I just downloaded the new QSI ASCOM drivers (v1.0.0.4) as well as SGP v3.1.0.295 and installed both. If you are using QSI cameras you will need to update both the camera selection to “QSI Camera 2” AND the filter wheel selection to" QSI Filter Wheel 2" in your “Equipment Profiles” (ALL of them) and in the Control Panel for ALL your sequences.
I completely overlooked the Filter Wheel issue and wasted a bunch of time trying to figure out why my filter wheel would not connect.
Charlie
Charlie, do you know what has changed with the new drivers? I am always wary of upgrading things that are currently working properly without there being any obvious advantage to upgrading! As you know, it’s all a delicate house of cards!!
A while back, I wrote a small utility to test ASCOM camera features and the previous version of the QSI ASCOM drivers (v1.0.0.1) had a handful of problems: could not set the gain; could turn on cooling but not turn it off; could not control the “fast readout” option (download speed); could set the CCD temperature down but could not warm it back up.
I have not had a chance to run my utility against the new drivers but will try that shortly. I did notice that after installing the new drivers, I can no longer connect to my QSI683 with the original (native) drivers written by Ken and Jared. Since the native drivers work just fine, you might want to wait for some more testing of the new QSI drivers before installing them.
Any software that is ASCOM only will want to upgrade but apps that have native QSI support might not see any benefit – Ken or Jared will need to advise all of us about that.
Charlie
Ok, thanks. I’ll see what K&J have to say. Please keep the thread posted with your progress and any advantages or problems you come across. Thanks.
Did some more testing and found two issues:
You still cannot set the gain via ASCOM although it reports the gain correctly; interestingly, Gain=0 is high gain and Gain=1 is low gain.
You need to use the “Camera Setup” dialog box to set the gain manually; however this will apply to everything the camera does; ie, all binnings; AFAIK
There is a side effect to using the “Camera Setup” dialog box – after you close it, attempts to connect to the camera fail. So, you have to open it; set the gain; close it and end your app. Then restart the app; the gain is retained. There may be a way around this but I don’t know what it is.
As far as turning off the cooling and doing a warm up – I discovered that if you disconnect the filter wheel first, access to the camera is lost. It looks like disconnecting from the filter wheel also disconnects from the camera. Doing the “cool down” first and then disconnecting the filter wheel works. This may have always been true but I did not understand that before.
So, it still seems like staying with the native SGP drivers is a good idea unless Ken and Jared have put in a work around for these issues.
Charlie
Does the new QSI driver have native driver as well or just ASCOM only?
Peter
Interesting, Charlie. Thank you for your research. It doesn’t sound as though there is any advantage to ‘upgrading’ the driver!
QSI has abandoned their native driver. The new universal QSI drivers are ASCOM only.
Not a terrible idea (at least for a while). Like all software, it will need its tires kicked for a bit. The legacy QSI drivers in SGPro have been stable for a long while.
Ok, it sounds like it is just a scene change rather than a functionality improvement. I guess that providing ASCOM drivers for QSI cameras means they will readily integrate with any ASCOM compliant software rather than requiring specific integration? Makes sense for QSI/ATIK moving forwards.
How to determine which drivers I am using for my QSI660 camera?
It seems that til now it is better to use the SGP drivers instead of Qsi´s so I would like to find out what is installed on my Win 10 Home PC.
Thanks in advance
Renan
I am not sure what does “SGP driver” mean? SGP developers do not really write device drivers, do they?
Can latest SGP beta still work with previous or last or legacy QSI native driver? I am not sure I want to be guinea pig testing latest QSI ASCOM driver right now until newest QSI ASCOM driver is very robust and reliable.
Peter
We do not write drivers. From SGPro’s perspective there are two kinds of “drivers” to us. Ones that wrap native device communication with an ASCOM interface and those that don’t. This means that, instead of ASCOM filling that role of talking to the native device, SGPro must do it. It is this that I refer to as the “SGPro driver”… The legacy QSI drivers had ASCOM in them, but they also extended the ASCOM standards to do their own things. Because of this, SGPro talks directly to the QSI driver. The new QSI drivers will see SGPro going through ASCOM.
