QHY5L-II-M and Mac Software

[niknak]

Afternoon folks.

Recently bought a QHY5L-II-M for guiding and perhaps a little planetary imaging.

I know It may have been asked before but has any else had trouble with this cam and OSX?

I'm running OSX 10.14 and have PHD2, EZCap and OACap installed. Both programs appear to be able to see the camera but a preview generates nothing.

Has anyone else had success? What did you use?

Any suggestions much appreciated.

[MarkAR]

Maybe have a try with KStars/Ekos. They have a QHY driver installed in the profiles and works with PHD2.

[JamesF]

My experience is that it isn't the most reliable camera in the world.  I just had a go with my current v1.7 code and with the QHY drivers it wasn't stable and when using the driver I wrote I got an error from the USB subsystem that appears to cause MacOS to give up on the device when I tried to change the exposure time

You can have  go with the current v1.7 code if you want though?  Let me know and I'll PM you a link.

James

[niknak]

17 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Maybe have a try with KStars/Ekos. They have a QHY driver installed in the profiles and works with PHD2.

Thanks Mark. Downloaded and tried but still no joy. Although I'm not sure the INDI server has set up right. It never seems to want to connect. Will play with it more later.

I see you list the Altair GPCAM in your sig. Is that with a Mac ?? Does it (Altair) work well with everything ??

[niknak]

11 hours ago, JamesF said:

My experience is that it isn't the most reliable camera in the world.  I just had a go with my current v1.7 code and with the QHY drivers it wasn't stable and when using the driver I wrote I got an error from the USB subsystem that appears to cause MacOS to give up on the device when I tried to change the exposure time

You can have  go with the current v1.7 code if you want though?  Let me know and I'll PM you a link.

James

Hi James. I have 1.6.3 at the moment but I'll PM you. In your experience .... what have been the most stable and useable cams for use with OAC?? Any recommendations for me to look at ?? What about the Altair units as Mark mentions above ?

[MarkAR]

1 hour ago, niknak said:

Thanks Mark. Downloaded and tried but still no joy. Although I'm not sure the INDI server has set up right. It never seems to want to connect. Will play with it more later.

I see you list the Altair GPCAM in your sig. Is that with a Mac ?? Does it (Altair) work well with everything ??

I think with Ekos it's picking the right drivers from the profile list and letting it cycle through the ports. Maybe also changing the Baud Rate might work if it doesn't connect. 

Yes its the GPCAM3 which is USB 3.  On my old MacAir I had to plug it in directly and not through the USB Hub, though I reckon that was down to the laptop. New MacBook Pro and everything connects through Hub fine. I could probably do some imaging with it as well.

Edited April 19, 2020 by MarkAR

[JamesF]

I've been fiddling with this problem this evening.

On Linux using the driver I wrote I can get a maximum 15fps (full frame) from the QHY5L-IIm with a USB Traffic setting of 41, but it does throw a USB overflow error whenever the exposure time is changed.  The QHYCCD driver seems to top out at about half that, but doesn't throw the error, suggesting that their implementation is somewhat different to mine.  I can't make the USB error go away with my driver though, and whilst that's not a major problem on Linux it does appear to be on MacOS because there the OS seems to lock up the device somehow when an overflow error occurs.  Sadly I'm not convinced that the QHYCCD driver is particularly stable on MacOS either

James

[AndyPS]

Hi All,

I am a newbie here, would love some guidance to see if you have had any luck with this. I have a newish Mac Book Pro, and recently purchased the QHY-II-M as a guide camera (have Saxon AZEQ6 GT Pro, Skywatcher BlackDiamond 100ed with a Canon 80D DSLR)

 

Trying to understand what recommended software could be used for having this all work together, it seems a bit of a nightmare to naviagte

 

Thanks in adavnce

 

Andy

 

[powerlord]

Im a complete mac household too.

Not sure for control I can help though - I use an asiair pro (well 2 of em, one on each mount).

frankly I'd recommend the same they are awesome.

For processing on mac, you have a few mac choices, but to open choices up I'd recommend getting vmware and a windows 10 install. It will make your choices much broader, and vmware is free now.

This is what I use:

stacking: DSS on windows. If you want a mac solution there is Sirl (Free), AstroPixel Processor (very not free) or Affinity Photo (basic, but it does it)

processing: starttools (not free, but very reasonably priced and great support), affinity photo (awesome image editing - better than photoshop and mac native with astro features)

planetary stuff: firecapture

planetary processing: PIP on windows, AutoStackeert on windows, Registax on windows.