ASI120MC on a Mac

[richaddis]

Has anyone managed to use the ASI120MC with a Mac? Oacapture is the buggiest software I have ever experienced and there doesn't seem to be any other Mac Webcam software that recognises the camera!

[CraigT82]

What version of OSX are you using?  My imaging source DFK works perfectly on OSX yosemite with oacapture.  

[JamesF]

19 minutes ago, richaddis said:

Has anyone managed to use the ASI120MC with a Mac? Oacapture is the buggiest software I have ever experienced and there doesn't seem to be any other Mac Webcam software that recognises the camera!

I believe I have fixed every single issue you have reported

Perhaps if you described the problems you're having then you may find a solution.

James

[richaddis]

25 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I believe I have fixed every single issue you have reported

Perhaps if you described the problems you're having then you may find a solution.

James

I'm using OSX El Capitan 10.11.5

 

Oacapture crashes everytime I try to switch camera to ASI120MC. I have uninstalled and reinstalled many times and the same problem constantly. 

 

When it did connect at the beginning it was freezing the image constantly. I had the scope set on a tree in the distance. Then it started doing this...

IMG_5777.MOV

[Owmuchonomy]

I run El Capitan on an old Macbook Air USB2 with oaCapture and an ASI120MM or ASI174MM.  It works very well.  The only bug I have encountered is the saving of the 'last' profile which I have reported to James so he is aware.  I ran it for 5 hours solid on Mercury transit day without any other issues.

[richaddis]

16 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

I run El Capitan on an old Macbook Air USB2 with oaCapture and an ASI120MM or ASI174MM.  It works very well.  The only bug I have encountered is the saving of the 'last' profile which I have reported to James so he is aware.  I ran it for 5 hours solid on Mercury transit day without any other issues.

Did you see the video I attached? I get a jumpy, broken up pixelated image. But it's intermittent. Before, for about 5 minutes I managed to get it to stableise so I know the camera (which is brand new) is ok... It seems to be the software! Have been looking forward to this camera arriving and am really disappointed that I can't get it working. Have wasted so much time on it already!

[Owmuchonomy]

Sure. I have never had that issue with either camera.  Have you got a PC you can try the camera with and use Firecapture to see if that is OK?  Are you using the original USB cable?  Is it the USB 2 or 3 model?

[richaddis]

8 minutes ago, Owmuchonomy said:

Sure. I have never had that issue with either camera.  Have you got a PC you can try the camera with and use Firecapture to see if that is OK?  Are you using the original USB cable?  Is it the USB 2 or 3 model?

It's the USB 2 model. Yes I'm using the original cable. It's brand new just out the box today!

 

No I don't have a PC to try the camera on unfortunately. If I could get the camera to work with another app then I could at least establish whether it's a problem with the camera or the software. 

 

[Marci]

What model MacBook? Retina or non-retina? I have same issues using USB2 cameras on retina (USB3) MacBook Pro. If I switch to my older non-retina USB2 MacBook Pro, everything works perfectly.

S'a known issue with Darwin based operating systems and USB2 hardware in USB3 ports, caused by libusb being a bit fritzy. You can try installing libusb-dev via MacPorts or similar... but no guaranteed fix. In the backend there'll be a flood of isochronous errors going on. Ultimately s'an OSX / Darwin issue which means if it's a USB3 MacBook, buy USB3 cameras. That's the only guaranteed fix.

Issue has been the scourge of my life for years (I do a lot of Kinect-based realtime mocap work, with several original xbox360 kinects which all behave the same as you're seeing, alongside my Opticstars, which pass thru to a Windows VM). And is the sole reason I keep multiple MacBooks in my possession.

[richaddis]

1 hour ago, Marci said:

What model MacBook? Retina or non-retina? I have same issues using USB2 cameras on retina (USB3) MacBook Pro. If I switch to my older non-retina USB2 MacBook Pro, everything works perfectly.

S'a known issue with Darwin based operating systems and USB2 hardware in USB3 ports, caused by libusb being a bit fritzy. You can try installing libusb-dev via MacPorts or similar... but no guaranteed fix. In the backend there'll be a flood of isochronous errors going on. Ultimately s'an OSX / Darwin issue which means if it's a USB3 MacBook, buy USB3 cameras. That's the only guaranteed fix.

