A night of frustration! Please help! NINA, APT, PHD2 and ASCOM camera connections!

[oymd]

Yesterday night was miserable.

I had been using APT in the past with some success, but I was always annoyed with the poor layout and the dreaded BUSY hang, where APT would hang after a 10 second live view exposure, or after my first or second actual exposure sub.

It was also my first night of trying out guiding, and again, it was very very frustrating.

My laptop has 2 USB ports, one port is connected to the mount, and the other port is connected to the camera. Its not very powerful, but relatively new and 1 year old.

So, yesterday i decided to use my surface Pro 7 laptop, which is very fast, hoping that the BUSY issue with APT was a USB thing, but it was just the same.

I hope someone can guide me through what was the reason of all the issues yesterday night:

Gear: AZ-EQ6 Pro connected with EQ Mod. This connection was solid, and never dropped.

Cameras: 294 MC Pro and 120MM Mini. The mini NEVER dropped, but the 294 MC Pro was constantly hanging and after 1 or 2 subbs, would go into a BUSY state. I would then DISCONNECT, reconnect using the SHIFT key, and connect using the ASCOM drop box.

So, here's how the night started:

 

Fired up EQ MOD, connected scope.

Fired up NINA. I had prepared my surface before hand, and input all the details of the scope, mount, ASTAP, Astromnetry API key, weather API, etc.

Used IPOLAR to Polar Align.

Went to stellarium and slewed to IC 1396.

Connected the guider in NINA.

NINA connected to the 120MINI as the imaging camera, and was not sure how to fix this.

SO I opened ASCOM and forced a connection to the 120 Mini as the guide camera.

Opened PHD2 and was met with PHD wizard. Went through the whole steps, but kept getting all sorts of erroros. Dropped the exposure time from 5s to 2s, and was able to complete the dark library. Went through the looping etc, but again all sorts of errors.

So I closed PHD2, and disconnected the guider in NINA, just to see how can I get on with NINA and setting up and framing.

The IMAGING tab brought up the lots of smaller windows, and in the sequence small box, I tried to start LIVE VIEW by imaging 10 seconds on a loop. I also started the cooler to -5C. Cooling was fine, but the camera never brought up an image. I tried maybe 10 times, but always got a NINA error message that the camera failed for over 30 seconds to acquire an image!!

In frustration, I closed NINA, and opened APT.

This time, I ONLY connected to the 294MC Pro, and live view worked, so I quickly slewed to VEGA and fine tuned focus on my Esprit.

I closed APT, reopened and connected to 120Mini, and again fine tuned focus on my Evoguide.

Slewed back to IC 1396.

Tried plate solving in APT, and with all the 3 softwares required and downloaded, Plate solve 2 solved the live view image, but was not sure where the TRUNK was on my image?

Opened PHD2 and again went through the wizard, and for some reason calibration went fine, and it started guiding.

Set up imaging in APT, and started taking subs at 180s -5C.

2 subs in, and APT hangs with the BUSY error.

Disconnect and reconnect a few times.

This time 15 subs in, and again BUSY, and hangs and stops imaging.

I almost smashed the laptop against the tripod!!

Sorry, but as you can see, the night was a TOTAL MESS.

I think my issues that need sorting are:

1- How to properly connect the cameras in NINA or APT?

2- When I choose the ASCOM camera, why do I have ASCOM camera 1 & ASCOM camera 2 in my drop down, since each 1 & 2 have choices of choosing the 294MC Pro OR 120MM Mini

3- In NINA, the imaging tab on the left brings up the actual live view window on the right. To the right of that is the smaller imaging window, where you choose binning and exposure times. I accidentally closed that, and was not able to retrieve that window?

4- I'm pretty sure my issue are DRIVER and ASCOM related.

5- in APT, I keep seeing that the main imaging camera gets UNP:UGGED and REPLUGGED, and I hear the USB chime. But when its automatically plugged back, it does not work. I need to physically disconnect, and SHIFT reconnect, but then the cooling was interrupted, and sequence lost!

6- in NINA, GAIN was fixed to 200, no matter what I did in ASCOM or in any other setting. APT read my GAIN correctly as 120.

Phew....that's it!

Yesterday was very very frustrating, and would appreciate some help!

The surface Pro had a FRESH install of EVERY software, and was never used before for AP.

Drivers installed:

ASCOM platform 6.5

ZWO ASCOM driver

ZWO camera driver

Fresh NINA and APT

Fresh PHD2

Fresh stellarium etc

I managed over the course of 6 hours to take just 15 180s subs.