Yes, SGPro doesn’t care. We didn’t remove any code, so if you have old QSI drivers installed, SGPro will still talk to them. If you install the new drivers, we will talk to those instead. The important point here is that the new drivers uninstall the old drivers so they cannot coexist!
“I am not sure what does “SGP driver” mean?”
That shows how lost I am…
Native SGP divers vs ASCOM drivers?
Thanks?
Thanks Ken for a detailed explanation.
Peter
I took the risk and installed QSI 1.0.0.4 driver in my non-astro computer and here are the results:
I still see legacy driver (7.4.1824.0) in Device Manager.
From SGP sequence window, I see the following Camera list under Equipment:
QSI Camera
QSI Camera 2
QSI CCD Camera
From SGP sequence window, I see the following Filter Wheel list under Equipment:
QSI Filter Wheel
QSI Filter Wheel 2
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
The above lists have different behaviors:
Then I uninstalled legacy 7.4.1824.0 driver and it shows:
QSI Camera
QSI Camera
QSI Camera 2
QSI Filter Wheel
QSI Filter Wheel 2
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
QSI camera and Filter Wheel will not connect at all for all QSI cameras and FW from the list.
I re-installed legacy 7.4.1824.0 and 1.0.0.4 drivers and now it shows the following:
QSI Camera
QSI Camera 2
QSI Filter Wheel
QSI Filter Wheel 2
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
It appears only “QSI Internal Filter Wheel” will not connect to “QSI Camera” or “QSI Camera 2”. “QSI Filter Wheel” and “QSI Filter Wheel 2” connects to both cameras (“QSI Camera” or “QSI Camera 2”).
It appears that BOTH legacy 7.4.1824.0 and 1.0.0.4 drivers need to be installed.
I then uninstalled BOTH legacy 7.4.1824.0 and 1.0.0.4 drivers and then installed just legacy 7.4.1824.0 driver and see the following list:
QSI CCD Camera
QSI CCD Camera
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
QSI Internal Filter Wheel
Everything from the above list connects just like before or original.
I think I will stick to legacy driver for now.
I am currently using SGP 3.1.0.295.
Peter
I have updated SGP to v3.1.0.294 and installed the QSI camera driver v1.0.0.4. I like that the new driver creates different entries in the equipment drop box. I could connect to the QSI 690 camera and its filter wheel. However, the filter wheel is not working. I cannot change the filters in SGP. Also, when I get the properties of the filter wheel, the filter list is empty and I cannot change it. I noticed that there is a new error file created in C:\ProgramData\QSI\ASCOM.QSI\Errors folder with the contents:
Exception
System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at CameraDriver.Core.VM.CameraSetupWindowVM.UpdatePixelMasks()
at Atik.Core.Tools.PerformAction(Action action)
Message
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
StackTrace
at CameraDriver.Core.VM.CameraSetupWindowVM.UpdatePixelMasks()
at Atik.Core.Tools.PerformAction(Action action)
Please advise.
I don’t think these drivers install properly. I have spent the day trying to get SGP3.1.0.300 to connect to my newly repaired QSI863 camera. I’ve had to go back to the 1.0.0.1 installer from QSI. With those old drivers it works fine but with the new ones it cannot connect at all. I do notice that SGP never shows anything other than a “QSI CCD Camera” in the camera selection list.
I’ve tried all combinations of uninstall old driver, reboot, uninstall from Device Manager, reboot, etc, and nothing works with the new drivers.
Has anyone else had this sort of issue?
Richard Sewards
Please ensure that you report these issues to QSI.
Are you installing the 1.0.0.4 “As Administrator”. Just went through a new installation of my QSI 583 and system would not recognize the driver(s); got the same error notice as you…
Tom W