Been trying to troubleshoot an issue that we cannot seem to pinpoint, decided reaching out to DC-3 might help.

Here's the rub: Using a QHY 42Pro camera, using MaxIm to collect exposures, the DATE-OBS value in the FITS header is not created properly; this renders PinPoint unable to plate-solve the exposure, and ultimately results in any attempted ACP plans erroring out.

Version of MaxIm is 6.21, everything else is current. (ACP 9.2.1, ASCOM 7.0.1.4630, QHY ASCOM driver version 24.1.9.17) Windows 10 Pro, 22H2, 64-bit, all updates current as of this moment of writing (and have been throughout this troubleshooting process).

This is a somewhat insidious problem, as it does not occur every time; sometimes the DATE-OBS value is set correctly. But, more often than not--and EVERY time after ACP connects to the MaxIm camera--the value in DATE-OBS is some unrelated string from elsewhere in MaxIm. Some examples include "Reading from camera…", "Cooler power 13%", and " ".

The DATE-OBS value is always set correctly from QHY's own software, EZCAP_QT. The QHY ASCOM driver passes all checks on the ASCOM Conform Universal 4.0.0+32688 checker (as does the camera itself, of course).

We've been trying to work with QHY to try to figure it out, but they seem completely perplexed; we've provided example FITS files with the problem present, confirmed all versions of all software, and even re-installed all versions of all software at their request, to no avail.

At this point, we're just hoping this description rings a bell for someone, or else we might be able to provide yet another data point to QHY. We *cannot* be the only folks experiencing this problem, can we?