PHD Guiding a Nexstar 4SE?

[mikehab]

Hi - has anyone managed to get PHDGuiding s/w to control a Nexstar 4SE mount successfully? I can use my laptop to control my 4SE quite happily using the NexRemote s/w, and also Stellarium seems to be able to talk to it OK, however I can't seem to get PHD to guide the 4SE properly. I have installed the Celestron version of the ASCOM drivers, and I can get PHD to successfully recognise and connect to the mount. I then focus my webcam/guidescope on a 'star' - been playing around with this indoors with a white LED on the other side of the room for a 'star' and have nice green cross-hairs when it recognises and locks onto the 'star' - then I slowly move the 'star' sightly and I can see PHD detecting this movement on the screen and re-aligning the green cross-hairs - yet the scope remains static. Just wondering whether anyone else has managed to get PHD working with a 4SE mount?

Thanks,

Mike

[cfpendock]

I had quite a few problems initially when I connected my celestron CPC to PHD, also using a home made star like yourself (it's all you can do with all the clouds!). PHD was recognising the mount, but not moving it. First, PHD moves the scope only very slowly - you have to listen to the motors to be sure it's working. But I couldn't get any movement using the RJ12/USB connector, even tho' this worked OK to control the mount from the laptop through the hand control. But nothing when connected to the autoguide port, even though PHD recognised it. I eventually got a connection via a GPUSB connector from Shoestring Astronomy. There is a useful programme called GPUSB check which confirms that this works, and I have to say that it does. I did, however also have problems tracking the "star" because the sidereal tracking was too fast for PHD to follow. So I learnt that "tracking" in the scope menu has to be turned off.

Not sure if the above is helpful, but at least you know that you are not the only one to have experienced problems with PHD and Celestron.

Chris

[mikehab]

Many thanks for response ... sounds like you experienced exactly the same behaviour that I'm seeing. I'll take a look at the GPUSB solution ...

Cheers,

Mike

[rpg850]

I'm trying to auto-guide an 8SE using PHD 2, NexImage5 camera, and the auto guide port on the mount.  I've downloaded the latest ASCOM platform and the Celestron driver. I've connected the serial cable to my windows 7 laptop on one end, and the mount's auto-guide port on the other. PHD 2 recognizes and connects to the NexImage5 camera just fine, but it isn't connecting to the mount. I can't seem to figure this out, any suggestions?