Ian McCallum

No worries. 👍

I was getting one 3D printed for £5, so not too much to lose.

I never mentioned polar align in my previous reply. I use the built in polar scope for that. I was referring to the target I was wanting to image.

I'm still using Windows 8.1 on my laptop.

Two problems that I can see. Firstly, I've been manually aligning the telescope with a eyepiece, as I don't have any Goto facilities. I can mitigate that by fitting a Telrad finder on the OTA, the 1, 2 and 4 degree rings should help, if used in conjunction with planetarium software.

I was trying to image and guide at the same time, probably not a good thing to do for a newbie...🙄 I remember trying to align the object in the laptop screen, whilst pressing the guiding buttons on the controller, perhaps this contributed to some of the spikes? I completely forgot about Guiding Assistant, I'll look into that when the weather allows. I've got a Bahtinov mask coming this week, so that should help with focus. I've got one for the guidescope and one for the main telescope. The lag is taking an exposure and showing up on the screen is rather frustrating, especially when it comes to focusing. This is where being part of a club or organisation that met up (lockdown conditions allowing), would be extremely useful. Hands on experience beats 'distant learning' methods, in my opinion.

I've been pulling my hair out with Raspberry Pi, as I've never had one before. I'm more used to Windows, so it's a steep learning curve. I'm finding KStars and Ekos rather daunting, as they look very complicated.😟 I've been very tempted a few times to give up on it.

Some of the wobble may have been me trying to realign the image on to the laptop screen, whilst outside, moving the controller buttons - waiting for the image to update on the screen.

I hope this is the right one.🙄 PHD2_GuideLog_2022-02-06_103137.txt

Whoops. I'll get that done.

I wonder if this evening's effort was any better?🤔 PHD2_DebugLog_2022-02-06_103137.txt

I did and it didn't. Seems that the Port Selection box needed to be unchecked first, for the auto connect to work.

I've solved this particular problem (till the next one appears).🙄 What I was trying to do was to get Ekos to connect to the cameras, without having to click on the connect button. I thought Ekos would have done this automatically, as I has set it to in the profile. It turns out that I had to untick the Port Selector option, save the profile and that seems to have cured the problem.

I'm using on camera ST-4 guiding, would that make a difference?🤔

Here are some screenshots from Astroberry, KStars and Ekos. I tried variations on a theme, either choosing host local or host remote, with PHD2 connected first or not at all (as I want to use that for guiding). Either variations ended up the same, I had to manual click the connect button is Ekos, after first pressing the 'play button'.

Will do. 👍

That was an image from a website.

I did manage to get it working, thanks. The problem is that Ekos won't auto connect to the cameras, even though I've told it to in the profile. I've no idea why? 🤔

I've got KStars and Ekos set up on a RPi 4, but am uncertain of this part of the connection. I use VNC Viewer on my laptop to control Astroberry, through the VNC Server on the RPi. All the cameras are connected to the RPi, so do I check the local or remote tab?🤔 This is the confusing part to me, as I'm still very green when it comes to the RPi and the like. I'm old enough to remember a few command lines from DOS.😂

I'm just using the power supply that I got with it, from the Pi Hut. It says on the box that it's the official Raspberry Pi PSU.

My camera's firmware is v3, but I've already reflashed it to v3 anyway. 😉 It's only a month old and bought brand new from Auntie @FLO.

One option is to get a replacement microphone cable for a Yaesu amateur radio, as it's got a RJ12 on one end. You then can cut off the other end and use a crimping tool and a new RJ12 plug on the other end. It's quite cheap to do. If you can't do it then someone on the forum would be happy to help, I'm sure. 😉 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Replacement-Microphones-Mic-Cable-Cord-Wire-for-Yaesu-MH48A-FT7800-1907DD-TY-TM-/334001949175?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Thanks for all the input, I was nearly starting to tear my hair out... It's just that I like something to work either all the time or not at all (preferably the former). If it's buggy, I like to know why and what can be done to remedy it. I've uploaded the latest PHD2 log, for those who may want to have a look. Perhaps it can help someone else, in the future...🤔 PHD2_DebugLog_2022-02-03_083646.txt

I did a complete reinstall of Astroberry OS, last night. I did all the updates and this morning, I tried PHD2 again. I managed to get the dark frames library issue resolved, it seems. So, I pushed the limits a bit more and went for min and max exposure settings, with no apparent problems. I'll upload the log file shortly, but just the windows laptop, it did have a couple retries at 4.5 seconds. This time it did successfully reconnect to the camera without any major problems...

I've posted the log up on to the PHD2 help forum, so I'll see how that goes...