Hi, trying out SGP in favor of my current life with MaxIm.
While setting up a new laptop for testing, plus some new imaging equipment, I ran into trouble that isn’t really caused by SGP.
Could really use a little input on how to best resolve “driver problems by design”, possibly by ditching equipment.
The easy fix would of course be seeing a message like “yes, ASI native support is soon in beta”. Like the different native ASI drivers in FireCapture.
Anyway, running the SGP Equipment Profile Manager, after selecting “ASI Camera (1)” or “ASI Camera (2)”, I can select camera/gain/offset/USBspeed. Problem is that these settings does not save properly, and SGP always end up imaging with my ASI174MM that was intended as my new guidecam, getting ID0 in the selection list, never being able to save and use my ASI1600MMC which has become ID1. These IDs are the same no matter which order I physically connect cameras.
Asked the ZWO-forum, nothing yet: zwoug.org - This website is for sale! - zwoug Resources and Information.
Thing is, even if I get things working in some uncontrolled way, I will not trust this odd ZWO/ASCOM driver architecture. I simply need to have a stable environment when going long distance mobile imaging.
The ASI174MM I received had a ruined sensor surface, so this is my opportunity of taking immediate actions.
Anyone fully happy with dual ASI driver and actually using two ASI cameras, for capture and guiding?
Experiences saying I should move on and get a “proper guidecamera”? That is, at least a separate driver.
(Well, have a spare original Lodestar but wanted a bigger chip this time.)
I will be watching this thread with interest since I just purchased an ASI071MM-Cool to go with my ASI120MM-S guide camera. I would also love to see native ASI camera support in SGP.
I use 2 ASI cameras on my setup. Can’t speak about Maxim but with PHD2 on the connection window It knows that 2 of similar type of cameras are connected.
With both cameras connected to your laptop, In that same ‘Connect Equipment’ window in PHd2, choose [ASI camera 2] then click the settings icon and in the ASI driver window there will be a drop down menu to choose which camera you want for guiding. If you have a profile in PHD2, it remembers which camera you choose as the guide camera.
Then in SGPro on the sequencer window, in the Equipment list under ‘Camera’, choose [ASI camera 1]
Save sequence as profile in SGPro and it remembers which camera is which. To verify which camera SGPro is using as the imaging camera, (again with both cameras hooked to laptop) click the settings button for Cameras and the ASI driver pops up. Just make sure the Driver window is for the imaging camera.
There may be a simpler way, but this is how I set it up. Only needs to be done once
Yes, this is what I did. No problem with guide camera setup from PHD2.
But setting up the imaging camera and saving the SGP equipment profile simply fails.
The settings are always lost in for the “ASI Camera (X)” that is set for SGP camera. (SGP remembers “X” though)
So all imaging is done with the guide camera. For instance, when running the Flats Calibration Wizard.
Now that I think of it this is obviously all caused by ZWO’s sloppy programming of the ASI ASCOM Driver. Of course not a problem if you run just one ASI camera at the time, but with two the camera selection within the ASCOM driver setup need to work, and will be at risk in every update.
ZWO has absolutely no doc on the dual driver setup, maybe meant to be a no-brainer.
Anyway, I don’t want to complicate my own setup into falling apart every now and then.
Note to self - to stay out of trouble:
Native camera drivers for all controlling software? All well.
If not: Separate ASCOM drivers for all cameras? All well.
If not: Don’t connect two cameras at the same time, using the same unified ASCOM driver. Don’t buy, or get rid of one of them.
The SX Ultrastar Mono should definitely be a good guidecam replacement for the ASI174MM, for rather trouble-free OAG use. But at what cost, just for guiding! (need some minutes to swallow that one)
IIRC, I installed 2 different drivers for each ZWO camera.
I had installed one for my 174mm cool then when I got the 1600mm cool, I installed another one. Maybe that’s how I was able to choose between camera drivers in PHD2.
Could you try connecting the guide camera first with PhD then SGP should choose the one that’s left?
I remember having the same trouble but as I said after I set it up once, I didn’t have to do it again until I used the New Profile Wizard in PHD2.
Edit: actually I see ZWO only has 1 driver for all cameras. I’ll see if I can take a closer look at my setup to see what I did.
I have plainly installed and upgraded a number of laptops with astro-software, and never messed up the ASCOM installation.
I did upgrade the ZWO drivers once on this laptop, and upgraded to ASCOM 6.3 now that I think of it.
Maybe the latter toppled over the ZWO ASCOM drivers…
Anyway, I really want to try out SGP as soon as it clears up, so this time I swallowed the pill and just ordered the SX UltrastarM. Of course, at a crazy price (not so bad some places in Europe though…), but then again there’s crazy temperatures during my mobile nights
I just started to have the exact same issue and came to the same conclusion Olav did - it is easier to go to an Ultrastar for guiding. I love SGP and I am sure the issue is with the ASCOM install or the ZWO driver but it is still frustrating!
