PHD2 disconnects ZWO ASI 120MM Mini

[BUDA]

Hi All!

I have guiding problem with the following guider setup: 9x50 finder + ZWO ASI 120mm mini + PHD2.
The imaging scope is a 6' newtonian + canon dslr on a HEQ5, driven by a laptop via diy EQDIR cable.
When the mount is set up and running correctly, polar aligned and all... I connect the guider camera
and mount with phd2. All nice and easy, I run a calibration, then it starts to guide. All seems ok.

Then I am starting to take pictures. The first seems OK, then the second have the star trails...
I check phd2 and there is a message: the camera (ASI) did not take a picture for "xy" seconds so it is disconnected.
Grrr.... I reconnect try to set up a longer period for "xy" in the settings as mentioned in the message.
And all the same again and again. Whatever I add for connection timeout for the camera, it just reaches that
and disconnect the camera.
PHD + philips toucam has worked for me flowlessly. I changed to PHD2 because I gave myself a birthday present,
the little ZWO camera. (and PHD did not recognize it)
Do you have any idea what can be the problem? I will contact PHD2 help also, but maybe somebody had already
the same problem and figured out how to overcome. I am almost sure I make some dumb mistake in the PHD2
software settings, however I tried to change only what was needed.

[alexbb]

Hello!

Check the power management for your USB devices/ports and disable power saving for them. Maybe it's because of this.

[almcl]

Here are some things to try:

Make sure you are using the latest version of PHD2 ( 2.6.6 dev 1)

Try using the 'other' driver for the ASI120 mini (there are 2 ASCOM drivers and a ZWO native driver - can't remember at the moment which gives the better results, so swapping and seeing may be a good idea)

Try switching from 16 bit to 8 bit images

Post your PHD2 guide and debug logs over on the PHD guiding forum 

If you are connecting via a USB 3 port, switch to a USB 2 one

 

[david_taurus83]

Did you install the latest drivers for the ZWO camera prior to connecting it to your PC?

[BUDA]

Thanks for the quick help! Will try all (one by one) and give a feedback.

[BUDA]

Tonight I had the chance to give it a try. I disabled the usb power saving first, but I could not even start looping in PHD2. I started to worry, but as I chose the ZWO camera driver (not the ascom ZWO) everything went as a charm. Thanks again for the help!!!

[TerryMcK]

I too was getting mysterious disconnects during imaging sessions. In PHD2 an error message against the guide camera (ZWO ASI120MM) would say something like "An image has not been acquired after 17 seconds so the camera has been disconnected..retrying". Sometimes it would reconnect successfully other times the imaging camera (ASI183) would error in APT saying "waiting 30 seconds for download from camera".

I found that PHD2 would acquire whatever ZWO camera would respond regardless of whether it was already connected. They were both using ZWO ASCOM drivers.

After pulling my hair out over the last couple of days with my rig I am now using the ZWO native driver for the ZWO ASI120MM mini guide camera and the ZWO ASCOM driver for my ZWO ASI183. It seems to have settled down now 🤞.

It is so much easier with a DSLR 😁