Ian McCallum

29 minutes ago, malc-c said:

my mistake

No worries. 👍

11 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

You don't need a Bahtinov Mask for the guidecam.

Just point the guidecam at a bright star, and with a fast refresh, say 0.5 sec exposure, adjust focus for lowest HFD figure in the Star Profile window.

A B Mask for the imaging camera does help.

 

What's wrong with that ?  That's how you get good images !

Michael

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

35 minutes ago, malc-c said:

You don't need goto to polar alight.  Many ways to polar align, some use software such as Sharpcap or NINA which have built in routines (Sharpcap required a subscription  ) or you could use the polar scope built into the EQ5

When selecting a target,  you don't need a planetarium program as you don't have goto.  Release the clutches and swing the scope to the target area, using the finder to help.  Lock the clutches and engage the motors so the scope is been set to track, and then with your eyepiece in place use the direction buttons to centre the target in the eyepiece.  Remove the eyepiece and place the camera in the focuser, then take an exposure to get focus and also a rough framing to see if the target is where you want it.  Use the directional buttons to frame the target how you want the final image to look if required.   Then launch PHD2 and run through the calibration as described.  Once PHD is guiding you can then do your imaging.

 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.

55 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

One of the issues was with drivers - no drivers available for Win7.

I guess support really ended for Win7 and we are forced to move forward (although I was quite happy with that version).

I'm still using Windows 8.1 on my laptop. 

2 hours ago, malc-c said:

Normal practice is to frame your target in the imaging camera, and once your happy, then let PHD pick a star in the guide camera's  image, let it calibrate, run the guide assistant and apply its recommendations and then either run guide assistant once more or just start guiding.  Once guiding has been running I typically let it run for a few minutes to settle down and then start the imaging run.  Once its all running I walk away and make a cuppa and let it do its thing.

Imaging is something you can't rush... it is a learning curve, sometimes steep and frustrating...  Vlaiv may remember a thread a while back were between us we wrote a very detailed step by step process for a guy who was struggling to grasp the basics - and then he simply stopped posting - so no idea if he gave up or it resolved his issue.  I don't think you are at that level, but people here are here to offer advice and guidance... just be patient and you'll get there.

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. 

15 minutes ago, michael8554 said:

From the GuideLog:

Signs of large Dec Backlash in the Cal, which skewed the reported Dec Guide Rate a bit.

The start of the final 25minute run shows that:

 

 

After the Backlash was driven out the  PA drifted on the south side, so backlash didn't come into play.

About halfway through that run you enabled Dec Backlash Comp.

But you hadn't run Guide Assistant at any point in the evening, so PHD2 hadn't established a starting setting for Dec Backlash ?

Or suggested suitable Minimum Move settings, or measured PA Error.

Guide Errors were RA = 1.43arcsecs, Dec = 1.69arcsecs, so round but bloated stars.

Guidecam focus was poor HFD = 7.64

Michael

 

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.

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

I will look into that at first opportunity.

My computer died on me, so I have now new machine with band new install of Windows 11 (that was adventure to install and get going), so missing all the software needed to analyze the data.

Hopefully, I'll install it all in next few days.

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.

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

Bit of a wobble at the start which has skewed the peak values somewhat, the rest of the trace of the longest guide session looked quite reasonable  to me for the equipment used.  The drift suggests a 16.1 arc minute polar alignment error so better polar alignment might improve the guide accuracy a little more.  Hopefully @vlaiv will be able to provide a more detailed in depth diagnosis of the log.

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.

42 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Ian, that's a debug log, you need to upload the guide log file

I hope this is the right one.🙄

PHD2_GuideLog_2022-02-06_103137.txt

34 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Ian, that's a debug log, you need to upload the guide log file

Whoops. I'll get that done. 

I wonder if this evening's effort was any better?🤔

PHD2_DebugLog_2022-02-06_103137.txt

20 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

You just tick the Autoconnect box, then they will connect as soon as indi comes up…..👍🏼

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.

6 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

You have to have a mount connected and in the profile before it will connect….👍🏼

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

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Can you take some screen shots of your profile and what it says when you try to connect ?

Steve

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'.

42 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Can you take some screen shots of your profile and what it says when you try to connect ?

Steve

Will do. 👍

1 hour ago, AstroKeith said:

Your screen shot shows no physical cameras selected? 

You are clicking 'save' before 'close'?

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.😂

56 minutes ago, trailer said:

The RPi is very sensitive to power it's power supply I believe. I was using the Argon One V2 case with the standard RPi PSU (Astroberry, EKOS, PHD2) and was having random crashes. I noticed that the Argon case has a dedicated PSU which supplies slightly higher volts and amps. Since using this PSU I've had no crashes. I am also using the Pegasus Powerbox Advance so not powering anything directly from the RPi. Not sure if this your issue but maybe a possibility?

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.

2 hours ago, Grant Fribbens said:

There has been issues with frame breaking in the ASI120 series of cameras and I would probably make sure that you are using the version of firmware from the ZWO website https://download.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/download/usb-camera-windows/?wpdmdl=258.

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

1 minute ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

I would see if PHD2 now runs without issues.
If this is the only issue then maybe not a problem, I don't know what exposure time you normally use for guiding bit I find generally the best for me is betweem 1.5 and 4 seconds so maybe no real need to take the darks any longer than 4 seconds.

Anyway you have your darks library now that should be fine for several months now 🙂 

Steve

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...