

I have just recently bought the same camera and have spent 2 weeks trying to get an image. I finally achieved it, but with a lot of problems. I had to use the usb2 connection as it wouldn't connect to usb3. You have to download both WMD and WMD native. Ezplanetary forwards the image to another program I.e. Sharpcap. PHD does crash, but I found after awhile it will settle.

The biggest problem I had was with focus - I couldn't get it, but after sticking with it I got it to work. I haven't had a chance to use auto guiding yet - I have a 9x50 finderscope and have managed to get an image through that - I don't know about st80 as I haven't tried it yet. Hope you get sorted soon.

[JamesF]

I haven't tried oaCapture on Yosemite yet, but it might be worth trying just to see if you can get an image out of the camera.  Sadly it won't help with the guiding from Windows, but it might at least prove the camera works.  I doubt it's anything to do with the USB three ports as I have no problems getting an image out of my QHY5L-II on my 2013 MBP with oaCapture and Mavericks.  It may well be something to do with Parallels handling of the USB ports, perhaps.

If you're willing to give it a try on Yosemite and you do have problems, please let me know and I'll look into it.  Just today I got Yosemite installed on a Mac Mini so I can test with it.  A dmg and sources are here: http://www.openastroproject.org/

I do know there's something odd going on with 10.7.5 and the QHY5L-II.  When oaCapture is built on 10.7.5 it has some weird problems changing the exposure time with the QhY5L-II, but if I take the same binary to 10.9.5 it works just fine.  One more item on my list of things to look at before I make the next release

James

[Rico]

I did a Windows update and connected my power supply to my laptop. I now coincidently see the 'B' driver under astroimaging device in the my device manager. I opened ezplanetary and managed to get an image. Refocused the camera using the finder scope and it was crisp. Worked from 320 pixels up until i tried 1024 and it sort of crashed

[Thalestris24]

Hi

It should work out of the box with the ascom driver or native driver and phd2, or the native driver with EZPlanetary... I have 2 and have been using them as guide cams with no problems. They do have quite high bandwidth requirements so I think they need high speed usb 2.0 ports and good quality usb 2.0 rated cables. (some useful usb 2.0 info: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00022531&lc=en&cc=th& )

Louise

[Rico]

I haven't tried oaCapture on Yosemite yet, but it might be worth trying just to see if you can get an image out of the camera.  Sadly it won't help with the guiding from Windows, but it might at least prove the camera works.  I doubt it's anything to do with the USB three ports as I have no problems getting an image out of my QHY5L-II on my 2013 MBP with oaCapture and Mavericks.  It may well be something to do with Parallels handling of the USB ports, perhaps.

If you're willing to give it a try on Yosemite and you do have problems, please let me know and I'll look into it.  Just today I got Yosemite installed on a Mac Mini so I can test with it.  A dmg and sources are here: http://www.openastroproject.org/

I do know there's something odd going on with 10.7.5 and the QHY5L-II.  When oaCapture is built on 10.7.5 it has some weird problems changing the exposure time with the QhY5L-II, but if I take the same binary to 10.9.5 it works just fine.  One more item on my list of things to look at before I make the next release

James

Thanks James, I'll have a look. I wish i could do everything natively from OSX as like you said, I'm not sure what parallels is doing with the USB ports

[Thalestris24]

I have just recently bought the same camera and have spent 2 weeks trying to get an image. I finally achieved it, but with a lot of problems. I had to use the usb2 connection as it wouldn't connect to usb3. You have to download both WMD and WMD native. Ezplanetary forwards the image to another program I.e. Sharpcap. PHD does crash, but I found after awhile it will settle.

The biggest problem I had was with focus - I couldn't get it, but after sticking with it I got it to work. I haven't had a chance to use auto guiding yet - I have a 9x50 finderscope and have managed to get an image through that - I don't know about st80 as I haven't tried it yet. Hope you get sorted soon.

Hi

It should work out of the box with the ascom driver or native driver and phd2, or the native driver with EZPlanetary... I have 2 and have been using them as guide cams with no problems. They do have quite high bandwidth requirements so I think they need high speed usb 2.0 ports and good quality usb 2.0 rated cables. (some useful usb 2.0 info: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00022531&lc=en&cc=th& )

Louise

[Rico]

Hi

It should work out of the box with the ascom driver or native driver and phd2, or the native driver with EZPlanetary... I have 2 and have been using them as guide cams with no problems. They do have quite high bandwidth requirements so I think they need high speed usb 2.0 ports and good quality usb 2.0 rated cables. (some useful usb 2.0 info: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00022531&lc=en&cc=th& )

Louise

I would have thought USB3.0 ports wouldn't have any issues with the bandwidth though

[JamesF]

Because the camera is USB2 the link will run at the USB2 speed, but even so you should still be able to get perhaps 8fps at full resolution.

James

[Thalestris24]

I would have thought USB3.0 ports wouldn't have any issues with the bandwidth though

Hi

You wouldn't think so but I've tried mine with usb 3.0 ports on two different computers and neither would work. It's probably as much to do with the qhy drivers - they don't seem the best software engineers!

Louise

[Rico]

I get 16fps at 800 pixels with he USB traffic set down to 6. Doesn't produce an image at 1024 or full res

[JamesF]

They do make life hard for themselves.  It seems that almost every camera they produce has a completely different driver.  I think they may (relatively) recently have changed the way they handle the coding of the drivers, too.  It used to be (as far as I can work out) that a (Belgian?) chap called Tom Van den Eede seemed to be writing them.  I don't think he's on the scene any more though.  Possibly they've taken it in-house.

James

[JamesF]

I get 16fps at 800 pixels with he USB traffic set down to 6. Doesn't produce an image at 1024 or full res

I wonder if there's something going on between OSX and parallels that means it can't handle the data rates for the higher resolutions?

James

[Rico]

I wonder if there's something going on between OSX and parallels that means it can't handle the data rates for the higher resolutions?

James

Maybe. I've managed to get it working on PHD ... so i think that for guiding it might be ok. For high res planetary recording i may have to look at another solution like that one you've posted earlier