ATIK 16200

[gmillerok1]

I received my new ATIK 16200 from Highpoint Scientific.

First, let me say how impressed I am with the design, build quality and fit and finish of this camera. It is stellar!

Second, I did have a few issues getting it to connect, which was reported to Highpoint and who forwarded my issues to someone at ATIK. I thought I would post here to report I had getting it to work correctly, and how I resolved them, so other new 16200 owners may avoid the same frustration.

Basically, I installed the Artemis applications, and drivers using the disk provided, and for good measure, when that didn't work, downloaded and installed it again from the ATIK download site.  The USB drivers installed and the camera was found in device manager, but it would not connect using the Artemis application, MaximDL5 using the plug-in, or SkyXpro using the ASCOM driver or the ATIK Universal driver supplied with SkyXPro. This was on a Win7Pro Desktop that I use simply to test the camera.

I never was able to resolve it on this bench PC (the reason is likely because I did not reboot it the second time after connecting the camera), so I used my portable laptop with Win10Pro to use with my small refractor and portable mount, and after a few reboots, I was able to get it connected and working correctly using Artemis, MaxemDL5, and SkyXPro, using ASCOM.

Since I will also use the camera on my AGOptical 12.5" iDK in my permanent observatory, I then installed it on that PC, which has Win7Pro. I was again able to get the camera connected and working. But it took the following action to do so:

1.  Install the ATIK drivers. The online version is the same, but to be safe, I downloaded the online version off the ATIK site. If using MaximDL, you must go online and download the plugins and copy them to the MaximDL directory.

2.  Reboot.

3. Plug in the camera, and connect using the USB cable. Let it finish the “searching the internet” and don’t interrupt it. This could take a few minutes.

4. After it installs, reboot the PC again.

5. If you leave the camera connected in any application, even if the application is closed, it will not connect in another. You also have to turn off the cooler as I think the same thing may happen, so be sure to always turn off the cooler, camera, and disconnect when shutting down the camera before closing the application. The problem is there won't be any notice as to why you can't connect. So, worse case scenario, reboot the camera, and PC, to get things back to normal if you can't figure out why it will not connect.

There is still a bug in the SkyXPro ATIK Universal driver as it says the cooler percentage is unknown.

But, other than these small issues, I've got it all sorted out.


Gerald