QHY native driver not enabling direct connected QHYCFW filterwheel

[Former user]

Hardware: QHY9M and QHYCFW (1st gen).

The filterwheel is connected to the camera - QHY's instructions say to connect the camera first to your host software, then connect the filterwheel.

Tested and working in QHY EZCAP (using native QHY driver for the camera).

Testing and working in SharpCap (using ASCOM drivers).

This issue will likely affect any setup using a QHY camera and filterwheel that is direct connected (mostly CCD models).

Issue in NINA: Native QHY driver doesn't flag the camera as 'connected' for the QHY filterwheel ASCOM driver. When you try, you get the error message "Please connect the camera at first!".

Steps to reproduce are easy: Connect and power on hardware (filterwheel will do its poweron sequence, counting the slots). Connect camera using NINA's native QHY driver - camera will connect and work as expected. Attempt to connect filterwheel - error message.

I'm a poor excuse for a programmer, and all my googling shows is that there is only a couple of references in the QHY SDK to the filterwheel. Perhaps QHY itself can provide guidance?

Workarounds: If I connect the camera in NINA with its ASCOM driver, the filterwheel will then work, but the ASCOM driver introduces new issues (being NINA can't successfully download an image from it - I'll create another issue for that one).

Logs: For what they are worth, Trace level logs are attached.

[Dale Ghent]

Yeah, this is a known issue. QHY owners who control the CFW through the 4-pin connection rather than through USB will need to connect to both the camera and CFW via ASCOM instead of using the preferred direct/native camera control.

I’m going to be loaned a camera and CFW from QHY to implement this support, but will not receive the hardware until a few weeks from now. If you are interested in testing this code when I get the hardware and implement it, please contact me via email at [e-mail] and I’ll keep you in the loop.

[Samuel Roehr]

Apologies, I hadn’t bothered to log in when I first lodged the ticket.

Happy to test your code when you are able to put something together.

ASCOM is the obvious alternative (though I would obviously prefer the native option!), but with my QHY9M that presents a different showstopper (see issue #193).

My programming skills are pretty limited, but I have limited ability to debug existing code - let me know if I can be of any help.

[Stefan B]

Included in 1.10 #15