SC4 ASCOM unhandled exception error

A few days ago I installed an SC-4 / AOX guider on my CDK24 at SRO. The primary imaging camera is a Moravian C3 with a Moravian filter wheel. I had a custom adapter plate made to bridge the Moravian FW to the SC-4 that allows the primary imager to be parfocal with the SC4 and fixes the alignment between the two cameras. DLI drivers and the setup utility were downloaded from the DL site and were installed on a current version of Windows 10 Pro with ASCOM 6.6 SP1 as per the instructions. When using the direct connection for the SC4 (DL Imaging) the SC4 and AOX were successfully calibrated and tested. So far all great news. When ASCOM was selected for the SC4 driver the chooser functioned properly showing the SC4 status panel. But when OK was ticked the driver threw an Unhandled Exception error. The system was rebooted and the test run again with the same results. Using the ASCOM Diagnostic tool and selecting the 32 bit Camera driver yielded the same fatal error with the chooser. An upgrade to ASCOM 6.6 SP2 was done. The DL ASCOM driver was reinstalled. The test yielded the same fatal error. Any suggestions? Note this is not a show stopper. The SC4 / AOX can be successfully used in direct mode. One more thing - the AOX debug panel was extremely handy - great work! One small nit - the SNR on this panel is always 0.

A few screen shots are attached which show the problem.

Cheers,

John

 

Maxim DL PRO 6.50. Updated from 6.31 (Beta) a few days before the install. By the way, to update from the Beta I had to uninstall the Beta version and reinstall 6.30 then do the update. The DL updater did not recognize the beta version number. Easy fix and no problem. Everything is absolutely current.

Note also that the same problem occurs using ASCOM Diagnostic / Camera / Chooser without Maxim DL running at all.

John

 

I believe so. What is the file name of the driver?

 

Hi Adam,

I ran the 32 bit beta ASCOMDriverInstaller. It removed the old driver (but with a minor issue - a dialog box asking me if the installer can change the attributes of one file from Read Only to Read Write. I didn't note the file name. First tested with the ASCOM Diagnostic tool. The chooser worked perfectly with no Unhandled Exception errors. The ASCOM Diagnostic tool could connect, disconnect and show attributes as expected. Then ran the installer a second time but the Read Only dialog box did not appear. Next, with Maxim DL ASCOM was for the guider camera and selected DL Imaging. No issues. Now waiting for darkness at SRO to run live tests. I also have this configured for ACP control. The ACP guider calibrate tool ran perfectly last night. I have an extreme 1800 second exposure duration image to test the guider. Normal images are less than 600 seconds so this pushes the mount. I'll probably find that I have to do a proper polar alignment rather than rely on a great pointing model! Last night the first mount bump occurred at about 15 minutes into the exposure. Tested several times. Excellent!

I'll have a follow up note for you in the morning. But so far, so good. Many thanks.

John

 

Hi Adam,

The DLImaging AO Control panel and the Info View Debug panel do not come up when the Camera Control DL guider is configured in ASCOM mode. The Unhandled Exception error does not happen so the ASCOM configuration appears to be correct but when Connect is selected in Maxim DL Camera Control the DLImaing AO Control panel does not appear.

John

 

Hi Colin,

I didn’t realize the lack of adaptive optics support in ASCOM. But now that you mention it - my results make sense. The beta ASCOM driver supplied by Adam did fully support the SC-4 in stand alone mode - which again makes sense. It’s a guider camera which should have ASCOM support. So that beta code does work as it should. The DL Imaging code for the SC-4 / AOX works as it should. I’ve run some extended tests over the last two evenings (some with mount bumping using an extremely small threshold limit to test the bumping configuration). The results have been absolutely perfect. I’m very pleased. I’ve been sharing this work with Martin Pugh who has an identical installation in Chile. I’m hopeful that we can resolve his issues - and will test when we have a clear sky there. I do have one question - the SC-4 has a built in 0.7x focal reducer. The SC-4 manual (page 16) says to configure the SC-4 guider optics as “identical” to the main camera optics Maxim DL / Setup / Optics setup panel. Does the 0.7x focal reducer make it not identical?

Thanks for the very rapid support.

John