Hey everyone!
So yesterday during the day I finally managed to control my SkyWatcher EQ5 GoTo mount through EQMOD and other software. I'm still waiting for my EQDIR cable to arrive, but for now it worked by simply connecting a USB2.0 A to USB B cable to the EQ5 SynScan control unit and set the Baud rate to 115200 in both EQMOD and the Bitrate on the COM port. Since in the evening it finally stopped raining and we actually got a couple of hours of decently clear skies I was insanely eager to start and try autoguiding for the first time (yes, I am extremely new to this hobby and never took a picture before. I'm kind of learning all the steps and equipment as I go). I set up my telescope, balanced it and polar aligned it.
I'm using a William Optics Uniguide 50mm (200mm focal length) as guidescope and ZWO ASI 290MM mini as guidecam. After some failed attempts I decided to do a clean install on PHD2 and run through the set-up assistant again and making a new Dark Library. I set my mount to Sidereal tracking and after connecting all the gear I hit the loop button to take 2s exposures (played around a little between 1-3s during the night). When looping started I asked PHD to auto select a star and pressed the guiding button. At first it gave me a warning "Calibration this far from the celestial equator will be error prone. For best results calibrate at a declination of -20 to +20". Not being sure exactly what it meant, I did some googling and decided to recalibrate at a point much lower over the horizon (assuming this is what it meant), and didn't get that error again. Before my clean install this is what my guiding looked like:
You can see in the graph that I reset it once, but no matter how many times I tried on different stars or even multiple stars, the graph kept steadily declining and the total error rate kept steadily increasing. After the clean install and calibrating this is what my graph and calibration details looked like (I know the calibration isn't looking good as they are supposed to be straight lines if I'm not mistaken).
Does anyone know why this is the case? My Dec graph seemed to want to stay within view at least, while my RA dropped straight to the bottom again, total error was still steadily increasing. On top of this I had 2 more warnings from PHD: "Advisory: Calibration completed but RA and Dec rates vary by an unexpected amount (often caused by large Dec backlash)" and "PHD2 is not able to make sufficient corrections in RA. Check for cable snags, try re-doing your calibration, and check for problems with the mount mechanics". Being so new to this hobby it's hard for me to make sense out of most of these messages so I'm hoping someone is able to help me troubleshoot. Could it be a result of bad polar alignment, bad focus or a bad cable? Am I doing something wrong with my calibration? Can it be that my guidecam was rotated giving wrong angles? Is there a specific point in the sky best for calibration? Am I using wrong values somewhere?
Please let me know if you have any tips or advice. Thanks!