Anyone autoguiding with Artemis Capture?

[ollypenrice]

I'm finding AstroArt, my ususal guiding software, keeps hanging up. It may be Vista, I don't know. It was very reliable on my XP machine. Has anyone tried the new guiding funtion in Atik's Artemis? And if so, do you have any tips for a first time user?

Olly

[Tom OD]

I'm surprised no-one got back to you on this. I tihnk there is a tutorial video on the atk website which shows you how to sue it.

[fatwoul]

Despite my gripes with Artemis Capture, I've always stuck to it for sequencing.  Now that I am learning lots of new things, I figured I'd try the auto-guiding, but I can't seem to get it to hold onto a star during calibration.  Either it tells me the star didn't move enough, or seemingly the star move so much that calibration fails due to the star being lost.  I've always found the guiding setup in Maxim fairly intuitive, but for reasons I don't want to cloud this thread with, I was keen to try and get imaging and guiding running from a single programme, whatever programme that may be.

So, as Olly asked five years ago, is anybody successfully using the autoguiding in Artemis?

[pyrasanth]

Atik should really bin Artemis as it is only a step up from being pretty much useless. My humble opinion for guiding would be PHD every time. It is simply the easiest piece of software I've ever used and no compromise- it gives great results- well done Craig!

[Gina]

I didn't know Artemis did guiding   I use it and like it for capture and sequencing

[carastro]

Hi Olly, I tried to use it but it wouldn't connect to PHD.

So when I saw Atik at Kelling I spoke to them about it and it appears it will only connect if you are using an Atik guide camera.  So should work if you're using your Atik16i, but I have a QHY5 and I'm blowed if I am going to buy yet another camera just to connect to Atik for guiding.

Atik should really bin Artemis as it is only a step up from being pretty much useless.

Every-one is entitled to their opinion, but personally I really love it as I know others do too.  It just works.  Some other software are too unnecessarily complicated and you need a degree in IT IMO.  

Carole 

[carastro]

Just to clarify, PHD is what i use for guiding, but I wanted to do dithering which the new Artemis supports, but couldn;t get it to connect as per last post.

Carole 

[pyrasanth]

My main criticism with Artemis is that it feels really basic & I don't feel that it gives much control in respect of image processing. There are better tools but I guess as it is bundled we can't complain too much! 

[pyrasanth]

As an afterthought has anybody had any success with Dawn? producing satisfactory images. I played with it once & got unexpected results particularly the stacking function.

[Gina]

As an afterthought has anybody had any success with Dawn? producing satisfactory images. I played with it once & got unexpected results particularly the stacking function.

Good or bad?

[carastro]

My main criticism with Artemis is that it feels really basic

That's probably precisely why I like it, I find some of these other programs too complex.  You don't need processing to capture.  I would however like to be able to dither with it, and this is my only gripe.

Carole 

[ollypenrice]

I'm amazed that anyone would find Artemis Capture next to useless. I love it. I greatly prefer it to Nebulosity, for instance. Having to go through each step via 'Abort' is really clunky and irritating.

Olly

[Scott]

I can't believe that apart from Tom OD, it's taken you 5 yrs to get a reply....Hope you find it useful Olly 

[ollypenrice]

I can't believe that apart from Tom OD, it's taken you 5 yrs to get a reply....Hope you find it useful Olly 

Hehheh, the problem just went away. Maybe the miserable Vista picked up some updates which found the original problem.

Olly

[carastro]

I can't believe that apart from Tom OD, it's taken you 5 yrs to get a reply

OMG, I didn't realise that was a 5 year old question, and obviously referring to an older version than the one I was talking about.  I was referring to the version released this year which incorporates dithering, and thought that was what you were asking about.

How on Earth did this thread get resurrected? 

Lol.

Carole 

[kirkster501]

APT all the way.  11 Euros.  Job done.  And it supports dithering.

I am really happy with all my free field-laptop astro software of APT (well almost free), PHD, AstroTortilla, EQMod, CdC.  All on my eight year old Dell Latitude 630 on Windows 7.  I upgraded to an SSD last month and reinstalled the whole lot.  Brilliant.

[dave_galera]

APT all the way.  11 Euros.  Job done.  And it supports dithering.

I am really happy with all my free field-laptop astro software of APT (well almost free), PHD, AstroTortilla, EQMod, CdC.  All on my eight year old Dell Latitude 630 on Windows 7.  I upgraded to an SSD last month and reinstalled the whole lot.  Brilliant.

I have looked at this before and it seems very interesting, however, I just wish it had an inbuilt auto-guider and pin-point plate solving like Maxim has.....it just that I hate Maxim's interface and I don't use it for processing, nor would I ever.

Dave

[dave_galera]

An afterthought......maybe for 13 Euros I should give it a go, can't lose anything.

Dave

[petevasey]

Coincidentally today I played with my venerable Artemis 285 to see if it could be used as a guide camera with MaximDL.  The camera certainly works ok in Maxim DL (4 and 5), and brings up a small guide box, so ok for speed.  But I didn't test to see if the inbuilt guide port would be accessed by MaximDL to do  ST4 type guiding.

So

a) Has anyone done this?

Next clear night I'll give it a try.  I don't know what the output connections are except that pin 2 is ground, but I have two cables I can look at which are wired mirrored and straight through, so one of them should be correct ;-)

Cheers,

Peter.

[petevasey]

Right, I didn't need to wait for a star, I was able to test using the Guide Move commands in MaximDL.  And it worked    The axes needed to be swapped around a bit, but in RA the commands definitely slowed down or speeded up the tracking.  I don't know about DEC - I could hear the motor running on command, but didn't look to see whether it ran in both directions.  I assume it did.   I will eventually try it out 'in anger'.

So if anyone reading this has an Artemis 285 lying in their parts bin and uses MaximDL for image capture and guiding, you've got a spare guide camera!  It may be supported by other guiding programs, I can't comment on that.

Incidentally I also love Artemis Capture - I have an early version, in fact my camera was one of the completely home assembled testers (hand soldering surface mount components!) and I was marginally involved in the early testing of Capture.  The camera was my main imager for a number of years but I don't use it much now except for Solar and Lunar imaging where my QSI 683 can't handle the bright subject.  Artemis Capture is extremely intuitive and easy to use.  And the program is teeny!

Cheers,

Peter.

[petevasey]

A caveat.... 

I've so far and probably for ever(!) been unable to find an Artemis285 driver for Windows7.  Even the supposed universal 'Core Software'  installer on the Atik web site fails.  Not a problem for me - the computers I use for imaging are all Windows XP, and I now have XP Home running in Virtual Box on my W7 desktop.

Thank goodness, but thanks for nothing, Microsoft, every day I read about people who are having hardware problems when they 'upgrade' to W7 or above, I know it caused me all sorts of problems including having to buy some replacement software (and a new scanner because of lack of drivers for my existing one) 

I DID have a problem for a while.  My main laptop is XP Pro, whereas my Observatory computer and little netbook (which is my 'travel abroad' computer of choice) are XP Home.  I found that the MaximDL plugin which I already had failed under XP Pro although it behaved perfectly in XP Home!  Fortunately after trawling the internet for an hour or so I found a later version of the plugin which works in XP Pro.  Oh boy, the vagaries of Windows!

Cheers,

Peter.