Polemaster problem

[MartinB]

My polemaster worked without a problem during it's first few outings but I now have a problem which seems to be getting steadily worse.  It isn't taking images on a continuous basis.  I noticed this first whilst doing the precise align,  the rotating circle would stop rotating and the  reticle would jump about.  The circle would then rotate briefly and it was during this time that I could see the results of my alt az adjustments.  I read a thread posted by someone having a similar problem and the suggestion was that this was down to the seeing.  Last night from the word go polemaster was only taking infrequent images with gaps typically 30 to 60 seconds but sometimes longer.  It took a long time to run through the axis rotation routine.  Doing the initial coarse align was painfully slow and I didn't even bother trying a precise align.  The problem wasn't resolved by shutting down and reconnecting.  It occurred regardless of exposure time or gain.  I also tried a different USB cable without any joy.

Has anyone else encountered this? 

[carastro]

Oh dear, that sounds awful.  Is is still in a guarantee period as it sounds faulty to me?  

Carole 

[newbie alert]

Deffo the seeing conditions.. everything you have described happens with high cloud..

[carastro]

Quote

Deffo the seeing conditions.. everything you have described happens with high cloud..

Well I was using it on Friday and had passing cloud which I could see on the screen but not naked eye, and all it did was pass across the screen rendering stars to be temporarily obscured, but it did not cause PM to freeze. 

Carole 

[MartinB]

11 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

Deffo the seeing conditions.. everything you have described happens with high cloud..

I could understand the seeing conditions preventing polemaster from being able to lock onto a star during alignment.  I can't understand how the seeing conditions would stop Polemaster actually taking an image.  The problem last night was that it was only very intermittently producing an image even when running the RA rotation routine, I don't think this is down to seeing.

[sloz1664]

It's not a seeing problem Martin. Have you tried the Polemaster with a different software programme, like Firecapture to check that it's a hardware issue. You could also try updating the software from the QHY site if it's not.

Steve

[MartinB]

Thanks Steve.  I'll try Firecapture and also my other laptop.

[bottletopburly]

Try deleting the INI file , there should be one in the polemaster folder , it will make a new one  when you restart software , when I use  qhy ezcapture  it plays up now and again, ini file delete resets the software and is fine , never found their software the best tbh .

[david_taurus83]

Sharpcap will also run the Polemaster. I find 2s exposures are fine for picking up stars. Not sure if the Polemaster software gives control of gain and exposure?

[MartinB]

10 hours ago, bottletopburly said:

Try deleting the INI file , there should be one in the polemaster folder , it will make a new one  when you restart software , when I use  qhy ezcapture  it plays up now and again, ini file delete resets the software and is fine , never found their software the best tbh .

Thanks a lot BTB, that may prove very useful.  I've done some daytime testing today on both my laptops and appears to be working fine!  A bit frustrating I suppose since I was hoping to confirm whether or not this was a software or hardware problem.  If the problem recurs I will try deleting the inf file

6 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Sharpcap will also run the Polemaster. I find 2s exposures are fine for picking up stars. Not sure if the Polemaster software gives control of gain and exposure?

Thanks David.  I will install Sharpcap and have a look.  The pole master does give control over gain and software giving the option of exposures 50 - 300 ms which seems plenty

[newbie alert]

22 hours ago, MartinB said:

I could understand the seeing conditions preventing polemaster from being able to lock onto a star during alignment.  I can't understand how the seeing conditions would stop Polemaster actually taking an image.  The problem last night was that it was only very intermittently producing an image even when running the RA rotation routine, I don't think this is down to seeing.

High cloud causes the green box to jump about..I don't use the polemaster software anymore and much prefer sharpcap..and in bad seeing it stops the frames per second and can't get a fix on the stars..

[MartinB]

 

2 hours ago, newbie alert said:

High cloud causes the green box to jump about..I don't use the polemaster software anymore and much prefer sharpcap..and in bad seeing it stops the frames per second and can't get a fix on the stars..

Yes I see that poor seeing could create a problem when polemaster needs to lock onto a star during the actual alignment process.  Will probably have a look at Sharpcap.  When you use Sharpcap are you still putting the polemaster into the mount?

[david_taurus83]

6 minutes ago, MartinB said:

 

Yes I see that poor seeing could create a problem when polemaster needs to lock onto a star during the actual alignment process.  Will probably have a look at Sharpcap.  When you use Sharpcap are you still putting the polemaster into the mount?

Yes! It's £10 For the Pro version which gives you the polar align feature (can't remember if there's a trial) Polemaster on mount, connect via Sharpcaps, run polar align and follow instruction. You only need to slew once and it continuously plate sloves while you adjust the mount. I used to get an average RMS of 1.0" just using the Polemaster software but with the Sharpcap routine I can get between 0.6" to 0.9" error. It's very good.

