Instability with 3.2 release 4

[navige]

Yesterday I experienced multiple freezes of pre release 3.2 release 4 32 bit.  I have an xsi camera and run Windows 7.  I had freezes during imaging sessions as well as while capturing flat frames with all other programs closed.  I have not experienced any issues with previous version except the latest release of 3.1 which would not load drivers which is why I am using 3.2.  I am thinking of reinstalling my previous stable version of 3.1.
I also am unable to get the plate solver to solve a plate.  The scope speed and centers to the coordinates that it pulls from the scope and takes image 1 but fails to solve and stops.  Any tips?

[admin]

Plate solve is a new feature in 3.2 and it looks like you are the to report issues.  Lets put that aside for now and focus on your other issues.

Please provide more info on the freeze.  What are you doing with it freezes?  Freezes mid-session are usually caused by a USB cable saturated with data and/or intermittent disconnect, even for 1 milliseccond.

Did you try anther USB cable?

Are you using a USB hub? If yes what other device are connected to it?

How long is your USB hub? 

[navige]

My first freeze was about 2 images into an imaging session, I was connected to a USB hub at that time because I bought a new one and was trying it.  I switched to connecting directly to the laptop and it worked for the nights imaging.  The next morning I captured dark frames fine but when I went to do flats and chose flat av for shutter in byeos  it froze on the first exposure and I had to force quit with task manager.  I shut down all other apps and tried again and got the same issue.  I manually snapped a pic in av mode to see the shutter speed and then switched to 1/400 shutter in byeos and was able to capture flats.  Last night I had a freeze up about 1 hour into an imaging session of 60 120sec captures.  I changed the usb cable and restarted the computer and started another similar session that froze after a similar time, when I woke this morning the last image was busy for about 3 hours.  
i tried to reinstall v3.1.11, my last stable version this morning but it has the same no drivers issue as the latest v3.1.  Something I did notice was that I had enabled the server function in v3.2 because I was trying to use the byeos driver functionality in fastcap so I disabled that and I currently have a session capturing 120sec darks right now.

I have twin USB cables that are high quality 12 foot braided cables that I have used for a few years and both experienced the freeze up.

[astroman133]

It sounds as though you have more than 1 issue when using BYE 3.2 RC4.

1) Plate solving is not able to solve an image.

I cannot help here.

2) selecting FLAT as the image type and AV as the Shutter causes BYE to hang when the capture plan starts.

I was able to duplicate this with BYE 3.2.0 - RC4 and my T5i when the camera was in Manual mode. When I changed the Shooting Mode dial on the camera to Av it worked as expected. I saw a message in the log history that the camera needed to be in Av shooting mode, so it appears that BYE was able to detect that the Shooting Mode was incorrect, but did not abort the capture plan. Manual abort of the plan was not effective. I believe that we saw a similar issue a few years ago.

3) Connecting the camera through a USB hub caused BYE to hang.

So, the hub was new, and so unproven. The hub could be faulty. You did not say, but you should always use a powered hub. An unpowered travel hub will only be able to draw limited power from the PC and this may not be sufficient for the devices that are using the hub. Using an independently powered hub is the solution. A USB port is limited to drawing 50 milliamps of current. An unpowered hub can then only provide a total of 50 ma to all the devices that are plugged into the hub. A powered hub will be able to provide 50 ma to each device.

4) BYE freezes about an hour into a capture plan.

You need to be sure that your laptop's power management plan does not power down any part of your system, including the USB ports after a certain time has elapsed. If you typically operate your laptop off of A/C (mains) power when doing AP, you should make sure that nothing is automatically powered down ever when connected to external power.

5) With Windows 7 and an EOS XSi camera you get a "no driver" error with some versions of BYE.

This is strange because I would expect that if any version of BYE is able to connect that they all would. When the camera is plugged into the PC and powered on Windows Plug-and-Play subsystem should detect the device and load the low level driver. Once the driver is loaded the camera will be listed in the Windows Device Manager and any version of BYE should be able to connect. If Windows is unable to find or load this driver, it will be listed as an unknown device and BYE will not be able to connect. For some older versions of Windows the Canon driver was not a part of the O/S and it would typically be installed from the CD that came with the camera. This driver is the only driver that BYE and the Canon SDK use.

I hope that this helps.

