The old PHD problem again

[mgirdwood]

Hi \All

unfortunately my old laptop finally gave up and i have to tp replace it with a new one, windows 10 machine.  so far it has not been to painful to find and isnstall most of the old softwares the inly real bproblem being Batinov Grabber which doesnt work at all.  so i will try to find an alternative, but the main issue is that i cant  guide. 

I eventually found the drivers for my Starlight express Costar that Win10 was happy with and both PHD and PHD2 can connect to the mount and the camera, I can see the stars using the camera but I get the " star did not move enough " problem.  I know the setup was working earlier n the year with the old laptop so I wondered if there might be an issue with the fact that its Win 10.  does any one have any experience with using PHD and Win 10 that could shed some light  ?  laptop has 2 * USB 2 and 1 * USB 3 .  I tried all the connection's but non made a difference.   I did up the RA to 2000 as per a number of threads suggestions but again no difference. 

thanks for any ideas

Mark

[Bizibilder]

Are you trying to calibrate on a hot pixel rather than a star?  'Tis easy enough to do!    Do you take dark frames before calibration? If not then try that as they will eliminate any hot pixels for you.

[KyleStoke]

Hi Mark, what are you RA and DEC rates set on in Eqmod?

[mgirdwood]

hi Roger, definetly a star as i can move it with eqmod

ok Kyle  I confess that question has thrown me a little bit, I have never looked for RA and Dec settings in EQMOD itself,  the only area I can see that related to that when I look at the settings is the " ASCOM Pulse guide Settings" area which RA rate x0.10 and the same for DEC rate, minimum pulse width = 20 msec.   not sure that is what you mean though

[mgirdwood]

hi Kyle , I just noticed the 2 sliding bars next to the NESW controls that also indicate RA and DEC, these are at 1

[KyleStoke]

Hi mark

I have highlighted the ones to change on this picture, as you can see on mine they are set to .40

I think its set to .10 by default but I read a post from a guy who is involved with the development of the software he said start at .50 then work your way up or down to see what suits. Im using a finder guider and found .40 did it fine for me. 

The other thing you can do is increase the guiding steps in PHD itself, ill put a copy of my setting up for you to look at.

[KyleStoke]

Just seen that you are using an ST80 so will probably not need the settings as high as me in the calibration steps, but its a good starting point then you can lower it until you have a nice amount of steps, I believe about 12ish each way is good

[mgirdwood]

Thanks kyle

i know i never messed about with eqmod in the past but i will certainly try this later, maybe the sky will clear again

mark

[KyleStoke]

No problem Mark I also never messed with it using PHD 1 but 2 needed it, a plus side is that originally i was waiting for about 40 steps each way when calibrating it took a long time at least 15 minuets I am probably down to around 5 now which is what i required to get SGP to work. Good luck i hope you get clear skies 

[solarboy]

Hi

just a thought i bought a new laptop with windows 10 and had the same problem 

so i went on AAbuy S and bought an old notebook with  a load of astro progames on it for 50 quid .

works perfectly it has a 7 hour battery life more than enough for evening of imaging problem solved.

solarboy