ZWO ASI 120MM-S USB 3.0 Mono Camera User Guide

: June 3, 2024
: ZWO

Table of Contents

ZWO ASI 120MM-S USB 3.0 Mono Camera
Connecting the camera to the telescope
Troubleshooting
References
Read User Manual Online (PDF format)
Download This Manual (PDF format)

ZWO ASI 120MM-S USB 3.0 Mono Camera

Thank you for purchasing a ZWO ASI camera. This guide is brief summary of the installation procedure to get you up and running with your new camera. Please be sure to read the user manual for more complete instructions.

Driver and software inst allation(Windows)

Download and install A SI Cameras driver from our website https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software-drivers
After plugging in the camera, you will see your ZWO camera model listed under the “imaging devices” category of the Device Manager if the driver is installed successfully.
Download and install A SIC AP (image or video capture software from o ur website. Choose your camera model and click “Connect” icon. Then you can see the preview video . K eep in mind that you will only see some brightness in the preview video with out lens or scope.

More detailed user manual can be found on our website: https://astronomy- imaging-camera.com/manuals/

Connecting the camera to the telescope

The following cameras include a n all sky lens
ASI120MM/MC ASI120MM S/MC S ASI178MM/MC ASI290MM/MC ASI185MC ASI385MC ASI224MC
Please remove the lens before attaching the camera to your telescope.

Take off the lens and CS adapter	Screw the 1.25” nose-piece
Focus through the eyepiece	Replace the eyepiece with camera
Plugin the USB2.0/3.0 cable	Focus until preview is sharp on PC.

Troubleshooting

The preview image is completely white but the fps is normal.
The camera is over exposed , p lease reduce the e xp osure and/ or g ain.
Keep in mind that you can only see brightness without lens or scope
The preview screen is black and the fps is “0”.
Please try to slow down the capture speed by reducing the “ USB Traffic Also try connecting the camer a to your PC directly without a USB hub or extender if reducing “USB Traffic ” still does not work.
The camera can’t preview at the FPS declared in the specifications
P lease make sure the camera is connected to USB3.0 h ost if it’s a
USB3.0 camera. Check that the camera is recognized as “via USB3.0
Please try to update the computer`s USB Host Controller driver if not.
Make sure that the “High Speed is On.
Adjust “ USB Traffic we recommend 80 90 %. This value depends on your computer, higher means faster
Don`t forget the e xposure time affect s FPS too . In general , your exposure time needs to be shorter than 1FPS rate. For example, the FPS will decrease to 1FPS when the exposure time is 1 second.
T he camera can preview at 6 0fps but drops to 20fps when recording.
This is because your hard disk drive cannot match the speed of the camera Most ASI cameras are very fast and require up to 400M/s data transfer speed. But most hard disk driver can only run at 40 50M/s. We recommend you can exchange your HDD with one fast SSD and try to record the data in RAW format instead of RGB24 if use a color camera.
The camera cannot run continually on a laptop without external power.
This is because of the power save mode of your laptop, you need to disable power saving of USB port.
There is a yellow hint with the c amera model name and error code 10
You may have this problem with our USB2.0 cameras, please try another USB Port or PC, then you can upgrade the firmware of this camera on the good PC. The original firmware is more stable and faster.
Download this upgrade tool from our website
http://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/software/FWTool.zip
Unknown device shown under the device manager after plugging in the camera.

This is because the driver in not installed or installed properly, please try to close all anti virus software and re install the driver.
You can also update the driver manually if re installation still does not work.

Right click the “Unknown device”, choose the “Update Driver Software” and point to the driver directory. Normally the driver directory is:
C:Program Files (x86) ZWO Design ZWO_USB_Cameras_driver

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