AC 4040 power management

Colin, every time I reboot my PC and power cycle the camera, Windows turns back on the power management to SBIG Camera device. Have you seen this and any tips for making the change permanent. I now have a startup step to check this every time.

 

Colin,

Windows 10 and its up to date with everything. There are some optional updates which I routinely turn off. I will try saving the power plan and see if that solves it. Thanks

 

Looks like this will be a nuisance. Saving the power settings does not preserve the SBIG Camera Power Management Setting. Also, I can turn off power management after computer startup, but when the Camera Connects in Maxim, it flips it back to "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". After I turn it off that time, it stays off until I reboot.

 

Its a Lenovo Desktop 920s - CPU: 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-855OU (quad-core, 4MB cache, up to 4GHz)
There is an Icron Ranger 2304 communicating USB from observatory. Every USB device has Power Management off and it stays off, except SBIG Camera.
I still have an occasional hang on the AO. If I don't start an acquisition before I start the AO on the first frame, it always hangs. That's an easy fix just to start an autosave sequence with a delay and then start the AO. Sometimes I go for hours with no issue. Occasionally I find the AO hung up but the camera still acquiring. I was looking through the details to see if I could ID a culprit and this is the only item we discussed earlier that is an issue. I can't say either way at the moment.

An additional note I have not been able to get the AO to dither. I don't think this is related but its still an outstanding issue for me. Also, If some issues like a wind gust or mechanical makes the AO lost the star, it will just keep bumping the mount until I notice. While I think I see the documentation say that on a new frame, it resets the AO, I don't seem to see that happening. I can occasionally get hours of undithered images with proper mount bumping. Then sometimes I just get 45 min. If I'm asleep, then that kills the rest of the session.

So while I do still have some mount tuning issues and AO setup issues on my end to resolve, I found the Power Management issue and am trying to make sure I keep it off just in case it is related to my occasional AO hang.

Long answer. But that's where I stand at the moment. Any leads on how to get the AO straightened out would be appreciated.

 

Notes from last night. The AO tracking froze on a filter change early in the run. I was observing and caught this and immediately stopped tracking and restarted. Things worked fine after that for 90 minutes, with several bumps needed and executed perfectly. There were no other filter changes in the sequence. I have seen that behavior before on filter change, but not every time.

I was running the system using guider relays for bumping. I will repeat with ASCOM Direct to see if I can get it working with TheSkyX to bump the mount. Telescope direct control does not work.

Went to a second target sequenced with one filter and things started off well and I went to bed. When I got the wakeup to come shut down the system, I noticed that the AO system tracked for 70 minutes with several bumps then it lost the guide star and never reacquired it. There were 25 300s subs with track lines.

Also, no dithering occurred in either run even though dithering was enabled at a max amplitude of 5 pixels.

My main concern is that with these occasional hangs and frequent loss of guide star I basically have to supervise the system to get a full night of productivity. I was under the impression from the documentation that Maxim was able to recover from these issues, but so far once the system hangs or loses the star, it is toast until human intervention.

Also, I do really need dithering to work to help get rid of some of the natural patterns in the CMOS chip. Any help in diagnosing would be much appreciated.