Issue has been the scourge of my life for years (I do a lot of Kinect-based realtime mocap work, with several original xbox360 kinects which all behave the same as you're seeing, alongside my Opticstars, which pass thru to a Windows VM). And is the sole reason I keep multiple MacBooks in my possession.

It's a 2012 MacBook Pro. I bought the USB 2 camera because I was aware of my MacBook having USB 2 ports. 

 

There is no problem with incompatability as far as I can see... Just glitchy software or glitchy camera! Could be that I was unlucky enough to get a bad cable in the box...

[Marci]

Which other webcam packages have you tried so far?

[JamesF]

There have been a lot of USB problems with El Capitan, but 10.11.5 has fixed many that I know affected cameras.  The changes Apple made to the USB layer in El Capitan have also caused issues in libusb.  I have a testing version of oacapture linked with a very recent dev version of libusb that might help you.  I'll PM a link to you.

James

[rpineau]

Have you tried Astrolive : http://astrolive.io/astroliveusb.html

There is a free version for ZWO ASI Camera users.

 

[richaddis]

12 hours ago, rpineau said:

Have you tried Astrolive : http://astrolive.io/astroliveusb.html

There is a free version for ZWO ASI Camera users.

 

Yes I tried AstroLive but it didn't see the camera at all!

[rpineau]

I never tried it. I don't have a ZWO camera yet, but will soon and was hoping this software would be the way to go. May be you could contact the author ( goodwink@gmail.com ). I'm sure he can help.

 

 

[rcpettengill]

An update...  I'm using oaCapture 1.0 on an early 2015 MacBook Pro 13" retina display running MacOS Sierra 10.12.4 with a ZWO  ASI120MC.  This is a USB 2 ASI camera on a USB 3 MacBook.  It appears to be working very well.  I've found only 2 bugs.

There is an interface display bug that causes some default values in settings panels not to display properly on startup.  They display properly when toggled.

The most important setting is in Settings / Camera / USB / High Speed which appears to be not enabled but really is.   If it is set to "High Speed" frames are corrupted and communications to the camera can lock up.  The workaround is to click on on the "High Speed" check box a couple of times to get the check box displaying correctly and turn off the default High Speed setting.

The second problem is a memory leak. osCapture will use up large amounts of application memory - eventually all of it freezing up your Mac's applications if you leave the camera Preview running.  Turning off Preview either stops the leak or slows it down considerably.  The workaround is to not run preview when not needed and keep an eye on osCapture's application memory usage and restart it when it gets too large.

This is a wonderful app to have on the Mac and I'm looking forward to making use of it!

;rob

http://astronomy.RobPettengill.org

 

[rcpettengill]

I moved on to Jupiter from the Moon with the ZWO ASI120MC, the Questar, and my MacBook Pro 2015 running macOS Sierra. With the workarounds above, I'm very pleased:

http://astronomy.robpettengill.org/blog170403.html

 

;rob

[mackkyD]

I'm afraid I have the same problem. I'm dual booting 10.11.6 and windows 7 on a USB2 mac (2009 macbook pro). My new ASI120mm works fine in firecapture on windows. However oacapture fails to provide more than 1 f/s of broken-up looking images on preview. The camera controls also seem sort of weirdly unresponsive -  I assume checkboxes for things like gain are setting it to automatic but after changing any of the settings, the apply button is grayed out so I'm not sure if its making any difference. setting USB traffic to lower settings helped maintain framerates in firecap but seems to have no effect in oacapture. setting a lower resolution didnt help either.

Weirdly, I can use the camera to autoguide with PhD on mac with no problems (on highest frame rate setting which is 0.01).

Is it possible there are variations between camera examples that determine how well oacapture can work with them? I dont mind working in windows to do image capture, but I'd like to do it all on a mac if possible.. and oacapture looks like a great program if I could get it working for me.

I think I may sell this camera and get one of the usb3 versions which apparently work much better on mac..