Unable to activate an 'idle' camera to N.I.N.A

[abmwinnoch]

Hi, I've had NINA installed for some months now, but keep giving up on it because it never renders an image from any camera. Determined to get it working though! Everything works as it should with Sharpcap, PHD2 and any other imaging software I connect to my ZWO ASI294MC Pro. I even make sure these are all off before loading NINA just in case other programs are interfering. I have all the appropriate drivers installed (unless nina needs something unique that the other program don't?). It sees cart de ceil as well. Everything should be fine, but alas just a blank window when I try to view the camera output. Same goes for my guidescope camera. No image.

NINA says the camera is connected, but the 'status' shows 'idle'. How do I activate it? At one point when trying to run a sequence to see if that woke it up, I got an error message related to 'cannot find executable' or something like that.

Any ideas NINA users what is going on (or not going on) here? Thanks

[tomato]

If you get the banner up showing a successful connection and you can control the cooling on the camera then you should be able to capture an image. 
Have you got auto debayer and stretch set in the options menu?

If you set a 10 sec exposure and press the shutter button in the imaging window, do you see the progress bar fill up at the bottom of the screen?

[Jamgood]

Try lowering the USB Buffer in the camera driver settings?

[abmwinnoch]

2 hours ago, tomato said:

If you get the banner up showing a successful connection and you can control the cooling on the camera then you should be able to capture an image. 
Have you got auto debayer and stretch set in the options menu?

If you set a 10 sec exposure and press the shutter button in the imaging window, do you see the progress bar fill up at the bottom of the screen?

Yes to all the above. Everything behaves as if the camera is working, but no image; Just white with a faint logo in the middle. I'll take a screen-shot next time it's all set up. I then switch to Sharpcap and everything is working normally so no issues with the camera or rest of the set-up.

 

[abmwinnoch]

2 hours ago, Jamgood said:

Try lowering the USB Buffer in the camera driver settings?

I'll give that a go, thanks.

[david_taurus83]

Have you got the stable 1.10 version of NINA or the latest nightly 2.0? When in NINA, can you find the imaging tab? If you move any of the windows or tabs around its difficult to get them back to where they should be. When on the imaging tab, you should see some capture controls on the top right hand side and on the middle of the screen there should be some more tabs where you need to select Image.

[tomato]

A screen shot would be good, I’m not familiar with the faint logo that you report seeing on the screen.

[abmwinnoch]

Okay folk thanks for these pointers. Hopefully Tuesday looks like being at least partially clear so I'll have another go then and report back.

 

 

 

[abmwinnoch]

Okay so here are a few screenshots. One showing the main 'imaging' screen with the faint central logo I was talking about. Any ideas? I know it'll be something really simple!. Hopefully imaging again tonight (with sharpcap) as several weather apps predict a clear-ish night, so let me know if any specific screen shots I can take that would help further diagnose the issue. Thanks!

[scotty38]

The gain is pretty high but it's connected and working, and the cooler is on and going towards -15. What is the image supposed to be?

[abmwinnoch]

6 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

The gain is pretty high but it's connected and working, and the cooler is on and going towards -15. What is the image supposed to be?

The live sky ! I'm supposed to be able to see what the camera is outputting, right?

[scotty38]

13 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

The live sky ! I'm supposed to be able to see what the camera is outputting, right?

Yes of course but there are a  lot of variables in terms of target, exposure settings etc including focus too. On the imaging tab, if you're in focus and take maybe a 10 second exposure you should see something.

Not that it should make a fundamental difference to what the issue is here but I'd change the gain to say 121 so that just puts it in the "best" place of DR/Noise/Gain etc

Edited November 16, 2021 by scotty38

[abmwinnoch]

Okay, but should I not be able to see that there is some sort of input, even with a lens cap on there should be a black screen, right? If there's just a blue or white splash screen as my images show, then there's no input to image. Unless I'm totally misunderstanding how NINA works. But a quick google search shows that window should be filled with a camera output. Mine isn't, despite me knowing that the camera is working and outputting a focussed image.

[abmwinnoch]

5 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

Yes of course but there are a  lot of variables in terms of target, exposure settings etc including focus too. On the imaging tab, if you're in focus and take maybe a 10 second exposure you should see something.

Now you mention it, I did a trial exposure last week and that's when I got the message I mentioned in the opening post about not being able to find an executable. I'll try again tonight and get a screenshot of the error message.

