I heard back from ZWO about this. Sounds like an incompatible combination of how their drivers handle temperature changes and how the Cool Down works in SGP. Essentially, I believe that you’ll need to disable the cool down option in SGP or have the time set to be 0 minutes.
When using the SDK the driver will not increase the power to the cooler if the new set temperature is very close to the existing temperature (I’m not sure what “close” actually means…but likely a couple of degrees to prevent wild spikes in power while attempting to stabilize the camera).
I have not seen this with my ASI1600 but they mentioned that they did replicate the same behavior with the 1600, so I’ll give that a shot again. Maybe because mine is the older “non-Pro”?
This is good news, thank you for looking into it. I have only seen this a couple of times with my 1600. It is also the non pro version. I chalked it up to finicky usb as it is pretty rare. The 294 on the other hand is basically every time. I’ll try the workaround when my scope is back in service.
Jared, Just wondering if this is on a bug list? I’m planning to buy the 294mc pro and just wondering if this is something that should be corrected or just control temp outside of SGP. Is there a recommendation on Ascom driver versus zwo driver?
I wouldn’t worry about it ehorton. I have used the 294MC Pro for months and it works fine as long as I set the camera to cool down when connected and set it to cool down in 0 minutes. That’s how I got around it anyway.
Now if I could just get my dither seeing to save instead of reverting to small dither each time that would be fantastic
Thanks. So i assume the 0 time is not causing it to cool too fast and freeze. I got the impression from jareds post the camera logic is controlling that and he is just sending an on or off
It causes no issue at all. I rarely see the TEC % go above 50% utilization. I just checked my settings and the one I have been using recently is set to -20 in 10 minutes. I guess it hasn’t been a problem over the past couple months on my configuration.
It is now 2020 and I have a new ASI 294 MC Pro and I have cooling issue. I don’t know if there was a solution in this discussion. I have read that SGP doesn’t actually control the cooling and it is done internal to the camera. I have read that switching profile of a 1600 to the 294 has solved the problem but mysteriously.
Are there any updates on this? I set mine to -15c at 19 degree ambient and start the cooling process and it gets stuck at -14.8 and sometimes it oscillates between -14.1 and -14.8.
I have also contacted ZWO tech support. I have not heard back from them but I am reading about similar issues on their forum. I can reproduce the issue when using NINA as well, so it is either the ASCOM driver or the hardware itself.
