Camera disconnecting issues

Yes I and have experienced this on several ZWO cameras we have at the observatory…  I found they are very sensitive to voltage and don't like to be over or under volts…Our power supplies were running 12.9 -13.6v…. We have  swapped them to a variable supply and turn them down and now we run them at a precisely 12v.
I am not saying this is your problem but worth checking

Peter Shah (Roboscopes):
Yes I and have experienced this on several ZWO cameras we have at the observatory...  I found they are very sensitive to voltage and don't like to be over or under volts...Our power supplies were running 12.9 -13.6v.... We have  swapped them to a variable supply and turn them down and now we run them at a precisely 12v.
I am not saying this is your problem but worth checking

I am powering the camera from a pegasus power box so i assumed it should have a stable power supply. But i will look into it anyway. Thanks

You need to have a powered usb hub to connect your gear to a mini pc, otherwise it could get very unstable specially with cooled cameras that require usb3.0 and power to cool down. That's why with asiair you also don't have a problem because it has that usbhub funcionality as well.

I've also experienced the same disconnect issue. It used to disconnect during an imaging session and although it reconnects, the whole session is paused, so I ended up losing hours unless I was to check in every now and then. I changed the original flat ZWO cable and also changed USB hub devices. This helped solve the problem, at least for now..

I had this twice, both times different culprit. First time it was USB cable and second time for some unknown reason my PHD2 instance didn't see my guide cam and selected my main one 2600-MM as guiding cam, so nina and PHD were fighting over it. Try to disconnect everything from NINA and only have your main camera connected. Do loop exposures and save them on disc. Run this for some time, see if the error mainfests. Also, are you using native or ascom driver in nina? For some reason I tend to have some random issues with native drivers. Hope this helps

Peter Shah (Roboscopes):
Yes I and have experienced this on several ZWO cameras we have at the observatory...  I found they are very sensitive to voltage and don't like to be over or under volts...Our power supplies were running 12.9 -13.6v.... We have  swapped them to a variable supply and turn them down and now we run them at a precisely 12v.
I am not saying this is your problem but worth checking

I am powering the camera from a pegasus power box so i assumed it should have a stable power supply. But i will look into it anyway. Thanks

I used the powerbox and had similar problems.  I now us the power cable provided and don' have issues.  My powerbox is rated at 10A, but it does not seem to supply that.

We had the same problem.

First of all: cable. Cable matters.

Second: power available from your architecture.

E.g.: direct connection is better than going through some pegasus or stuff like that for power.

I use two separate power supply's on all my rigs, one for my ASIAIR and one just for the camera. 
I have NEVER had a camera failure of any kind that was not my own fault.

Do you mean with asiair or with NINA?

I haven't had this problem with my ASI2600MC but I do have it with my ASI2600MM.  I use SGP and connect my laptop to the camera and filter wheel via one dedicated USB3 extension cable and to the mount (AP1200GTO) via another USB3 extension cable.  These are 3 meter cables because my PC is in the warming room and the scope assembly is on a pier in the telescope room, too far apart to connect directly to the PC via the USB3 cable supplied with the camera.  I plug the USB3 cable that came into the camera to the powered USB3 extension cable

First the ASI2600MM would not connect at all.  I replaced the USB3 cable with a powered USB3 extension cable (from Plugable) and then it connected.  However, it still occasionally has disconnected spontaneously, usually at the end of an exposure.  SGP gives no indication other than that the camera continues to download without finishing the download, and I eventually have to kill SGP and restart it.  Maybe switching to NINA would be a good idea.  Anyhow, after a couple of frustrating nights the ASI2600MM settled down and stopped spontaneously disconnecting, though I expect the problem may recur from time to time.  

By the way I have a Pegasus UPBv2 but I do not connect the camera to it, either for power or as a USB hub.  I have found that if you connect the USB3 cable from the camera to the PC via the Pegasus, the camera cooler will not operate.  ZWO recommends connecting the camera via a dedicated USB3 cable.  Also I use a dedicated 12v power supply for the camera rather than plugging it into the Pegasus.

I had this problem a lot when I first started imaging. I traced it down to connections, standard USB and 13mm power connections are far from industrial grade. I found that by simply securing the cables near the point of connection prevented the connectors from moving around during the night and solved the issue if me. +1 though on having a good hub and making sure the power supplied to the camera is correct. I think too often cables are blamed when it's the poor quality of the connection that's getting you. I've been tempted to use a low quality hot glue around the camera connections to stabilized them and prevent ingress of moisture.  it sounds harsh but I would certainly do that if I was operating remote.

