PHD2 Beta

[r3i]

To change the graph colours, bring up the graph then shift click on the RA/DEC tab.

Great - thanks for the tip

[redfox1971]

Thanks for the help every1,going give astroTortilla a go on the next clear night.

[Freddie]

Great - thanks for the tip

No problem. The other thing to remember is that the scale (Y axis) on the PHD2 graph may not be the same as with PHD1, so be careful that you are comparing like for like.

[Ewan]

Just got this myself, i'll be giving the drift align a shot with this.

[Ewan]

Out now giving it a try, nice to be able to put guide scope details and pixel size in, clouds and a charging battery on laptop making things even more interesting.

[SnakeyJ]

Tried again tonight, but initially had problems with failed calibration on RA. I've increased the calibration pulse length to 1500ms and this worked amd was doing a great job for 15 minutes. Though it still managed to crash out half way through my first run at NGC6543 - nothing really useful in the logs or error message. I think I'll have to revert to the previous version for a little while the glitches are ironed out. That said, functionally this will be a major improvement on the original - hopefully it can be sorted quite quickly.

[Ewan]

Agreed but saying that these are the longest good subs ive ever done so phd2 seems good for me & no crashes fingers crossed, imaging M57 @ F6.3 approx 1280mm fl as its an easier target & fits on my sensor, if clouds keep away i want to try NGC6772 with a couple of 10 mins.

I take it the small pink circle indicates 'steadiness' & staying on target ?

[SnakeyJ]

Pink circles - last time I got these was after drinking too much gin? I've just got the usual green box, crosshairs and guiding - though the graphs look very respectable up until it crashes out. Good tip from Freddie on changing the graph colours.

[Ewan]

I think ive selected a view option that you havnt Jake thats all, i am having much better results with this version, not easy with a C8 & finder guider thats 225fl im guessing.

Finished my first true 10 min sub & it looked good.

[russellhq]

When I was using PHD2, the pink circle was a measure of the polar alignment error. I used it when following this drift alignment method:

https://code.google.com/p/open-phd-guiding/wiki/DriftAlignmentWithPHD2

[Ewan]

When I was using PHD2, the pink circle was a measure of the polar alignment error. I used it when following this drift alignment method:

https://code.google....ignmentWithPHD2

That was what i thought later on in the night as i had watched the screen & kept an eye on my PA error, on average it hovered around 0.04, i have not got a clue if that's good, fair or bad but i have got on better with this version than PHD1.

[Gonzo]

So yesterday all day long it was sunny, I got all my gear out ready to test this PHD2 in the evening and ..... wait for it... yeap you guessed it.... the clouds came out

I'll give it a shot another evening.

[Gasman]

Hi chaps

Well I have to say I`m pretty convinced that PHD is the work of the devil . Just been prattin about for an hour trying to tweak the various settings and my mount is all over the place.

Beats me after all its calibrating 40 steps N S E and West it still needs 6 variables to tweak not accounting for the ones in EQmod??. I have patiently started from scratch adjusting one up then down watching the graph to take on a life of its own and then try the next setting . I think I know where the term RA aggression comes from when the laptop nearly flew out of the obs. I`m sure I`m missing something somewhere as others praise it but at this moment I could happily stick PHD where the sun don`t shine !

Steve

[Steve 1962]

Hi Steve

A cause of your problems could be that you have your min motion settings set too high.

The PHD website says this about min motion:

This is the minimal amount that the star is allowed to move

*without* sending a correction. It applies to both RA and DEC. If it were set to .25, the star

would be allowed to "float around" a quarter pixel without PHD sending corrections to the

mount. This is like a non-linear version of RA aggressiveness: The idea is to eliminate

corrections that are probably erroneous, but in this case it is done through a threshold rather

than a linear modification of the correction value. A setting of 0.15 is typically good, but it

will depend to some degree on the relative magnification of the guide system and imaging

system as well as on the seeing conditions and the quality of the mount.

According to this and your graph - there's probably no Dec guiding going on at all, and your RA looks just about ready to guide

Also - your Max RA and DEC setting look very high too - mine are set at 100.

Good luck!

[Gasman]

Cheers Steve, I'll try your settings tomorrow :-)

Best

Steve

[Ewan]

I changed my min to 0.05 seemed good to go.

One thing bugged me though was i didnt stop guiding slewed from m57 to m27 & guide cam picture went from a clean dark background with bright stars to a very grainy grey picture, nof sure if thats cable or software related.

7 steps W & E & 13 N & S, my calibration steps was set to 2500 as my guider has a 225mm Fl.