[Merlin66]

SharpCap V2.9 (freeware) allows you to do the polar alignment....not as "fancy" as the V3 pro but does the job.

 

[fwm891]

Martin - My PM occasionally has the final fine alignment image dance around like crazy. I've only had it happen at that final stage and usually I try hard to get earlier alignments a tight match so the red/green final alignment components are usually touching. I've put mine down to the power hub that I work through. 

[newbie alert]

13 hours ago, MartinB said:

 

Yes I see that poor seeing could create a problem when polemaster needs to lock onto a star during the actual alignment process.  Will probably have a look at Sharpcap.  When you use Sharpcap are you still putting the polemaster into the mount?

Yes, still use the polemaster in the mount, with sharpcap software

[FrodoBaggins]

I have the same problem and it appears there are some known issues. If you are using on a laptop, try plugging into AC power (i.e. not running on battery). Mine works fine when plugged in but when running on battery it runs at about 3 frames per minute. Here is a link to some possible fixes. It appears to be a USB power issue. Hopefully QHY will fix this in software and release an update. http://en.coolccd.com/bbs/index.php?topic=6665.0

[MartinB]

Thanks Frodo, I think it is something related to the the USB.  I am plugging it directly into my laptop which is running on mains.  Daytime testing shows it is running better on sharpcap than polemaster but still nothing like as fast as it should be and at one point sharpcap flagged up a message about a usb traffic issue.  Might try a powered hub.  

[MartinB]

So, images have been intermittent both with Polemaster software and Sharpcap, although better with Sharpcap.  I have been connecting the Polemaster directly to my laptop which is on mains power.  The problem has  been resolved by connecting via a powered hub.  Switching the QHYCCD.dll file, as suggested in a thread on the QHY forum didn't help me.

There are clearly usb power issues with  Polemaster and some systems.  Mine is a 2017 Dell XPS with icore-7 processor.  Thank you for everyone's help, hopefully problem now resolved.

[FrodoBaggins]

All good. It's definitely USB / Software (driver) related, probably effects certain chipsets more than others. The ball is definitely in QHY's court to fix. When not at home, I have to run an inverter from 12V to 240V then plug my laptop into that (HP Elitebook) just to get it to work properly. Its a great bit of kit, but software needs some work...

[Radec]

Did this issue receive any input from QHY?

I recently acquired a Polemaster and have suffered the self-same problems using a laptop with W10 on battery power.

It only ever worked properly once - last night at a public outreach event where I was demonstrating the set-up routine it behaved like a pig! Freezing despite the mount moving and then suddenly displaying a rush of images. I have downloaded the latest driver and stable OS so I'm guessing it is this USB power issue. Last night when I got back, I went into the power settings and disabled the 'reduce USB power on battery' function, but won't get a chance to try it for a while. Is that likely to be the answer and would I be better using my Mac instead? 

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Keith

[MartinB]

On 30/03/2019 at 09:32, Radec said:

Did this issue receive any input from QHY?

I recently acquired a Polemaster and have suffered the self-same problems using a laptop with W10 on battery power.

It only ever worked properly once - last night at a public outreach event where I was demonstrating the set-up routine it behaved like a pig! Freezing despite the mount moving and then suddenly displaying a rush of images. I have downloaded the latest driver and stable OS so I'm guessing it is this USB power issue. Last night when I got back, I went into the power settings and disabled the 'reduce USB power on battery' function, but won't get a chance to try it for a while. Is that likely to be the answer and would I be better using my Mac instead? 

Any help much appreciated

Thanks

Keith

I solved the problem by using a powered usb hub.  Prior to this I was connecting the usb directly to my mains powered laptop so wouldn't have thought power would have been an issue but it was!  Works perfectly now.

 

[Radec]

Thanks Martin.

Iit sounds like the USB power saving on battery modification wont work, if yours wouldn’t even work on mains power!

What a pain as I don’t have a powered usb hub.

might get a chance to try again tonight - I’ll report back if I do.

[Radec]

Last night luckily gave me another chance to use the PM. 

This time, it was better, but still displayed some hesitation in imaging. For example, the instruction to move the mount 30 degrees shows the stars stuttering rather than moving smoothly, but the worst is when adjusting physically to get Polaris in the circle - it suddenly jumps, which makes it tough to get right.

I really don’t want to go down the line of powering a usb hub I don’t actually need.

[MartinB]

33 minutes ago, Radec said:

Last night luckily gave me another chance to use the PM. 

This time, it was better, but still displayed some hesitation in imaging. For example, the instruction to move the mount 30 degrees shows the stars stuttering rather than moving smoothly, but the worst is when adjusting physically to get Polaris in the circle - it suddenly jumps, which makes it tough to get right.

I really don’t want to go down the line of powering a usb hub I don’t actually need.

That's a shame, it's a very annoying issue.  The polemaster responded better for me when using sharpcap but still not perfect.  You can test it during the day as well and also worth trying with Sharpcap.