woodblock Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 Does anyone use a ZWO ASI camera with Astro Photography Tool (APT)? Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GazAstro Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 Hi Steve, yes ... I use a 1600mm with APT. I use the ascom driver as I had some issues with dropped frames early on but the drivers have been updated several times since then but I stick with ascom as it worked for me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodblock Posted March 31, 2022 Author Share Posted March 31, 2022 Thanks, I suspect that the problem might be to do with transfer rate over USB. My laptop has only USB2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TerryMcK Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 Hi Steve. That would probably be it. My 120mm is the mini one which is USB2 only. They do make one with a fatter body which is USB3. You may have to upgrade the laptop. Amazon sell lots of refurbished ex office laptops with a full warranty full of USB3 ports for quite modest prices. You don't need a super duper mega processor one for imaging. A lower spec CPU say I3 or I5 and 8GB of RAM are more than adequate. All my astro cameras are USB3 and the quicker bus works well. Just as a side node I don't use Windows machines anymore for acquisition and prefer to use Raspberry Pi4's with Astroberry/INDI/EKOS on board. That may be an alternative. Or the ASIAir which you can control from a tablet or even a mobile phone. Everything is built into that device. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GazAstro Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 Interestingly I use my 1600mm on usb 2 as I find it's more stable 🙂 If I'm doing 3 minute subs, It has plenty of time to transfer the data. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GazAstro Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 Just connected the 120mm via usb2 cable, fires up APT and tried both ascom and ZWO drivers ... Set a 15 X 20 second plan and they both worked ... But ! Wouldn't save the first image, ok on subsequent subs. Suspect it's as there is no buffer / ram on the 120 as it's fine on the 1600. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodblock Posted April 1, 2022 Author Share Posted April 1, 2022 After a bit more investigation I found that the problem occurs when I try to use Live View. Occasionally it has worked but mostly it stops with "Can't save the image" error. Once that has occurred then the camera won't work even with a single shot. However if I disconnect, unplug the camera then plug it in again the single shots are ok and I've run it with 1 second exposure, 1 second waits for 100 exposures without any problem. It seems what happens is that the transfer rate for liveview is too low so it crashes and once that happens the camera is left in some kind of error state which it won't recover from until I reset it. I can probably work with that. I use live view for initial focussing so I'll have to work around that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GazAstro Posted April 1, 2022 Share Posted April 1, 2022 You could try binning the file in liveveiw, it will give a much smaller file size ... Worth a bash ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
woodblock Posted April 1, 2022 Author Share Posted April 1, 2022 I found a bit more. In APT under Liveview one of the settings is a box called "Video Liveview". If that is ticked then liveview doesn't work and also it seems to screw up the camera as mentioned before. If unticked then LiveView works ok. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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