QHY5-II/QHY5L-II: How to get best FPS

[Pascal]

Hello Artyom, thank you for your help, I use the nvidia quadro nvs 3100, I cannot access to the intel hd graphics (no option in bios, I presume that the switch is done automatically), disabling the integrated webcam do not solve the problem and I do not have other peripheral that can interfere, of course all the drivers are up to date (and it work well with a point grey chamelon camera). It is probably a driver compatibility problem ... no chance
 

[Pascal]

Hello Mr QiuHY,
yes the camera works perfectly in other computers (one dell M4500 and on desktop pc), this evening the camera worked two minutes at 30fps on my e6510 before freezing and impossible to repeat this .... reinstalling windows (with all the good drivers has no effect). The problem is the freeze of all the software used with this camera.
I can use it at 640x480 at 60fps but when I activate the hight speed : freeze. I have to plug / unplug the camera in order to use it again.

[Pascal]

other test on an eepc it works well in usb 2.0 port(26fps at hight speed, with no freeze)  but not in usb 3.0 (3fps and freeze with hight speed selected), I have already had the same problem with usb 3.0 on another camera (pl131-m from opticstar), this camera too worked well in the usb 2 port but not in usb 3.0. I think that there is a problem with the drivers of the qhy5l II and some particular hardware, I hope there is a solution other than change the computer or the camera ...

[Pascal]

hello, some other news about my problem:
I tested in windows xp64 on the same m6510 and same problem, I also tested with another e6510 motherboard (it is a long story), same behaviour.
I tested the usb data transfert with 'advanced usb port monitor' and I reach about 20mb/s only before freezing and the data rate was very unstable.
I tested the same with the wdm driver on the same pc and I get more than 30mb/s, without freeze.
I success two time two have a normal rate on the m6510 with ezplanetary but I dont know how or why .... but it was not stable, after restarting the software the problem come back.
It is clear that it is not an camera or computer hardware problem, it is a software problem : driver or its dependencies, os ....
I spent several hours testing the problem, I give you all the results I found and I hope they will be useful for solving the problem. Mr QiuHY, I am aware that I am may be the unique people than encountered this problem but I will appreciate that you take a look to this problem. I have had no chance with the combination pc/camera, but I am not completely unlucky because,for the moment, I can use the camera in wdm mode.
Regards.
P.

[Pascal]

silence .............

[Wagner Trindade]

I followed the instructions of the first message of this post and obtained the following rate of fps:

 320x240 ==> 180 fps
 640x480 ==>  94 fps
 800x600 ==>  58 fps
1024x768 ==>  39 fps
1280x960 ==>  25 fps

My machine: a 5 years old notebook with Pentium Dual Core T2330 @ 1.60GHz, 2Gb RAM, Windows Vista Home Edition, USB 2.0. Because it is a (let me say) old computer, I use it only for astronomy. So, there is just a few programs installed in it: Cartes du Ciel, EZPlanetary v3.55, FireCapture 2.2, DSS, Registax v5.1, Autostakkert! 2, WinJuPos, Google Crhome and antivirus. I have to do some more tests but, for now, I'm quite satisfied.

Wagner

[RobC]

Hi,

The only way that I have found to control the frame rate of the QHY5 WDM driver is by changing the exposure time. Setting the frame rates does not appear to have any effect on the fps. Capture software that invokes the QHY5 WDM driver should expose a dialog for this purpose. From memory if you are using PHD and have selected a WDM camera you have to click on the Video Amp button for this dialog to appear. The QHY5 WDM dialog that appears allows you set the exposure time and gain. This works quite effectively with PHD in the sense that these adjustments can be done without stopping the video capture and the effects are immediate.

I tested the QHY5 WDM driver with the Microsoft DirectShow Amcap sample program which I built locally in Vs2010 using DirectX 10. After the QHY5 was selected Amcap exposed the exposure and gain setting dialog under PropertyPages>Video Capture Device.  Amcap also exposes a frame rate dialog. Selecting a frame rate does not have any effect on the QHY5 fps. The QHY5 WDM driver may have some WDM compliance issues. 

Regards

Rob

[Artyom]

Can anyone who faced with insufficient fps rate check out a following thing, please?
Some time ago I had to change my good old Atom N450-based nettop with WinXP with new one with Atom N2600 and Win7. And I saw that max fps rate decreased (10 fps vs 30) despite the more powerful CPU.
After some trials I started to think that main problem sits in graphics driver and maybe in video subsystem of Win7. Switching to a simplest GUI settings gave me 20 fps. And I noticed that max fps depends of image area in EZP window. So setting less zoom gives more fps. But even with 320x240 it doesn't get bigger than 150 fps.
And the strangest thing - if I open image display in EZP and open some other window, such as File Explorer, and overlay the explorer window over the entire image area in the EZP, then fps counter in bottom line of EZP gets normal high values! The same thing with QGvideo32 and QHY5V.
So taking in account some N2600 graphics issues (and already discontinued drivers support) and Win7 video subsystem architecture, I thought that my nettop is just unlucky one. But I want to ask you to check this out on your systems if you have similar problems with fps.

[QiuHY]

Maybe it is because of the CPU speed adjustment of the computer. When you open more windows and computer think you need more CPU and it will increase the CPU freq. 

Can anyone who faced with insufficient fps rate check out a following thing, please?
Some time ago I had to change my good old Atom N450-based nettop with WinXP with new one with Atom N2600 and Win7. And I saw that max fps rate decreased (10 fps vs 30) despite the more powerful CPU.
After some trials I started to think that main problem sits in graphics driver and maybe in video subsystem of Win7. Switching to a simplest GUI settings gave me 20 fps. And I noticed that max fps depends of image area in EZP window. So setting less zoom gives more fps. But even with 320x240 it doesn't get bigger than 150 fps.
And the strangest thing - if I open image display in EZP and open some other window, such as File Explorer, and overlay the explorer window over the entire image area in the EZP, then fps counter in bottom line of EZP gets normal high values! The same thing with QGvideo32 and QHY5V.
So taking in account some N2600 graphics issues (and already discontinued drivers support) and Win7 video subsystem architecture, I thought that my nettop is just unlucky one. But I want to ask you to check this out on your systems if you have similar problems with fps.

[Artyom]

So taking in account some N2600 graphics issues (and already discontinued drivers support) and Win7 video subsystem architecture, I thought that my nettop is just unlucky one. But I want to ask you to check this out on your systems if you have similar problems with fps.

And I found the "best solution" for my issue at last. I just switched off Intel GMA 3600 driver (in Device Manager) for imaging session. I suspect the driver has high DPC latency and it is significantly interferes with high-speed USB-transfer. So system runs with basic VGA driver. It gives non-optimal resolution but camera goes perfectly, giving best fps in any mode.