Something strange happened

[Starwiz]

If you could change one thing to remove some of the frustrations of deep sky imaging, what would it be and why would you choose to improve USB connections reliability? 

I began setting up my imaging run last night which took two hours because of connections reliability.  I finally got the imaging run going with 360s SII frames and waited to check the first frame came out OK.  The imaging camera, my ASI1600mm-Pro wouldn't download the first image.  I checked everything and in PHD2 I noticed that the guide star looked a lot smaller than when I set it running.

What had happened was, my guide camera had disconnected and PHD2 had grabbed the main imaging camera and started guiding from this.  Very weird.   After fixing the connection and updating the camera in PHD2,  I had to shut down APT and reconnect.  It ran fine until about 3 in the morning when I think a similar problem must have occurred as it was still trying to download an image when I went back out at 5 AM.

John

[Tomatobro]

I run one laptop to manage the mount, navigation and guiding and another for the imaging camera. The mount control laptop is a used £70 win 7 version and works flawlessly, first time every time just like an Anvil. The imagining laptop is not quite as reliable but near enough.

I keep looking at ASIair pro to replace the mount laptop but still undecided.

I have seen that when both the imaging and guiding are on a single laptop when both download images together  then a conflict seems to occur and its PHD that looses its guiding camera but it usually re-establishes its camera connection after the camera timeout setting limit is reached.

 

[Starwiz]

1 hour ago, Tomatobro said:

I run one laptop to manage the mount, navigation and guiding and another for the imaging camera. The mount control laptop is a used £70 win 7 version and works flawlessly, first time every time just like an Anvil. The imagining laptop is not quite as reliable but near enough.

I keep looking at ASIair pro to replace the mount laptop but still undecided.

I have seen that when both the imaging and guiding are on a single laptop when both download images together  then a conflict seems to occur and its PHD that looses its guiding camera but it usually re-establishes its camera connection after the camera timeout setting limit is reached.

 

Thanks.  I have two laptops although one is quite old, but I'll give it a go.

Yes, I was seeing PHD2 losing the guiding camera, then reconnecting last night so it sounds like it could be the same problem you've seen.

John

[nigelg]

Open Devise Manager and check all devises unchecking Power Management. I have had it closing down a device during a long exposure.

[Aramcheck]

3 hours ago, Starwiz said:

If you could change one thing to remove some of the frustrations of deep sky imaging, what would it be and why would you choose to improve USB connections reliability?

If I could change one thing, it would be my location. I've not had any issues (yet) with USB reliability, but neighbours lights and general light pollution / sky brightness is something I'd love to be able to sort out.
Cheers
Ivor

[Starwiz]

4 hours ago, Aramcheck said:

If I could change one thing, it would be my location. I've not had any issues (yet) with USB reliability, but neighbours lights and general light pollution / sky brightness is something I'd love to be able to sort out.
Cheers
Ivor

That's under your control.  Move to mid Wales.  🤣

Cheers

John

[Starwiz]

6 hours ago, nigelg said:

Open Devise Manager and check all devises unchecking Power Management. I have had it closing down a device during a long exposure.

Thanks, I'll have a look.

John

[Starwiz]

7 hours ago, Tomatobro said:

I run one laptop to manage the mount, navigation and guiding and another for the imaging camera. The mount control laptop is a used £70 win 7 version and works flawlessly, first time every time just like an Anvil. The imagining laptop is not quite as reliable but near enough.

I keep looking at ASIair pro to replace the mount laptop but still undecided.

I have seen that when both the imaging and guiding are on a single laptop when both download images together  then a conflict seems to occur and its PHD that looses its guiding camera but it usually re-establishes its camera connection after the camera timeout setting limit is reached.

 

I just thought.  If you're using one laptop to control guiding and another for imaging, how would dithering work?

John

[Tomatobro]

Although I have not used it I think that dither is controlled by PHD and not the imaging laptop.

[Starwiz]

1 minute ago, Tomatobro said:

Although I have not used it I think that dither is controlled by PHD and not the imaging laptop.

I think it works that APT sends a command to PHD2 to tell it to dither, so I think this would be a problem if both were running on different laptops.

APT needs to do this as PHD2 doesn't know when the imaging frame has been completed.

John

[spillage]

Sounds like a possible ascom thing or  a usb issue. Have you made sure it is all up to date. I had this a while ago in sgpro then it just stopped happening.

I is the image capture software that tell phd to dither and when, it then waits for the dither to finish and guiding to settle and then continues imaging.