USB Bus Crashes with BYEos-Canon 80D

[tgraves]

Greetings,  Could really use some help.

I'm chasing an issue which is pointing to BYEos but that is not confirmed.  It appears to be a conflict between between the BYE 80D session and the Ascom Celestron Mount driver.  Equipment as follows:

Celestron CGX Mount ( has the USB port on the Nexstar HC, not a serial port)  I have to run a USB Chip driver PL2303 to connect to the mount per Celestron.

Canon 80D

Polemaster PA system.

HP  I5 Laptop under WIn 7

Zwo 120mm Guiding cam, running PHD2.  The PHD is talking direct to the mount via the ASCOM Celestron Unified driver.  ( I don't use the ST4 connection from the cam so I get full position data back from the mount to PHD).

The problem is that either the ASCOM driver or BYEos freezes first and the other follows right after. PHD will then report guiding command failures.  In a few cases it has crashed the PC to the Blue screen of death with a USB Bugcode user error.

I've tested the ASCOM driver every way I can.  What leads me to suspect BYEos as a possible cause is I don't see this when using Nebulosity for capture.  On the other hand BYEos run stand alone to the 80D has never shown the problem.

BYEos Logs just stop with no error so I haven't attached.  Is it possible for BYEos to be sending something to the ASCOM driver even though I do not have any ASCOM interfaces set up in BYEos?

Windows and the crash dump point to a failure with USBEHCI.sys as one triggering event.

 

 

 

[tgraves]

I don't want to jinx myself here but some progress has been made.  I rebuilt Win 7 on the laptop.  The problem was still there.  

After using Camera simulation in PHD the problem went away, this led me to focus on the ZWO. I tried using an ASCOM driver for the ZWO in PHD even though I had triple verified the drivers were the latest from ZWO,  still no luck.

Win crash logs kept pointing to a USB hub controller  usbehci.sys, ,  win forums suggested the external device could cause this. 

So I went after the ZWO firmware and reloaded the recommended file , ASI120MM.IIC,  still no luck.

In the firmware tool download, I noticed another 120MM file,   ASI120mm-compatible.IIC.  I haven't found anything yet that describes what the the difference is.... but........it's working.  

I've run about 60 full size frames and flipped back and forth to frame and focus running at 50ms, and so far so good.

I have no clue why the Vista desktop would work, but the laptop would not,  possibly just sheer power.

Again, thanks for staying with me on this it has been very trying to say the least.  ( laptop almost went for a swim in the pool on an imaging night )

Ty

[astroman133]

No, BYE does not communicate via ASCOM unless you have connected it to a filter wheel, focuser, or mount.

From your description it seems as though your issue could be that the USB hub (internal) is becoming overloaded with the mount, guide camera, PHD guide commands, and BYE all on the same hub. I would suggest plugging PHD or the 80D into a port on a different USB hub. This would often be through a jack on the other side of the laptop.

[s3igell]

As Rick said, we see a lot of issues with USB Hub "Saturation".  Please provide some details of your specific USB Hub and Cabling Configuration.

Also, please provide details of which Function of BYE you are using when you encounter these Crashes - LiveView, Planetary, Imaging Plan (short or long Exposures).

And what Exposure Speed and Size are you running your ASI120MM within PHD2??  The ASI120MM is capable of some really Short Exposures with High USB2 Data Usage, but PHD2 usually only needs 2-3sec Exposures, and a limited ROI.

Some combo of these is at the Root of your USB2 Issues.

[tgraves]

I replaced the old ext. hub I was using with a new  j-Create JUH340. I've got less than 10 feet of cable when I set up and even less when I bench the whole setup.   I split the ascom-celestron mount app to a port direct off the laptop and then tried to to put the mount back on the hub and the 80D direct to the laptop.  No Joy...the ZWO is running 2 sec frames with a full 1x1 binning in PHD.  The laptop is a HP 8440p I5 with 4 gb RAM, so there should be enough horsepower there.  The Win 7 install is brand new, I wiped the machine clean and rebuilt it from scratch so I shouldn't have many gremlins lurking.  I did cut the resolution down in the 80D to 10 MP to offload some just for grins.  I haven't noticed a definite pattern in what I am doing when the freeze occurs but frequency seems to be in frame and focus and long exposure subs, I'm a little suspect of the internals being a cause due to the fact that Nebulosity does not freeze.  I downloaded the Win  SDK tools and if I'm smart enough I should be able get a trace with more detail...any thoughts on other logging I might try?

[admin]

This has nothing to do with computer horsepower.

If you plug the 80D directly into a computer USB port, do you still have the issue?

Regards,

[tgraves]

yes,  I have tried to run the 80D directly from a PC USB port.  I spent some time matching up time stamps on logs from windows and BYE and have attached the relevant ones.  The win logs related to the 4-26 event were really messed up,  it was a blue screen crash.  The 4-24 ones were a freeze event w/o a complete crash.  I did overlook BYE  log entries in my previous searches.   The win log appears to show the sequence of BYE hang,  then a .Net service error,  followed by the ASCOM-Celestron driver fail.