Attached one, and some screen shots I took of the guiding, which only worked with APT, but not NINA.

Why is the 294MC Pro continuously disconnecting?

Cable, USB, Camera problem?

 

Many thanks

 

L_2021-08-01_01-39-12_Bin1x1_180s__-5C.fit

[tooth_dr]

Nightmare. It may or may not be relevant but I’ve found it impossible to use my 120MM mini and 2600MC in APT together.  Lot of weird stuff happens - random disconnects and recently I connect to the 2600 and take an image with it, but the image size is that of the 120!

I’ve always had trouble with ZWO stuff and still of the opinion it is a bit flaky when you connect >1 camera.  I own several ZWO cameras - 120MM, 120MM-mini, 290MM, 178MM and a 2600MC, they are good cameras but software/driver-wise I'm on the fence in terms of compatibility.

[markse68]

probably not the issue as for me it meant not being able to connect to things at all rather than getting connection then hanging, but are you running apt/nina in admin mode? I have to to get ascom connections to work at all.

Mark

[bottletopburly]

Try running 3.88.2 APT BETA , run your issues past @Yoddha on Apt forum , there is a zwo sdk update in 3.88.2 

[oymd]

50 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Nightmare. It may or may not be relevant but I’ve found it impossible to use my 120MM mini and 2600MC in APT together.  Lot of weird stuff happens - random disconnects and recently I connect to the 2600 and take an image with it, but the image size is that of the 120!

I’ve always had trouble with ZWO stuff and still of the opinion it is a bit flaky when you connect >1 camera.  I own several ZWO cameras - 120MM, 120MM-mini, 290MM, 178MM and a 2600MC, they are good cameras but software/driver-wise I'm on the fence in terms of compatibility.

 

35 minutes ago, markse68 said:

probably not the issue as for me it meant not being able to connect to things at all rather than getting connection then hanging, but are you running apt/nina in admin mode? I have to to get ascom connections to work at all.

Mark

 

9 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

Try running 3.88.2 APT BETA , run your issues past @Yoddha on Apt forum , there is a zwo sdk update in 3.88.2 

Sorry to see that you have had trouble as well, but glad to see others with the same problems, as yesterday I was pulling my hair in anger, and started to feel like a total IDIOT.

Glad its not just me.

I will try the new beta version of APT, but I was hoping to avoid APT altogether, and USE NINA.

[oymd]

12 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

Try running 3.88.2 APT BETA , run your issues past @Yoddha on Apt forum , there is a zwo sdk update in 3.88.2 

Had a look, looks like APT 3.88.2 beta needs a key?

[bottletopburly]

13 minutes ago, oymd said:

Had a look, looks like APT 3.88.2 beta needs a key?

If you have the paid version just use the current key 

[nephilim]

Sounds like a right nightmare. I've just bought the Asiair Pro to control my AP sessions, works straight out of the box, everything connects first time, PA is a doddle, plate solves flawlessly & makes everything easy. I've only just started doing AP & last Sunday was my first session which went very smoothly indeed. Coincidently I was also imaging IC1396. This is 50x180 sec (with Optolong L-eXtreme). Theres far more detail to come out of it but my processing skills are very much at beginner level at the moment.

[david_taurus83]

Is your laptop USB2 or USB 3? I had issues when I first got an ASI1600. Had a bit of trouble like what you describe with image downloads hanging, flaky connections etc. When I finally upgraded my aging USB2 laptop to latest W10 USB3 laptop, all the issues went away. Also, I never used the USB hub on the back of the 1600 for the guide camera as it never worked properly. Always try to have each camera with its own USB port directly to PC.

[Paul M]

I had all these problems with Astroberry on a RPi4 and then Ubuntu on a mini PC, put it down to USB issues with ZWO cameras ( 120mm and 178MC) 

But I  never had a problem with APT on the same mini PC that I'd run Ubuntu on (with KStars/Ekos et al) and failed. Nor with my 9 year old Lappy.

The mini PC It's still my current at-the -scope  imaging machine and it's a low spec, generic Chinese SBC.

If I'd continued to have trouble I'd have binned the 120mm mini and chose a different guidecam. After 6 months of Astroberry and Ubuntu frustration my conclusion was that they can really foul up USB traffic. 