I have found that if you connect the USB3 cable from the camera to the PC via the Pegasus, the camera cooler will not operate.

The requirement from ZWO for ALL cooled cameras is now a separate 12V power cable.  The USB3 cable alone does not supply enough power to run the camera+cooler.   I use a UPBv1 box.  I take one of the 12v outputs on the UPB to my 2600MCpro power port and one of the USB ports from the UPB to the camera USB port.  I have not had a power problem with this setup...however I did have different power problem that was related my main power cable.

Hello Menelaos,

I read thru all of the posts.  Some good ideas to check.  I personally think this is a power issue or a USB cable issue, both of which are easy to test/change.

You mentioned using a UPBv2.  Do you have any screen shots of the UPBv2?  On nearly all astro gear the input voltage is specified at 12V.  But this is not a 12.000v +/-0v specification, if you dig deeper into the specs you will almost always find an operating range from a high of 14/15v to as low as 9/10v.  Many products are also supplied with a 'cigarette lighter' style plug designed to be plugged into an automobile system or 12v battery, in these cases, the battery is almost never exactly 12.000v.  Most 12v lead acid batteries at full charge will be 12.8v, at full discharge is considered 10.5v and when charging can be as high as 14v (depending on charging system).  sorry for the rambling…forward

On my UPBv1 there is both an upper and lower limit that Pegasus has hard coded in the software. The upper limit is 14.1v and the lower limit is 10.5v.  If any of the voltages, either the main supply or any of the outputs to your devices is outside of this range then the UPB automatically disconnects the device to prevent damage.  In the case of over voltage this is to protect the devices from high voltage damage, and in the case of low voltage it is because the UPB see this a potential short or a device drawing too much current (Ohm's law says the if voltage drops the current increases). 

This occurring in the summer has me highly suspicious of a power supply cable problem.  I had the same thing happen to me about 2yrs ago.  During the summer when the camera required nearly full power 75-90% to maintain -10C, the UPB was reporting that the supply voltage was dropping to 10.5v.  I measured the voltage at the power supply and it was 12.0v so at first I just turned up the power supply to 12.8v but it did not solve the problem.  After repeated troubleshooting, I found that the power cable from my power supply to the mount/UPB was under rated.  I was using a cable I made for a previous setup that was about 5m long and made using 20AWG (5A max).  The combination of cable length and wire size meant that at full power the cable causing a voltage drop, such that at the UPB input the voltage was dropping below the minimum (in the fall, winter, spring this was not a problem because the camera cooling rarely required full cooling power).  My solution was to rebuild my cable using 16AWG wires which is rated at up to 13A, with two wires for +12V and two wires for ground, which should easily pass over 20A of current at 12v.  Double check both your main power cable length and wire size of the cable.  If the power cable is too long and/or the wire size is too thin it will not be able to pass the full current and thus will present a lower voltage at the UPB.

It is also possible that you have a problem with the USB cable from your UPB to your computer.  My UPBv1 is only USB2 speed.  For typical DSO imaging this should not be a problem as I am only sending data every 2-10min (depending on target and filters).  My OAG is sending data about every 2-3sec but the smaller sensor size of the guide cam is easily handled at USB2 speeds.  When I was running my ASI1600MM and ASI294MC with LodestarX2 guide came there was never a problem.  When I got the ASI2600MC pro and ASI120MM mini guide cam, there was more data and every time the ASI2600MC pro would send a frame, there would be dropped guide connection/frames.  PHD2 tries several times to reconnect and it would always reconnect after the 2600MC has completed the download.  It never caused a total disconnect but I suspect that it very well could have.  Even though my UPBv1 is only USB2, a direct connection from the UPB to laptop using a USB3 extension cable solved the dropped guide frames.  The highest data usage on the USB cable is from your main imaging camera and the guide camera, all of the other connected devices use only minimal USB bandwidth.

 Sorry for the extended reply.  I though it might be useful to provide some background and my personal experiences with similar problems.

John Schnupp, N3CNL
2007 R1200RT +81,200
1995 XLH 1200 106,495 (retired)
Georgia, VT44.7675°N, 73.1592