Went to do some imaging last night and took my first guide image and there was nothing, all pixels were at a value of 0. I tried rebooting the camera, rebooting the PC and my observatory partner who lives on site tried a new HDMI cable between the STT-8300M and the filter wheel with the same result. Any suggestions on what else I could try? Nothing changed since the last time I imaged and it worked perfectly last time. Thanks.
Usually the problem is the software configuration is wrong. The application needs to be configured to use the External Remote Guide Head port.
I went through all the configuration steps that you helped me with in this thread and they all match. https://forum.diffractionlimited.co...stt-8300-with-self-guiding-filter-wheel.9348/ Interestingly I had the same problem back then as well which seemed to have been a bad HDMI cable, that is why we tried a brand new one last night. Is there anything special about the HDMI cable that is needed? Will any type work? Nothing should have changed in the configuration, I literally shut down the PC from the last night of imaging and it worked fine, booted up last night and it stopped.
Clearly the evil elves are magically changing things at your site. A short (eg less than 3 feet), high quality HDMI cable should work fine. You MUST power off the camera and let it sit for 60 seconds before changing the cable, or the electrical interface can be damaged. Why not try the original one?
The original cable? That one was the one that first didn't work. This is what I just tried, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RL574BB?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details
$5 huh? Looks like unshielded junk from overseas. This is more the sort of thing: https://www.l-com.com/audio-video-premium-high-speed-hdmi-cable-with-ethernet-male-male-05-m If you can't get it going, I can ask my colleague @Tim whether we have any parts left to service the camera.
Unfortunately, we don't. Unless it is a simple problem, there is not a lot we can do. You are welcome to send it in though and we can see if there are any obvious issues that we can resolve.
Thanks Tim. I'm certainly going to try some troubleshooting of my own first. Any suggestions on how to determine if the problem is the CCD or the Filter Wheel?
The filter wheel is powered and controlled by the I2C AUX cable. The remote guide sensor is run by the HDMI cable to the Remote Guide Head port.
Hey Colin, I was able to make a trip to the observatory yesterday and I replaced the HDMI cable with a better quality one, and while I wasn't able to test with actual stars I do believe it fixed the problem. Images with the cap on the scope gave pixel values as expected, and pictures with the scope cap off during the day saturated all the pixels. The plug connection for the HDMI on the filter side was also quite loose, I was able to very carefully bend the tension tabs out slightly and this helped keep the cable in much more securely. Thanks again for your help.
Glad to hear it Josh. There's not a lot we can do for these aging cameras as parts have become unavailable.
I understand that, however I do appreciate you taking the time to at least help with problems. That kind of thing is what helps customer to keep coming back....