PHD set-up

[groberts]

I am about to delve into the dark world of autoguiding and would like to use PHD.  Unfortunately using Greg Marshall’s Guide to PHP Guiding I have not past the second paragraph on the set-up.

I have an AZ-EQ6 mount and just started to use EQMOD for computer control together with CdC, which I would now like to use with a William Optics 50 mm guidescope and a ZWO ASI 120 MC, that I deliberately purchased as it has a guideport – so how does this all fit / work together? 

·        Does the ZWO plug directly into the ST-4 guideport on the mount, if not then where?

·        Does PHD work with / through ASCOM in any way or just independently with its own software?

·        Is there a preferred start-up sequence in order for all this to work best together?

·        Have I missed something?

I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions but, for the moment, thanks.

[Astroboffin]

Hi,

First of all plug the ST4 cable into,the ZWO and the other end into your guide port on the mount, and do your normal PA and align routine and leave the scope pointing at an object in the sky, next go to the PCfor the rest.

Plug the ZWO into your computer with a USB lead

Make sure you have loaded the ZWO drivers for your camera, and the Ascom drivers for your camera, and the Ascom software.

Open PHD and click on mount at top of page, under that heading click "on camera"

Then go to bottom of page and click the camera icon, choose either the native ZWO driver or Ascom, if you choose Ascom, then you will have to then select your camera from a list, if you use the native driver then you will go to next step.

Now camera is connected click a length of exposure, say 2.5 seconds then click the arrow icon to start looping the image.

You will now see and image change on the screen every 2.5 seconds, click on a star, and an orange box will go round the star, then click, the target icon to start the guiding routine, the software will now run through a calibration routine, to check the orientation of the guide camera, (you can put the camera in any way round you want) when this is done, around 3 or 4 mins, the box around the star will turn green and guiding will begin, and that's it in simplified terms.

You can leave all the settings under the brain icon to default for now, but depending on what guide scope you are using you may need to alter the calibration step size, larger number for smaller guide scope and smaller number for larger guide scope, so for a 400mm guide scope set it at around 750ms or for a 50mm finder guider about 1500ms.

By the way I still use PHD the origonal but PHD 2 is almost the same.

Hope that helps a little

Regards, and good luck

AB

[Xplode]

Since you use EQMOD there is no need to use an ST4 cable, USB cable is enough, in PHD just make sure to choose your mount instead of "on camera"

1 less cable is always good

[glowingturnip]

the way we got the school's EQ8 mount to guide with an ASI ZWO was to connect the camera direct to mount with the ST4 cable, and camera to computer with the usb cable.  Then in PHD, choose the camera for the camera connection, and for the mount, found that 'on camera' didn't work, but that there was an option something like 'ASI ST4 Ascom' and that worked.

If in doubt, just try all the options until you find one that works -use the manual guide dialogue box to test if instructions are getting through.

[groberts]

Thank you all, that seems quite straightforward (famous last words).  

[rharrison]

Thank you all, that seems quite straightforward (famous last words).  

It is relatively straight forward, it's amazing software I've been using it the past couple weeks just got into guiding too.

Be interesting to know which setting you end up using, exposure, bining et cetera

[red dwalf]

i guide with a zwo 120 mm camera and a neq6 pro, pulse guiding is the easiest way to got , one less cable to worry about as mentioned above,

i didn`t have too much luck using phd 1 so migrated to phd 2, make sure you get the latest version by googling phd 2 snapshots, there you`ll be able to get the most upto date version, using phd 2 gives a lot more options and better calibration steps as you can enter the focal length of your guide scope and phd2 will detyect the pixel size of the guide camera and do it`s own calibration calculations.

choose server mode and not on camera.

also in eqmod make sure that your ascom pulse guide setting are set to x0.50 in both ra and dec, and also in phd2 guide speed x sidereal, if you change it in phd2 brain it will change it in eqmod.

when using eqmod it can also help smooth out you guiding, if you click on the display button and go to ascom pulse guide monitor, you will see a graph of the ra and dec, if you use the gain slider you can help smooth out the graph, my ra is usually good but i reduce the gain down to 26% and this helps smooth it out.