Help! White lines downloading from Starlight Xpress CCD

[JeremyS]

So, my brand new HP laptop arrived and all works well. Except the Starlight Xpress SXVF-H9 CCD camera. This is a USB 2.0 camera running on a USB 3.1 port under Windows 10.
Most downloads have short white lines as shown in the screenshot. 

Observations:
1.    The lines are in different position each download and are occasionally absent
2.    I get problems with AstroArt, with SX software and with SharpCap (the last 2 give error code 1235)
3.    I have tried several different USB cables
4.    Both the laptops USB 3.1 ports give the same result
5.    No other programmes are running on the laptop and it’s in flight mode, so hardly any background activity

Terry Platt at SX has been very helpful. He has sent updated drivers and updated firmware.
He has suggested it might be caused by system interrupts (computer doing other tasks) during download. 

[Deadlake]

Presume you have another previous laptop, can you try and reproduce on that one?

[JeremyS]

It has worked fine for many years on a number of laptops under XP, @Deadlake

[david_taurus83]

Unrelated but I also had issues with ZWO cameras. The 1600MM (USB3) struggled with my USB2 laptop sometimes and my first 120MM (USB2) wouldnt work when I got a new USB3 W10 laptop. Once everything was finally USB3 every fault and niggle I had before disappeared.

Have you tried the camera in your older PC to see if its not actually the camera thats developed a sudden fault?

[andrew s]

@JeremyS did you connect the camera before installing the drivers? SX say you should not.  If you did disconnect , uninstall and try again.

Under device manager is it installed correctly?

I never got my sx camera to work with usb3 but I had spare usb2 ports.

I have a usb2 hub you can borrow to try if you want. 

Regards Andrew 

[JeremyS]

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

Have you tried the camera in your older PC to see if its not actually the camera thats developed a sudden fault?

Yes, works fine on older laptop

[JeremyS]

10 minutes ago, andrew s said:

@JeremyS did you connect the camera before installing the drivers? SX say you should not.  If you did disconnect , uninstall and try again.

Under device manager is it installed correctly?

I never got my sx camera to work with usb3 but I had spare usb2 ports.

I have a usb2 hub you can borrow to try if you want. 

Regards Andrew 

Thanks Andrew. Very kind. What exactly IS a USB 2 in this context?

When you say you didn't get the SX camera working, did it not function at all?

I'm kicking myself for not getting a laptop which has USB 2 as well as USB 3 ports.

[Deadlake]

5 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Thanks Andrew. Very kind. What exactly IS a USB 2 in this context?

When you say you didn't get the SX camera working, did it not function at all?

I'm kicking myself for not getting a laptop which has USB 2 as well as USB 3 ports.

USB 3 drops back to USB 2 protocol when a USB 2 device is connected, every device on the same hub is then running at USB 2 speed. You only get USB 3 in laptops (as far as I know) now. Looking above you've connected a USB3 cable to the USB2 camera, presume you've tried just a USB 2 cable (not USB3 compatible) to the laptop and camera?

[JeremyS]

1 minute ago, Deadlake said:

Looking above you've connected a USB3 cable to the USB2 camera, presume you've tried just a USB 2 cable (not USB3 compatible) to the laptop and camera?

I've used a USB 2 cable to connect the camera. A USB3 cable seems to have a different connector at the camera end which doesn't fit the USB socket on the camera.

[MarkAR]

39 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Yes, works fine on older laptop

Have a look at the COM Port settings on each laptop and see if they match, might be Baud rate difference. Just a guess as I've no idea really.

[JeremyS]

I thought I'd had a breakthrough. A good friend connected to my laptop remotely via Teamviewer and updated most of the drivers on the laptop

The lines disappeared after updating .NET Framework. I was able to download dozens if images with no (or occasional) lines, even in 1 x 1 bin mode which is normally the worst. 

Curiously, we can run 100s of images while my friend was online on via TeamViewer, but when he dropped the connection the lines come back instantaneously. Obviously not practical way forward! 

I know this sounds bizarre, but I wonder if there is a reason why is OK during Teamviewer links, but not after.

[andrew s]

@Jeremys I always got banding on the down loads. Usb3 uses different chip set to usb2.

I will post hub to you to try.

Regards Andrew 

Edited September 4, 2020 by andrew s

[JeremyS]

18 minutes ago, andrew s said:

@Jeremys I always got banding on the down loads. Usb3 uses different chip set to usb2.

I will post hub to you to try.

Regards Andrew 

Brill - thanks Andrew.

Terry Platt of SX says TeamViewer might have been slowing this down enough and the hub might have the same effect. Fingers crossed.

Jeremy

[andrew s]

41 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Brill - thanks Andrew.

Terry Platt of SX says TeamViewer might have been slowing this down enough and the hub might have the same effect. Fingers crossed.

Jeremy

In the post you should get it tomorrow.  It is powered but the two ports furthest from the PC connection work unpowered. I also included two ferrite cores that you can try on the USB cable and on the sx power cable. They open up with two small clips on the side. If the cable is thin enough loop it through twice.

If it works just keep it as I found f two more in my box of cables!

Hope it works .

Regards Andrew 

[JeremyS]

4 minutes ago, andrew s said:

In the post you should get it tomorrow.  It is powered but the two ports furthest from the PC connection work unpowered. I also included two ferrite cores that you can try on the USB cable and on the sx power cable. They open up with two small clips on the side. If the cable is thin enough loop it through twice.

If it works just keep it as I found f two more in my box of cables!

Hope it works .

Regards Andrew 

Thank you so much Andrew!

[JeremyS]

Thanks to @andrew s, the USB 2 hub between the laptop’s usb 3 port and the Camera has solved the problem.

You are a star, Andrew: thank you!

[tooth_dr]

What a great result 👍🏼