 

I do appreciate the review and help,  I really do like the BYE interface compared to others

  Thanks    Ty

BYE fail 4-26.txt

bye log 4-24.txt

bye-ascom-celestron fail.txt

[admin]

If you do not connect an ASCOM device to BYE does it still crash/freeze?

Regards,

[tgraves]

I forgot to mention I finished the nebulosity stability tests, so I will reconfigure the test bench back to BYE and try a ST-4 guiding config which will take the ASCOM-Celestron driver out of the picture

[tgraves]

we crossed responses....I am not connecting any ASCOM device in BYE.....Only in PHD for mount guide commands

[tgraves]

After trying a multitude of sequences I am able to reproduce the BYE app hang.  Win and BYE logs attached.  I have it set up with PHD set to use the ZWO st4 port for the guide connection to the mount.  No ascom celestron driver loaded. The hang occurs shortly after I start looping in PHD....frame rate 2 sec.  May try reinstall of apps next.

 

Ty

 

logfile-[20170427-18h46m16s592]-[1336]-2017-04-27.txt

no ascom- looping started in PHD.txt

[tgraves]

Oh,  I took the USB external hub completely out.  80d and ZWO have direct ports on the laptop

[admin]

Are they connected on USB ports on the same side of the laptop?  If yes they may be sharing the same internal USB bus.

Regards,

[admin]

I looked at the log file and this is no error, but you did go in Frame&Focus and then nothing in the logs.

This is a classic case of USB data saturation issue.  Simply to much data on the usb bus to process.  Try increasing the live view threshold in the setting dialog to slow down live view frame rate.  The default is 50 milliseconds, increase it to 250 an see if it makes a difference.

 

[tgraves]

yes they are on the same side and looking through the resources they have the same root hub..I had PHD loaded but idle.  I minimized BYE, brought up PHD and started looping.  When I returned to BYE to go to imaging  ( a normal imaging sequence ) it was non responsive.   I used task Mgr. to shut it down.  I'll try slowing it down.

Sure appreciate your time on this.     Ty

[admin]

No problem, glad to offer assistance.

[tgraves]

Unfortunately,  slowing the frame rate down did not help.  I don't want to resort to using my desktop as a hardware substitute,  at least not yet.  I'm doing a deep dive on the hardware and drivers with the Win SDK kit tools.  USBviewer has given me an accurate map of the root hub/ports.   Hopefully applying debugger traces and bandwidth usage monitors will tell the story.  If I do identify root cause or solution I'll post here for knowledgebase info.

Again   thanks for the help  Ty

[admin]

49 minutes ago, tgraves said:

Unfortunately,  slowing the frame rate down did not help.  I don't want to resort to using my desktop as a hardware substitute,  at least not yet.  I'm doing a deep dive on the hardware and drivers with the Win SDK kit tools.  USBviewer has given me an accurate map of the root hub/ports.   Hopefully applying debugger traces and bandwidth usage monitors will tell the story.  If I do identify root cause or solution I'll post here for knowledgebase info.

Again   thanks for the help  Ty

Keep us posted on your findings.

[astroman133]

My configuration is somewhat similar to yours and all my devices play nice with each other and operate normally. There are some differences, however. One difference is that my guide camera is a USB 2 StartlightXpress Lodestar. Another is that I have a fast quad core i7 laptop with all solid-state memory. All my devices communicate through a single USB 2 cable from the observing room to the laptop in the warm room (about 15 ft.). I use any of 4 imaging cameras (T5i with BYE or  QSI 583, ZWO ASI178, and QHY 10 Pro with my own camera control app), with no issues. I use ST4-guiding and connect to my mount from PHD2 as the Aux Mount. In addition to PHD2, I typically have the camera control program, AstroTortilla, and a planetarium program all connected to the mount while I image.

I mention this to get you to consider that your issue is with your PC, not with your USB load. It seems that many of the users who report USB bandwidth issues are using a netbook or other under-powered PC.

I hope that you figure it out.

[tgraves]

Thanks, and you are right on target.  I found no evidence of bus overload or memory exhaust, only high CPU after the freeze which is normal for any app crash.  I moved the test to my desktop, a quad core/vista  ( yes I still have a vista machine,   )

It's running normally, even jacked up frame rate and image resolution to see if I could make it crash.  I've uninstalled and reinstalled just about everything.  I'll go after the OS next.....there should be plenty of machine on the HP elitebook.

[admin]

Were you using the same use cables / hubs  and what not when you where testing on the other machine that worked?

[tgraves]

yes,  in the last test fail on the laptop, i had removed the hub.  I used same cables on the desktop

[tgraves]

I noticed something odd with the desktop that works.......EOS Utility does not load when the camera is attached, just the WIndows "what do you want to do with this device" panel.  I just close it out.  Note DPP was never loaded as it won't work under Vista.

The laptop that does not work loads the EOS Util. and I have to close it before starting  BYE.  Now these are 2 different OS's but like I said it's a little odd.  Any thoughts?   

[admin]

This is an EOS Utilitity feature that is on by default.  As long as the camera is NOT connected to EOS Utility it should have no impact.

[admin]

Wow, this was the elephant in the room for sure.  Glad you got it to work.

Regards,