ZWO camera direct control?

[Ron_Kramer]

I’ve used ASI ASCOM to control the 1600MMC. I know many requested direct control and I see it was added? I installed a ZWO driver and…

1. why is the wrench BLACK when selecting the ZWO camera?

2. After working for a bit - I get this error. (pop up) Connection error, "Erro connecting to ZWO camera! Index was outside of the bounds for the array?

I actually can’t connect either way right now.

[Lex]

Hi Ron,

I just was checking the forum about that issue. Currently I am struggling too with that problem. I tried everything imaginable, nothing works. The cameras simply show black screens after some exposures. There is one strange thing, the ZWO´s work in all other Applications that I owned already previously.
For SGP I do run the V3, can´t say if it worked under 2.x.
None of the control plugins for the 1600mmc works, be it native or ASCOM.

Very best and CS from Luxemburg!

Lex

[Lex]

Afterburner,

your mentioned connection error also happens quite often on my I5 4c, 8gb DDR3, SSD and USB3.0.Solving it by unplugging/plugging the cam…

CS,

Lex

[Jared]

why is the wrench BLACK when selecting the ZWO camera?

Because there are currently no settings on the native implementation. For the most part I’d recommend using the ASCOM driver unless you just want to play with the native driver.

Thanks,
Jared

[astrojoe]

It is not just a matter of playing with the native driver. Jeez, this is supposed to be a major upgrade. I have a ASI 094 which was working with version 3. Then the ASCOM driver stopped working and did the endless download looping. Switched to the native driver and it worked. Then it didn’t. Now nothing works.

Given that ZWO’s ASI cameras must be a major part of the camera market and a huge help in selling SGP, it would be nice if this stuff worked.

Really tired of unplugging things, rebooting, reinstalling drivers, on and on.

I’d surely pay a lot more money to get this thing to work.

Ugh.

[Chris]

I’d surely pay a lot more money to get this thing to work.

Yet there’s continual pressure to reduce the cost of software, even of SGP that’s already pretty cheap.

[hxpi]

I tried to use the native driver in PHD and ASI(1) driver in SGP at the same time and that didn’t work. It doesn’t work in reverse either. I can only use the ASI(1) and ASI(2) drivers for both cameras to work at the same time. I suspect the native driver and ASCOM drivers were never intended to be used at the same time!

Ciao,
Mel

[Ron_Kramer]

I could be wrong as I don’t follow here that closely. But If I recall right. I remember seeing the ASIcam direct driver being touted as part of 3.x. And the reason for the native driver was to allow us to change driver settings in a sequence. (changing gain during a sequence?)? I now have two ASI cameras. I hope to image with the cameras side by side. Hoping that won’t be a issue.

[Chris]

ASCOM drivers tend to be fairly simple, all they do is convert commands using the ASCOM specification to commands to a device specific driver. This is known as a façade. This is particularly the case with cameras where all that’s needed is to communicate with a camera specific driver.

Direct control from SGP does the same thing, the SGP direct control driver connects to the same camera device driver and sends the same commands. Most of the complexity should be in the camera driver or SGP.

What this means if that direct control may make very little difference. For the most part the same software is used so if there are problems they will still be there.

Using two cameras at the same time is another can of worms. The camera control software has to be written to allow for this at all levels, from the camera drivers, through the ASCOM (or direct) interface. I’ve done ASCOM drivers for a couple of cameras and it’s not at all easy.

[Lex]

Hi guys,

I have really been confronted to this issue several nights, really wasting precious imaging time.
As my choice is SGP I really want this to work. As mentioned the native control was also one of my personal decisional points go the way of sticking to SGP by upgrading to V3.
Sadly I do not understand why all “other” software is working flawlessly?

Hopefully this can be solved…

CS

Lex

[Ron_Kramer]

SGP gives me an error now when I connect the camera. And yes - all other software using the direct driver works fine. I’ve recently been reduced to using ASIcap for recent acquisitions.

check it out.