Few weeks ago I have purchased my first telescope 8” Meade LX90 along with LPI.
I installed all the software, updates and… LPI doesn’t work !(?#&*^#). Phoned the store
just to find out LPI is not compatible with Vista. I searched the web for some solution
( this is how I came across this site )
Nothing. Very nice, that’s how my new hobby starts: with “dead equipment“. ( I am a
complete noob, didn’t even have opportunity yet, to see what’s  “ up there “ )
I checked Windows updates, Meade updates, HP updates again ( I have HP laptop) .
Well …LPI is “dead in vista” … or is it ? Windows update recognized LPI as
“ Trust Webcam 14823 “ and installed driver for it. This means LPI works and is usable
under Vista, the problem is “Autostar Envisage” which can’t see the cam because its name
was changed to “ Trust Webcam 14823 “ and it looks for “ Meade LPI “. Bingo !!!
It occurred to me that the name “ Trust Webcam 14823 “ somehow needs to be changed
to “ Meade LPI “  and neither one is “etched on the chip ”. So to make long story short,
this is what I did to make it work. On HP site I found two updates for Vista called
 Essential System Updates, one released on 2007-06-26

h**p://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-51890-1&lc=en&cc=ca&dlc=en&os=2093&product=3289680&lang=en

second on 2007-10-31.

h**p://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-55210-1&lc=en&cc=ca&dlc=en&product=3289680&os=2093&lang=en

I downloaded them and installed. This are Microsoft USB fixes. You may or may not need them, read description before you install them to find out what they are for.
Now I opened Registry Editor, in search box typed :    Trust Webcam 14823
Found 19 keys containing this name and renamed every one of them to :     Meade LPI
Two keys will require you to run permissions, take ownership and give yourself full rights in order to save changes. Reboot. Plug in LPI. Open Autostar Envisage and you will be
pleasantly surprised because now it sees LPI and it works !!! That’s all to it. Enjoy
I hope this tweak will fork for everybody

Few tips.
Before you do anything backup your system
Make sure LPI is unplugged.
If it doesn’t work or you crash or screw up your system don’t blame me, you are responsible.
Below attached screen shots.

Great Post, I will have to try this out myself this weekend.  If it works I will pass it along to the Meade folks.  Not sure why I didn't think of this as well, guess the old barin ain't what t used to be LOL.  Thanks again,

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Stephen P. Hamilton
AutoStarSuite.Net Owner/Moderator
http://www.HamiltonAstronomy.com
King George Observatory
38° 21' 26" , -77° 03' 04"
Photos: My Photo Gallery

I tried this on my desktop, and I (finally) got it working! Thanks for the info!

The renaming of the keys was a bit of a hassle, I had to login with the administrator account (this is disabled by default on Vista) to change the keys.

Also the hotfixes are KB940199 and KB929550, the first one is downloadable from:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940199

The second one is here, but no public fix available, I've used the HP one (worked on my Dell system)
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=929550

I think both are in Vista SP1, I'm trying now to install that on my laptop to get it working there.

Gday Hans

Nice trick, but does the long exposure still work?????

I have a SWANN VersaCam MINI
and when i loaded its drivers, my system ( XP ) detected the LPI as this camera ????
( even though i had loaded the LPI drivers prior and it ran as an LPI )
Everything (basic) still ran under the new driver, but no LX

On digging into it some more, ( as far as i can tell ), when you plug a USB device in
the system uses "at least" two things to identify it
VID Vendor Id and PID Product Id, which are hardcoded into the USB device.
You can read these nos in the driver install files
( for the LPI its snphv71.inf )
In my case, i got the occasional lockups and system reboots.
I suspect ( but not sure ) that envisage was trying to do things that the alternate
driver wasnt designed to do.
Just something to watch for.

Andrew

Well I don’t know whether long exposure works or not
I guess there is only one way to find out… try it.
All the drivers, info files and vendor ID LPI uses now are taken
from Trust Webcam (snpstd.sys) if you check “ Telescope” tab in envisage
in imager box it shows “LPI imager” not “Meade LPI”, so I think
the cam is recognized properly, all image controls seem to work.
“Color” button links to detailed cam setup just try it and see how those controls respond
However if something doesn’t work maybe swapping drivers and other files
will fix it. In any case it is a start and maybe now Meade will be able
to come up with some real fix for LPI.

Gday Hans

I dont have Vista so cant test, but all standard WDM drivers will allow the generic dialog boxes to be exposed using DirectX.
The colour setting etc is pretty standard, but when it comes to exposure,
you get the same box but it has different upper/lower limits. These are coded in the driver itself.
You can use the low level DirectX interfaces to determine what capabilities each specific driver has.
Running an app that exposes these will allow you to see what resolutions/colours/framerates/ exposure time limits etc you can get from the currently selected driver.

As to a real fix by Meade, i read Stephens post re the cause, ie vendor drivers already loaded.
I wonder if it is possible to specifically disable the driver already in Vista
then load the Meade driver????

Andrew

Fantastic!! Had to edit the registry twice to find all the entries for the Webcam but it works. I was unable to change the name for the actual driver but all the "friendly name" entries were switched to Meade LPI and it works.

