I am having a problem with my QHYCFW running in SGP. The wheel is USB connected, COM3, using SGP, with ASI1600 camera. This combination has been working perfectly for over a year, then suddenly SGP cannot select certain filter spots on the wheel. I can drive the wheel fine with a Serial Port Utility, and select each port using COM3 addresses 0,1,2,3,4 for slot 1 2 3 4 5.
I have been imaging with this manual configuration for a few weeks now and while it works, it is a pain as SGP cannot change fitlers in a sequence because it cannot address some wheel ports. I have to make sure I don’t select the QHYCFW from the equipment list in SGP, and just use the Serial Port Utility.
Any ideas on how to fix this? It is clearly not a filter wheel problem, as the Serial Port Utility can drive it just fine.
ASCOM diagnostics find nothing. I have tried reloading the SGP Equipment profile for the QHYCFW, and defining the filter list again. Everything seems correct in the SGP Equipment profile, yet when a sequence calls for a fitler change to certain wheel addresses it simply stops. No repsonse from the wheel, because it never saw an address change from SGP.
GO into the ASCOM driver and define the filters. In all probability there are only 5 defined, just change that to 7. My best guess… Bruce Morrell Astrofactors
Brice, thanks for your suggestion, but i should point out that it is a five position wheel, and the ASCOM definition box is exactly the same as it always has been. The filter wheel has worked for over a year exactly as setup, nothing has changed. It never had seven positions defined. My hunch is that there is an internal SGP addressing problem, as in hex, one bit missing would explain the inability to address all five ports. The wheel works perfectly driven by the Serial Port Utility, so it has to be an SGP problem.
I would suggest you post this question on the QHYCCD forum as well. Are you using the first gen filter wheel?? or second? specify when you post. I always test using ezycap first, if there is any problems. Post your results on using ezycap. Also specify which version of ascom as well, I don’t know if that makes a difference either. Just some thoughts… Bruce
Bruce, i have spend a considerable amount of time with QHY support debugging this problem, as the filter wheel was still under warranty when this occurred. Part of that interaction with QHY involved replacing the firmware, ASCOM driver, testing the wheel independently from SGP using Serial Port Utility, etc. It is not the filter wheel, it is not ASCOM, it is not my cabling, powered hub, etc. Simply SGP is not sending the correct addressing to the filter wheel. The SGP equipment definition is correct, nothing has been changed in SGP regarding filter wheel setup and definition since before when it was working fine. It has just decided to drop a bit from the address it sends to the wheel.
It maybe fixed. I reinstalled ASCOM 6.3, and downloaded Frank’s QHYCFW2 driver. The driver install deleted the old driver version. First try with SGP did not work, but after rebooting the laptop and selecting and setting up the wheel, it did connect. I tried cycling through all the filter positions and it is now selecting them all again. The final test will be an imaging session but it looks much more promising. Perhaps SGP was asking for the correct filter as defined in the sequence, but the driver corruption was messing up the pick. More after a live test.