 

[oymd]

38 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Is your laptop USB2 or USB 3? I had issues when I first got an ASI1600. Had a bit of trouble like what you describe with image downloads hanging, flaky connections etc. When I finally upgraded my aging USB2 laptop to latest W10 USB3 laptop, all the issues went away. Also, I never used the USB hub on the back of the 1600 for the guide camera as it never worked properly. Always try to have each camera with its own USB port directly to PC.

It's a new Surface Pro 7, so yes, USB3. But I am connecting the 120MM Mini to the hub on the 294MC Pro.

I think I will try today WITHOUT guiding, and see if that solves the issues. If APT behaves well, then it must be USB traffic issues.

By the way, when using an external USB3 hub, does it matter if its POWERED or UN POWERED?

[oymd]

By the way, since this is my first time ever guiding, how was my guiding yesterday?

Are those figures and graphs OK?

[oymd]

Here's a DSS stack of the 13 usable subs from yesterday.

NO FLATS.

Can someone have a look and advise if, besides all the problems I had, the image is OK?

Autosave001.tif

[Budgie1]

A couple of things to try:

Make sure the USB ports on the laptop are NOT in power saving mode, if they are then turn it off in the laptop settings.

Depending on the distance between the mount and the laptop, if you're using a USB hub then it should be powered and USB3 with a USB3 active extension cable back to the laptop for best performance. Using a USB2 extension will only give you USB2 speeds.

If you're using the flat USB cable that came with the AIS294MC, try a different better quality cable. the supplied one's aren't the best and do cause drop-out issues. 

Check the drivers you're using. There is the ASCOM driver for ZWO cameras and also the ZWO default driver you can download from the ZWO website. Both should work fine but try both to see if one works better then the other.

I'm running the same cameras as you, though APT and PHD2, using a 15m UBS3 active extension cable powered off a Pegasus Pocket Power Box Advance but it used to be powered from a powered USB3 Hub at the mount. The laptop is an old ThinkPad with i7 processor running W10 Pro and I don't have any connection issues, and that's with the ASI120MM Mini connected to the hub on ASI294MC. I used to get the odd drop-out of the cameras but this has stopped since changing to better USB cables.

[kirkster501]

AP can indeed be very frustrating and very bespoke to the individual and their setup and their PC's foibles.  There are general things to check for that forums like this help with but much of it is tinkering, experimentation and eliminating things.  All made so much more frustrating in the UK by the fact we get so few clear nights that we do not want to waste half of them getting the rig to work.

Edited August 1, 2021 by kirkster501

[Starflyer]

I'd put money on it being USB related rather than driver related, the built in USB hubs on ZWO cameras are known to be flaky.

Good advice above, make sure power saving is switched off on your USB ports, use a better cable and a good quality powered USB hub are a good start.

You don't have to waste precious clear sky time troubleshooting these problems, you can have your cameras looping away in the daytime and look for problems that way.   USB disconnect problems can be extremely frustrating to track down, you do know it stands for 'Unreliable Serial Bus'? 😉

[newbie alert]

Sorry to hear of your woes,in APT   I've never had a camera hang or connection issue but looking on the fb page these things do exist with people that use either zwo guide cam and imaging cameras, or Altair and altair.. I know that Ivaylo has worked hard to eliminate these issues and running the lastest beta could be somewhere you could try..

One thing you could try is to to have the same thing plugged into the same ports everytime, and in you main page have it all auto connect..  and don't disconnect the camera by pulling the usb out, always disconnect on the tab first...

new usb cables could work

Seem like you have lots of programs open at the same time so the mount is connected in multiple programs, are you connected in NINA,stellarium  and APT at the same time?

[oymd]

2 hours ago, newbie alert said:

Sorry to hear of your woes,in APT   I've never had a camera hang or connection issue but looking on the fb page these things do exist with people that use either zwo guide cam and imaging cameras, or Altair and altair.. I know that Ivaylo has worked hard to eliminate these issues and running the lastest beta could be somewhere you could try..

One thing you could try is to to have the same thing plugged into the same ports everytime, and in you main page have it all auto connect..  and don't disconnect the camera by pulling the usb out, always disconnect on the tab first...

new usb cables could work

Seem like you have lots of programs open at the same time so the mount is connected in multiple programs, are you connected in NINA,stellarium  and APT at the same time?

Thanks for your input.

 

No, just APT & Stellarium, or NINA & Stellarium

[newbie alert]

23 minutes ago, oymd said:

Thanks for your input.

 

No, just APT & Stellarium, or NINA & Stellarium

Take it you use stellarium for pointing?

I use those rainy days for target searching and save the coordinates in my custom file in APT