[AndyUK]

When I used a finderguider (9x50) I too used 0.05 min motion, with calibration steps set to 4000, although if the DSO was further away from Polaris, I could reduce that to about 2500

One thing bugged me though was i didnt stop guiding slewed from m57 to m27 & guide cam picture went from a clean dark background with bright stars to a very grainy grey picture, nof sure if thats cable or software related.

Ewan - Assuming we're now talking about "original" PHD (which is a little off-topic from the OP - My apologies!), I had that problem too, even when I moved to OAG - The background, instead of being nice and dark with bright stars, came up as fairly light grey, making guidestar selection quite tricky (using 3s exposures and a Lodestar). I tried playing with the gamma slider at the bottom of the screen, but it didn't seem to make that much difference.

I also tried replacing the cable (to no avail) and then uninstalled and reinstalled, which temporarily sorted it out, but then it went back to grey again. In frustration I switched to Maxim (which is probably a good thing for me as I now use one application for both capture and guiding), but even so I'd love to know if someone else has found the reason why PHD does this - It's almost as if it's doing an (unwanted) autostretch(?)

[malc-c]

7 steps W & E & 13 N & S, my calibration steps was set to 2500 as my guider has a 225mm Fl.

Blimey, using the original PHD my calibration step was 1750 and that was with an ST80 with a 400mm FL. I tried up to 2200 with PHD2 and it still ran 30- 40 calibration steps before starting to guide...

I like the new layout, and target display, but at the moment IMO it's still a beta product and they have a lot of bugs to iron out.

[malc-c]

OK now my scope is performing well optically since fitting the new OO secondary, time to sort out the mount. First thing was to redo PA as the last time I checked was around a year ago and no doubt things could of slipped or the mount knocked since then. It wasn't far out but I reset it using EQMOD's PA tool anyway. So then onto some PEC training... The later versions of EQMOD have an auto pec tool which records the guiding errors on the fly and generates a PEC curve at the end of the run. I'm still amazed at how much Chris and his friends at EQMOD have developed this wonderful app !

Anyway, whilst its running I've used PHDLab to monitor the progress of run, and with the QHY5 running through the 200P the RMS error for RA is just 0.74 arcseconds, with DEC being slightly higher at 0.76 arcseconds and that is before any applicaton of PEC

This by the way is using PHD1 to guide - PHD2 failed even on a bright star to calibrate... PHD1 too around 8 steps in NSEW

[stargazerslivingroom]

This by the way is using PHD1 to guide - PHD2 failed even on a bright star to calibrate... PHD1 too around 8 steps in NSEW

What has changed to cause this failure, I wonder?

Steve

[Ewan]

Well just setting phd2 up ready for a few runs, 8 steps now which im happy with.

Not sure what the grainy picture problem is/was but i just have to remeber stop guiding then slew & all is fine.

Seeing not to good but ok up near Vega thankfully

[malc-c]

Sorry to say that I'm not a convert to PHD2, I've been running PHD1 now for an hour taking subs of NGC 6960 and monitoring the guiding using PHDLab and I've been getting some of the best guiding traces I've ever had.

[r3i]

Sorry to say that I'm not a convert to PHD2, I've been running PHD1 now for an hour taking subs of NGC 6960 and monitoring the guiding using PHDLab and I've been getting some of the best guiding traces I've ever had.

I can understand the reluctance, especially when clear nights are so few and far between and we want to make as much of the opportunity as possible. However I take my hat off to those who are making the effort with PHD2 - the only way it will get better is for folks to keep using it and iron out the glitches. If nobody did this then we'd never move forward with anything. As the nights are getting darker earlier now, hopefully I can spend at least a little bit of the night to give it another go.

After seen your screenshots of PHDLab I gave that a try the other night - quite a nifty bit of software, very impressive. Do you know if it will also work with PHD2 log files?

[malc-c]

Hi Mike,

I agree with your comments, the only way to improve something is to keep using it and reporting any issues back to the developers. I have no idea why PHD2 has given me so much grief, and I might spend the next clear night playing with the settings and seeing if I can get it to work as well as PHD1. For me when using AA5 demo I liked the target method of displaying the correction plots. This now appears in PHD2 so for me PHD2 was a leap forward... until I stumbled across PHDLab, which gives a lot more data when guiding or analyzing previous guide logs. I've not tried it with PHD2 to see if it can monitor active logs live in the way PHD1 does.... maybe the next clear night I'll do some experimenting

[Ewan]

I have not been doing astrophotography as long as most on SGL & my kit, as i understand, is not that easy to guide with ie my SCT & a finder at 225mm FL.

I on the other hand am finsing PHD2 better, maybe it's more 'compatible' with a setup like mine & with more input options available to the user, i for one will be testing & testing some more as the results seem good so far.