I've been using ZWO ASI120MM for guiding for quite a long time. I flashed with compatible firmware for linux and it works quite well. Sometimes it renders bad frames but I can live with this.
I have noticed recently that PHD2 crashes with this camera. It looks like it happens when it cannot take a shot from the cam.
Not sure if it's related, but I think I read that the ASIair is not compatible with the ASI120 camera. (seems odd) but there has to be some reason for this.
The Asiair is a pi similar to the smate but geared for beginners. It has to use ASIcameras. but not the 120?
AP Mach1 / CP4 APCC & PEMpro.
EXP SCI - ED152cf APO - Celestron 11" RASA - Stellarvue 80mm
Baader F2 HS NB filters, Lodestar X2 guide camera / OAG - ZWO 290mm mini
ZWO ASI1600MM Pro / ASI174M (solar) / ASI094MC
NEXDome, CLoudwatcher, AVX mount/ASIair and Stellarmate
PHD2 recently changed its native ASI driver to use trigger mode in place of streaming mode. I wonder if there is a compatibility issue with your camera operating in trigger mode.
ASI 120MM (USB2.0 version) has a USB controller that is incompatible with Linux. It uses a non standard packet size which conflicts with a security feature programmed into the USB core in the kernel. The ASI AIR is build on Linux, so is still non compatible.
Although it may be possible to patch the kernel, I have not managed to successfully do so.
As Radek wrote, he has flashed the camera with compatible firmware making it work on Linux. I am not sure if that still could be the reason that PhD crashes though. Perhaps related to the bad frames that the camera sometimes gives? Does PhD crash everytime it tries to take a frame or only sometimes?
This is correct. I'm successfully using this camera on linux with a compatible firmware (it changes USB packet size). With this firmware it works 99% of time. Even better if you use subframes in PHD2, which minimizes bandwith use.
I don't think the issue is camera specific - it's the way PHD2 handles errors. In this case "Capture failed". I have just submitted a
bug report
at PHD2 github site.
Compatibility firmware helps. It will work*. But I find I still get unacceptable number of garbage, corrupted frames, and fps in a stream is extremely low.