Capture Plan Freezes Cannot Abort

[pawkspace]

Hello,

I have been experiencing a weird issue were the capture plan will run flawlessly anywhere from 10-20 minutes and then it'll freeze and I can't abort. I end up having to restart the software. In my capture plan, I have (4) exposures and the last one has a delay of 15s. This is of course with "loop" activated. I was hoping to use this during the duration of the eclipse for a timelapse.

Here is the log:

20:56:40  Licensed to pawkspace
20:56:40  Processor Affinity
20:56:40  BackyardEOS 3.5.0 RC7
20:56:47  Attempting to connect camera...
20:56:47  Canon drivers 'Canon\' initialized.
20:56:49  EOS-R8 CONNECTED!
21:01:36  Imaging session started.

 

[pawkspace]

I had no idea I had onedrive enabled! Gotta love Windows...

So, it looks like it was a cable thing. Swapped out usb-c cables for a shorter one and that did the trick.

Thank you for your help!

[astroman133]

There is the "log summary" which is what you have provided. This is displayed on the main BYE screen. Then there is a much more detailed log that is written to disk throughout a session. It is written to the BACKYARDTEMP\Logs folder under a date subfolder.

Seeing one log file that was written during a session that "froze" may be useful. However, I would not provide it unless asked by Guylain.

The Canon EOS SDK software library that BYE uses is very sensitive to even momentary communications glitches so what you are reporting could be due to a cabling issue such as loose connection or flaky cable. This can cause the SDK to hang and never return control to BYE, which causes BYE to hang. Changing your cabling to provide strain relief to the USB cable at the camera may be useful. You could also try a short, new, known good USB cable as a test.

It might also be useful to know where you are saving your images (to the PC, to the camera's memory card, or both). Are you saving RAW, JPG, or both?

Is the camera attached to a lens or a telescope? Also, if you have a lens on the camera and the lens is set with autofocus enabled, it may be trying and failing to get into focus. No picture will be taken in this case until the field of view is in focus. This will also cause BYE to hang because it is never getting an indication that the exposure completed and it is ready to take another image, or an image is ready to be downloaded.

The more detail that you can provide, the more quickly a solution can be found.

Thanks!

 

[pawkspace]

Thank you! I am saving solely to the camera's SD card. I'm only saving RAW. I was saving RAW+JPG and it would freeze about 4 minutes into the session. I also went into advanced settings and clicked the button for "maximum stability." The camera is attached to a Canon ef lens. The camera has an rf-ef adapter on. I believe I had AF turned off, but I'll double check. I'll also try a shorter cable.

I can definitely post that log file if you want it.

[astroman133]

I would wait for Guylain to ask for a log file and then follow the pinned post in the How-to's Forum to email it to him, rather than post it here.

In the meantime you could remove the lens and put on the body cap, and then run your capture plan. You may have to change the setting on some cameras that will allow the camera to take images with no lens attached. If this doesn't eliminate your issue, it would tend to point at some other cause than focusing.

[admin]

 

Send me the log file.

 

 

 

[pawkspace]

I sent the log files, thanks!

 

Astroman, thanks! I'll look into that as well.

[admin]

Got the log file, I see nothing abnormal.

This said, you are saving your images to onedrive. Should try and pause onedrive and see if this makes a difference.

 

[astroman133]

Thanks for letting us know.

[admin]

12 hours ago, pawkspace said:

I had no idea I had onedrive enabled! Gotta love Windows...

So, it looks like it was a cable thing. Swapped out usb-c cables for a shorter one and that did the trick.

Thank you for your help!

Yeah, that auto-onedrive backup drives me crazy at times to. It's always the first thing I make sure is disabled with every new windows setup I do.