The plug-in driver was unable to establish a link to the hardware. (-4)

[ADBjester]

Equipment:

Atik 383L+ Mono
Atik EFW2 filter wheel

Latest ASCOM drivers from Atik for both
(uninstalled and re-installed tonight)

MaximDL Pro 5.22

Issue:

When attempting to take BIAS frames, I get the error message:

"The plug-in driver was unable to establish a link to the hardware. (-4)"...

I have traced this down to the exposure time.

I can take exposures of any type (light frames, bias, darks), so long as the exposure time is 0.200 seconds or greater.

The moment i try to lower the exposure time to 0.199, however, the above error occurs.

The camera is documented to support BIAS exposures down to 0.001 second.

I would prefer my BIAS frames be as short as possible, though I suppose I can live with 0.2s frames if I must. However, this also becomes problematic when trying to focus.

FocusMax likes to start at 0.11 seconds, and at this time, the camera isn't shooting that short. To focus, I have to locate a FOV with nothing brighter than Mag 7 in it, and focus with longer exposures on that. THAT is something I don't wish to live with, as that makes automated focusing troublesome.

Diffraction Limited says this is a problem not in MaxIM DL but in the driver downloaded from Atik.

Has this been seen before? Thanks!

Jeff Woods
Reading, PA, USA

[topboxman]

Does Atik native drivers work with Maxim? In order for native driver to work, you have to install Artemis Universal software which contains low level driver. It works with Nebulosity. I have Atik 460EX and their ASCOM driver appear to be strange. I have issues with Atik ASCOM camera drivers. I took sample 10 minute darks with native and ASCOM drivers and darks with native drivers look more correct than with ASCOM drivers.

Peter

[Konihlav]

Jeff, it sounds like a bug in ASCOM driver from Atik. I can imagine you are the first one to either discover it or at least to report it back to Atik.

BTW I am using (for all my Atik life) native driver with MaxIm DL and I never had any problem. You have to install them from Atik CD (they have common driver for all Atik cameras) and select a bit strange name (from historic reasons) named "ArtemisHSC". This is the correct native driver for MaxIm DL

[Chris]

The current ASCOM driver throws an exception if the exposure is shorter than 0.2 seconds on the 383L+ because that's the shortest the shutter can manage.

This is known and there is a recent thread about it.  There's a new version of the ASCOM driver coming that will allow dark frames down to 0.001 seconds.  That will resolve the bias question.

It's a shame that Maxim replaces the meaningful error message that ASCOM sent with one that seems misleading to me. What is reported is something saying that the exposure is out of range and gives the range that's allowed.

I'm not sure if the low level driver will even accept light frame exposures of less than 0.2 seconds because less than that doesn't allow time for the shutter to open and close.

Chris (ASCOM driver developer)