PHD and my LX90 - Help Greatly Needed!

[CKemu]

Borrowing a friends laptop to control my guide cam and the LX90's mount - however running in to a snag.

Laptop OS: Windows Vista 32bit (not my choice, but not my laptop)

PHD, ASCOM 5.5 Platform and Meade LX200, Classic and AutoStar I drivers.

USB1: StarShoot GuideCam - Working Fine.

USB2: USB to Serial Adapter to AutoStar hand controller

Meade's AutoStar Suite controls the telescope fine, so no issues with COM7 and communication with the mount.

The problems come with PHD, it tells me it has connected to the AutoStar 497 fine, and last night I asked it to track, so it calibrates and apparently stars tracking. However the star slid out of the green box and PHD seemed to make no attempt at correcting, in fact the PHD graph stayed level throughout the tracking. I will note that I didn't do an accurate polar align, but last night was more an experiment than anything really practical.

Manual guiding also seemed to have no effect on my mount.

Any help on this matter will of course be greatly appreciated, and is there any independent control system in PHD to slew the scope at full speed, even just to ascertain that the scope is getting some kind of command.

[Merlin66]

The only option within PHD is the manual directional buttons.

Using these you should see the star image move on the PHD screen. If this is not happening then the PHD correction signals are NOT getting to the telescope controller.

Just check all the connections and maybe try Stellarium/ CdC to control the scope through the same cables - if CdC works then there IS a problem....

[CKemu]

Stellarium works fine, just tested it based on your recommendation (in fact I found it rather fun to use Stellarium as a control source).

I have no idea what CdC is, but given that I can communicate with my scope via Stellarium and the AutoStar Suite, I presume the connection is fine.

It's day time and cloudy here, and probably will be all week. Can I set the slew speed in Manual to go to "max", so I can see something? Or even at it's default would I not see the graph move whilst using manual guiding.

[Merlin66]

CdC - Cartes du Ciel IMHO is much better that Stellarium...

Don't look at the graph - just set up PHD and use the PHD buttons to move the star image on the PHD screen...if that doesn't work then PHD is NOT talking to the mount...

[CKemu]

Well the stars didn't move during last nights testing, so I am assuming that PHD is failing to communicate with my AutoStar 497. I've got no chance of clear nights it seems all week - I really don't fancy waiting until a clear night, and wasting it trying to get a piece of software to work.

Is there anything I need to do to the AutoStar unit for PHD to communicate with it correctly.

[Merlin66]

If PHD is recognising the Autostar then obviously it should "talk" to it??

What about trying a different connection cable??

[CKemu]

You would think that when it tells you "connected to AutoStar 497" - that it would be okay, but apparently not.

Cables are fine, if two other applications can communicate and control the AutoStar unit, then it's not a hardware problem.