Hi Guys,

Just to say a big "thankyou " for all your efforts with the LPI which I have now managed to get running on my Vista Home Premium edition after following the information in this post.

Still not sure if the long ( up tp 15 seconds) exposure works or not but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel now!

Let's hope the Meade people can incorporate this in a new release.

btw, which is the latest version of Envisage software? I installed the original from the LPI CD ( verison 2.1 I think) then installed the version 4 update from the Meade site.But I also have an Autostar Suite update version 3.0.0.0 that seems to install a new version 7 in which, for example, the focus adjustment function is completely changed!

It is not clear from the Meade site what is what, and he help files are definitely not up to date.

Thanks in advance,

Rod

Thankyou Hans, I will try this tonight.

Cheers

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Ric
Wamboin.Observatory
NSW Australia
35º S 15.1 sec, 149º E 17.55 sec

Thanks, I've been trying for what seems like weeks. It took several tries but now works, Will try get this out. People on the Bushnell  and MAK & Mak 5 ( MAK 5" with Autostar LPI ) sites are at a complete loss. I had resultes with RegiStax program but no "live" input.

 

 

Good news everyone.

I have found what I believe is the original LPI driver and it installs perfectly on Vista.

Search for this file on Google:

PC-30Cam602A.exe and you will find references to a pine cam driver.

Or follow this link directly:

http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=146163&action=filfo

After you click the "download this file" button you are given a choice of paying for the driver or getting it for free.

Chose the "Download this file by viewing a series of ads " option to get the driver file for free.It is only about 650Kb

Install the driver and let the Vista install the camera. Then rename all the registry instances of the camera name to MADE LPI as mentioned earlier in this thread. This allows Envisage to recognise the camera.

The Camera worls perfectly including the long exposure mode.

LPI lives in Vista!!

Clear skies,

Rod

Meade LX50, LPI

Leicestershire, England

It finally works!! Thanks for the tips...note that all I had to do was remove the "Trust Webcam 14838" and replace with "Meade LPI" with regedit and it worked. I think I only counted 9 changes, and the 2 that it will not let you do, didn't matter anyway. The other patches and updates were not done and all is well.  It is amazing that such a simple task could take so long to figure out...I mean it would only take a few lines on the Meade site to explain....or maybe they could just fix the problem!  I was wondering what to do as Meade support said it was a Microsoft issue and they were waiting for them .....translation: nothing was probably being done from either side.  I had checked the LPI with XP right before the upgrade, and was regretting it ever since.  I followed autostarsuite.net for progress but did not want to go the VM route....seemed overly complicated for a $99 camera.  The only downside I can see is that the LPI must always go into the exact same USB port, or it is not recognized....but one can live with that until the real patch comes out!

I am sure glad you figured it out!  Now on to the tests! (and hopefully some decent images!)

Jim T, Hinton AB, ETX-105 and an Old 13" Coulter!

Hans,

Thanks for the detailed information to get Vista to recognize the LPI.  Although in my situation it did not work.  Envisage did opena nd showed it saw the LPI the image was very unstable. Flickering diffetent colors, image was sometimes 1/2 red or blue, or a mosaic of differnt blocks of red & blue.  I tried this twice and had the same issues.  I checked the camera on my XP system and the camera worked fine. If anyone has more information to get the LPI to work in Vista I would be willing to test.  I have a Gateway laptop running Vista Premium.

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Karl Stephenson

Okay, old age is kicking in.  I forgot you cannot have the device connected when editing the registry.  Once disconnecting the device and then editing the registry it works fine.  As for using this on other USB ports I did get Envisage to recognize the LPI. You just have to go through Hans procedure for each USB port on the PC you want to use. 

Currently I still have two issues:

1) My LPI does seem to do what looks like breathing of the image and the magic eye focus is very erratic. Could be my table top testing in daylight.

2) When I try to capture images I get an error (unhandled exception has occured in your application)and it wants to shutdown.

My laptop has 4 USB ports and it worked on at least 3 ports doing it that way.  I saved the last port to see if I could make changes to the Trust Driver 14823 and have it install as a Meade LPI.  So far no luck.  I changed the .inf file to display Meade LPI and it said it installed the LPI and even Vista device manager said it was a Meade LPI and not Trust Webcam 14823 but Envisage did not recognize it.

Hans fix brings up a very interesting question though. If someone were to purchase a webcam and go through Han's procedure of editing the registry could they get Envisage to recognize the OTHER webcam as a Meade LPI?

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Karl Stephenson

To fix the erratic Magic Eye and the "breathing" I had to do a further regedit tweak and change all instances (in the registry data fields) of snpstd.sys to snphv71.sys. This is the driver file that Envisage would use for the LPI  in XP. I think the "breathing" is a result of Auto Contrast not working quite right with the snphv.sys driver.

If you've run the Meade LPI installer then snphv71.sys should already be in the Windows/System32 folder.  Change registry data fields only, not any registry key names. I also had one instance of snpstd.dll that I changed to snphv71.dll.  That should also be there if you've run the Meade LPI installer.

I get the unhandled exception too, but only when saving "All Uncombined Images" in .png format.  Other formats seem to be OK, as does "Normal" mode (save just the combined image) even with .png.  Any one else seen this?

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Steve Markham