Cant get Orion Starshoot Autoguider driver to install

[blinky]

Hi Dave-T has very kindly lent me a Starshoot autoguider whilst my Lodestar is being repaired, however I cannot get the driver to install on either Windows 7 or Windows 10!  Did as they say, installed the driver first then plugged it in but Windows just keeps saying unknown device.

[Marci]

IIRC, Usually the firmware isn’t initialised til something tries to use it, _then_ it installs the actual driver... fire up PHD, select the Starshoot and hit connect and see what happens (should make the ’new hardware connected’ plink and fire up the driver). My QHY5 (same camera, different vendor/product ID) does similar.

@Davey-T - you didn’t modify the vendor/product id in the firmware over to QHY5 at any point did you?

[blinky]

Nope that did not work - PHD just says no camera.

Never had this many problems installing a USB device!  I did try the QHY5 driver just in case but that did not work either

[Davey-T]

26 minutes ago, Marci said:

@Davey-T - you didn’t modify the vendor/product id in the firmware over to QHY5 at any point did you?

No not done anything to it.

Strange, it should show up in the PHD list of cameras, there was a problem when Win10 first came out and it took Orion ages to get a driver working.

Does it show up in device manager ?

Dave

[blinky]

shows as unknown deice in device manager

[Davey-T]

I had it working on Win7 and Win10 OK with the drivers from their site.

Probably some windows glitch.

Dave

[Marci]

Check vendor & product IDs as per https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/406237-orion-ssag-firmware-reset/ - it may have lunched its IDs (static during transit or other force of physics) thus doesn’t match to what the driver expects. See final post in thread which confirms "fix" still works (ie: modifying inf file ven_ids & prod_ids - doesn’t modify the camera, just the IDs that the driver will attempt to install for - ignore the links to firmware flashing and eprom write-only fixes in that thread, which you can only do from a WinXP machine / with physical mods to the PCB)

[Davey-T]

Just installed the driver on this Win10 laptop and it shows up and can be selected in the PHD drop down list, can't get any further without the camera, can you get this far ?

Dave

[blinky]

I can select the camera in PHD but it wont connect - I think the issue is that windows device manager shows it as an unknown device.

[Marci]

That’s standard I think - PHD has native drivers builtin for it, same as for QHY5, so it always shows in the list on a fresh PHD install whether you’ve installed the actual drivers or not... but they only map across if the ven_id & prod_id being given out by the hardware is correct.

[Davey-T]

Has it got an LED to show it's getting power ? can't remember now.

Try another cable.

Dave

[Marci]

It should have a solid red LED that lights when initial driver is installed & loaded, then changes to flashing red LED once the firmware’s been loaded (when camera has been init’d by software)

[blinky]

its solid red, although not very bright

[Oddsocks]

Did you try manually installing the drivers?

Several of the astronomers at my local astro club have had problems with the SSAG because Orion's driver installer puts the drivers where Windows does not usually look.

The following procedure is for Windows 7 (Windows 10 is similar but some of the terms have changed, otherwise the procedure is the same).

With the camera unplugged.....

Assuming you installed the latest driver package, version 5.1,  from Orion's website, otherwise, If you installed the old drivers from the CD then uninstall them first from 'Programs and Features' tab in Windows then download and install the version 5.1 drivers from the Orion's Website:

(Link is included but for some reason it may not work if you just click on the link, you may get taken to a dead page on Orion's server, if so, try copying and pasting the link into the address bar of a new browser window, or failing that go to Orion's site, Astronomy Cameras, SSAG and follow the support link from there):

https://www.telescope.com/Orion-StarShoot-AutoGuider/p/99565.uts

Check that the installer has created a folder containing the drivers at C:\Program Files (X86)\Orion\SSAG_Drivers.

Go to 'Control Panel' > 'System' > 'Device Manager'.

Plug in the camera.

The camera will appear after a few moments as an 'Unknown Device' in the Device Manager tree view.

Right-mouse-click the unknown device and select 'Update driver software' then select 'Browse my computer for driver software'.

Tick the box 'Include Subfolders' then click the 'Browse' button and navigate to C:\Program Files (X86)\Orion\SSAG_Drivers.

Click the 'Next' button, assuming the camera is ok Windows should find the correct driver in this folder and install it.

If it fails at this stage with Windows reporting something along the lines of 'No applicable driver found' then that "might" indicate that the camera has lost it's memory and that it requires a firmware reload. The early SSAG's were shipped with a missing link on the circuit board that inadvertently allowed the EEPROM memory to be wiped and reloaded by the end user. Often, unplugging-replugging the camera or power supply issues caused these cameras to randomly enter the reload firmware mode. With Windows Xp a user could fix this themselves but with Windows 7 onwards this needs Orion tech support to resolve and I know of one case where they did this via Team Viewer.