[navige]

I typically do use a powered hub for my connection but since I was having issues with the new hub I connected to the computer directly.  I will connect through the original powered hub and test it out.  
I have attached a screenshot of what I see when I open 3.1 v11 and 18

[admin]

19 minutes ago, navige said:

I typically do use a powered hub for my connection but since I was having issues with the new hub I connected to the computer directly.  I will connect through the original powered hub and test it out.  
I have attached a screenshot of what I see when I open 3.1 v11 and 18

This is an install issue that was address in 3.2.

If you re-install your 3.1.11 you should see what the options are on that screen.

[navige]

I reinstalled v 3.11 and the driver issue remains but I also got this message.  

[admin]

What is 3.11?  Did you mean 3.1.11?

Please re-install in a separate folder.

[navige]

I reinstalled in a new folder and it worked.  Thanks!

I had a 30% cloudy night last night so I was able to set up and run 2 1.5 hour sessions using v3.2 and my original powered USB hub to see if that improved connectivity.  I tried plate solve again and it failed (log below).  Then I ran an imaging session and the first session stopped about 10% through the log said "camera shutdown" (log below) but this did not freeze BYEOS, it just cancelled the imaging session which was good.  I ran another 1.5 hours in a new session that completed successfully.  

00:40:25  Target RA(16h 48m 26s) DEC(-01° 58' 47") acquired [jnow].
00:41:01  PlateSolve (attempt #1)
00:41:56  PlateSolve FAILED: ASTAP failed to solve PLATESOLVE_ra(16.81000)_dec(-1.97524)_20200527-00h41m01s093ms.CR2


01:11:02  Imaging session started.
01:13:07  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+31c_ra(16.44735)_dec(-23.39608)_20200527-01h11m03s694ms.CR2
01:15:12  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+33c_ra(16.44647)_dec(-23.37657)_20200527-01h13m08s334ms.CR2
01:17:17  PHD dithering...
01:17:17  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+33c_ra(16.44583)_dec(-23.39432)_20200527-01h15m13s232ms.CR2
01:18:49  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:21:04  PHD dithering...
01:21:04  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+31c_ra(16.44516)_dec(-23.35801)_20200527-01h19m01s681ms.CR2
01:22:10  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:24:25  PHD dithering...
01:24:26  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+31c_ra(16.44464)_dec(-23.35777)_20200527-01h22m22s423ms.CR2
01:25:58  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:28:14  PHD dithering...
01:28:14  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+29c_ra(16.44362)_dec(-23.35805)_20200527-01h26m10s277ms.CR2
01:29:46  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:32:01  PHD dithering...
01:32:02  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+29c_ra(16.44265)_dec(-23.35879)_20200527-01h29m58s443ms.CR2
01:33:34  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:35:49  PHD dithering...
01:35:49  Rho Ophiuchi Nebula_LIGHT_120s_1600iso_+29c_ra(16.44147)_dec(-23.35872)_20200527-01h33m46s453ms.CR2
01:37:22  PHD Dithering completed successfully
01:38:56  Camera SHUTDOWN!
01:39:33  Imaging session cancelled
01:39:33  ERROR EDS_ERR_INVALID_HANDLE : EDSDK.EdsSendCommand(CameraRef, 3, 0) 
01:39:34  Imaging session cancelled

[admin]

Did you try to solve that particular image using the ASTAP application (not BYE)? 

[navige]

I was able to solve outside of BYE.  I think that the issue is that there does not appear to be any settling time after the initial centering slew so the image it is trying to solve is streaked stars.  Is there a way to add a settling time before taking the solving pic?  It also only tries once to solve when I select 3 tries in the drop down.

[navige]

I just wanted to give an update on v3.2.  I got a new mini-pc scope side and installed the latest v3.2 and all of the functionality is working well.  I am able to Pull in info from cartes du ceil, plate solve and recenter, run dual camera mode, focus canon lenses.  I have had no dropped cameras either.

[admin]

2 hours ago, navige said:

I just wanted to give an update on v3.2.  I got a new mini-pc scope side and installed the latest v3.2 and all of the functionality is working well.  I am able to Pull in info from cartes du ceil, plate solve and recenter, run dual camera mode, focus canon lenses.  I have had no dropped cameras either.

That is great feedback, thank you.