[Clarkey]

The only time I have had any problems with NINA and the camera is due to a dodgy connection somewhere. So an intermittent USB fault. In some cases I have had the camera stuck in the 'idle' state but will not do anything. Sometime just disconnecting and reconnecting the camera cable has worked. Other times I have had to restart everything from scratch which is a real pain. Sometimes you can connect one of the simulated cameras then disconnect and reconnect the real camera and it seems to restart. Also, try going from live view to imaging can work.

This camera issue is the only real negative I have found with NINA (along with the meaningless error messages). However, once working the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks.

[abmwinnoch]

3 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

The only time I have had any problems with NINA and the camera is due to a dodgy connection somewhere. So an intermittent USB fault. In some cases I have had the camera stuck in the 'idle' state but will not do anything. Sometime just disconnecting and reconnecting the camera cable has worked. Other times I have had to restart everything from scratch which is a real pain. Sometimes you can connect one of the simulated cameras then disconnect and reconnect the real camera and it seems to restart. Also, try going from live view to imaging can work.

This camera issue is the only real negative I have found with NINA (along with the meaningless error messages). However, once working the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks.

Yes, this is the frustrating thing. I don't have any major issues using the combination of Sharpcap, PHD2 Cartes Du siel; they appear to get the job done as far as I can tell this early into my astrophotography journey. But many people extol the virtues of NINA, so I really want to try it! I'm not sure it's a connection issue though. Like I say, I can switch between NINA and other software all night long and I get a camera feed successfully from the other software and not NINA. It must be a NINA issue.

[Jamgood]

Can you not test it in the daytime on a distant object or even a blurry close object.

For the 294mc I use the defaults of 120 Gain and 30 Offset. Like I said before I did have some idle camera issues with APT, usually after a meridian flip, and dropping the USB down to 40 solved that for me. 

[abmwinnoch]

1 minute ago, Jamgood said:

Can you not test it in the daytime on a distant object or even a blurry close object.

For the 294mc I use the defaults of 120 Gain and 30 Offset. Like I said before I did have some idle camera issues with APT, usually after a meridian flip, and dropping the USB down to 40 solved that for me. 

Sorry where is that USB setting? I meant to try that and forgot.

[Jamgood]

5 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

Sorry where is that USB setting? I meant to try that and forgot.

USB Limit on the Camera page, under Gain and Offset. 

[Clarkey]

11 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

Sorry where is that USB setting? I meant to try that and forgot.

I have not done anything with this setting, but looking at a post on Cloudy Nights it would appear that there are problems with some kits using USB3. However, this was an other thread so may no longer be relevant.

[abmwinnoch]

Okay I can't see that setting whilst the camera is disconnected- must just pop up when connected so I'll give that a go later.

[abmwinnoch]

To be honest, I think I'm just going to give up on NINA. I was thinking last night as I was imaging with Sharpcap, that I just don't want to waste any more precious clear-sky time messing about trying to get it to work. I'm certainly not going to mess about with drivers that are working fine with other applications. If it ain't broke and all that. The Sharpcap/PHD/Cart du Siel trio seems to do everything I need. It would've been nice to have the choice of trying another application but if it fails at the first hurdle of getting an image to display then I'm not going to waste any more time on it. Thanks for everyone's help here.

[Jamgood]

22 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

To be honest, I think I'm just going to give up on NINA. I was thinking last night as I was imaging with Sharpcap, that I just don't want to waste any more precious clear-sky time messing about trying to get it to work. I'm certainly not going to mess about with drivers that are working fine with other applications. If it ain't broke and all that. The Sharpcap/PHD/Cart du Siel trio seems to do everything I need. It would've been nice to have the choice of trying another application but if it fails at the first hurdle of getting an image to display then I'm not going to waste any more time on it. Thanks for everyone's help here.

That's fair enough and I don't blame you to be honest. I've personally never had any success with N.I.N.A either. I've always successfully used APT and have been happy with it but I like to try new things. The first few times I tried N.I.N.A it just crashed when trying to start the camera. I've since tried it again and managed to get everything working but suffered from random crashes in the course of imaging sessions. APT just works for me and works well. I'll stick with what I know.

[Clarkey]

39 minutes ago, abmwinnoch said:

that I just don't want to waste any more precious clear-sky time messing about trying to get it to work.

I can understand the sentiment. It is the only downside I have had with NINA - spurious errors or connection issues. When it is working it is excellent, but if this is a problem there are plenty of other options. Let's face it, AP is challenging enough without adding software issues.

[Viktiste]

I think your camera is connected ok. Here is is how my ASI 1600mm looks like when connected in NINA:

 

And here is how my imaging screen looks like:

 

It looks to me like you have "lost" the windows layout under the imaging section. Try to toggle these buttons on/off:

Edited November 17, 2021 by Viktiste