Some issues with PHD Guiding

[Amra]

Finally I had a clear night to begin testing autoguiding. Felt sad to waste the excellent clear sky on experimenting with phdguiding, but that's okay I need the experience, and the good news is I ironed it out in the end, but still some questions remain.

I have a QHY5L-II colour for autoguiding through my 9x50 finder, mount is HEQ5 Syntrek EQmod. I was nervous at first that it wouldn't be able to perform as well as the mono version, but it performed absolutely great! Lots of stars at 1s exposure and no problem ramping the exposure up higher for more stars or on areas where few bright ones were present.

Now on to the problems, I was under the impression that it was best to send pulseguide commands to the mount and not use the ST-4 port, because then you can do more advanced calibrations on the laptop (forgot what they were called.) However, no matter what settings I picked in phdguiding it would always only perform the check to the west, like 61-62 steps and then fail, with a message that the star hadn't moved enough. And indeed the star was moving to the west but that is the only calibration the program got to do, also it crashed a lot, but that might be due to my laptop being rather rubbish. I googled myself to some SGL threads while I was troubleshooting, and saw many with similar issues that some were able to solve, but nothing worked.

At first I used the old PHD Guiding, I suspect it's some kind of communication error. Then I downloaded PHD Guiding 2.0, and had the same issue there.

Finally after wasting hours, I went inside for the ST-4 cable, connected my camera to my mount, then immediately it worked on the first calibration in PHD Guiding 2.0, ughhh. Too bad it was already dawn, so I couldn't check if I could do 10-15 minute exposures.

But my question is, if I do connect my camera to my mount through the ST-4 port I guess I can't do more advanced autoguiding? (I guess that would be periodic error correction?) I don't really care, if both can give me 10-15 mins subs anyway.

I ran PHD Guiding 2.0 in the end with the ST-4 cable inserted, it seems to not crash and works fine.

I'm willing to troubleshoot more to get it to work through USB only if that's worth the trouble, but next time I'm out I'm going to play with the ST-4 port guiding because tonight I didn't really get to see autoguiding in action.

[Amra]

btw I did read that if I wanted to use ST4 I was supposed to pick 'On Camera' from the PHD 'Mount' menu & 'ASCOM' (this was on by default) for pulse guiding.

However in PHD Guiding 2.0 I couldn't find those options and I guess it just picked 'On Camera' for me when I added the ST-4 cable to the setup?

[Davey-T]

Can't shed any light on your problem but curiously I had the opposite one, my mount wouldn't calibrate with ST4  and I had to use ASCOM, wasted a few nights trying to fix it then decided lifes too short and just use ASCOM.

PHD2 has a different interface and you click on the camera icon at the bottom to connect your equipment. 

Dave

[dmahon]

I suspect you need to increase one of the settings (the brain icon in PHD v1) - can't remember what it's called, but it is set at 1500, try 3500 instead.

[Amra]

Tonight I couldn't get it to run properly at all, it crashed after a while every single time. I got the video feed from the guide cam, could clearly see stars and it refreshing for a while but then when running calibration it constantly crashed after a while, no error just a complete freeze. I gave up on it for tonight.

So what could it be, cables, drivers? I read that old laptops have lower power output in their USB sockets, could maybe be that? I do have USB 2.0 on all slots.

I was almost tempted to drag my desktop PC outside... But didn't, I'll have to look around for a laptop to borrow.

[Amra]

It's really weird that the program crashes so much, I recorded the sun one day for hours with the QHY with ezplanetary with no problems. I have updated every single driver I can think of as well.

Sent from my M9pro using Tapatalk

[Merlin66]

I'm using PHD V2.2 with a Lodestar and ST-4 cabling....no issues, no drama, it calibrates in around 30 steps per direction.

I can keep my target star image on a 25micron slit indefinitely.....what more would you want.

[Amra]

I am going to read this thread thoroughly and try with another laptop http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/188777-phd-guiding-basic-use-and-troubleshooting/

But knowing my luck this streak of clear skies is going to end before I resolve the issues.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Just to chime in to Your earlier post about PHD2. Here is how to set On-Camera ST4 guiding in PHD2:

That´s how I currently run my own guiding via ST4 between QHY5L-IIc camera and Mount. As I don´t use EQMod yet.

[IanL]

There is no material difference in performance between ST4 and ASCOM pulse guiding so if one works well and the other doesn't, don't sweat it too much.  If you move on to add PEC via EQMOD then you should definitely try to get pulse guiding working as EQMOD will intelligently combine PEC and guide commands, whereas you can get conflict between PEC and ST4 guiding (over/under corrections).

Regarding the crashing, it could be all sorts of things and you're going to have to work through to try to isolate and troubleshoot the culprit.  USB cabling, connectors, etc. can be a significant cause of problems so it might be an idea to start with the simplest cabling set-up you can - only the equipment you need to run the mount and guide camera connected, get rid of any hubs, cable extenders, etc. See how you go with that, and if it works then start adding in extra things (imaging camera, any hubs, extra cabling, etc.) one thing at a time and re-test.  I had all sort of random lock-ups and crashes in various bits of software that turned out to be dodgy USB connections in the end.

Also check your power supplies are adequate.  If lots of things are drawing too much from the supply or if cabling is too long or dodgy, you may find that dips in voltage can cause the mount or camera to crash or disconnect briefly, throwing out the software.

Next troubleshoot your software.  Again try to remove as much stuff as you can (start with a clean machine with Windows installed from scratch if possible), only install and use the software you absolutely need to guide and run the mount first, then try adding in various other items as you go until you find the cause.  I also had problems with some extraneous software that was trying to talk on one of the TCP/IP ports used by Stellarium for mount control - everything worked fine most of the time and then a random crash or error for no apparent reason.  Took ages to track that one down.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

"like 61-62 steps..." >60 calibration steps?? It sounds like you haven't got your calibration step size set up correctly. However, PHD2 calculates this for you once you enter the appropriate details. You should expect to calibrate in something like 12-15 steps in each direction. Also, make sure you don't have multiple versions of drivers installed!

Louise

[Amra]

Hey, thanks for the tips guys!

I'm going to connect only the most essential equipment directly to the laptop & check everything, my laptop has 6x USB 2.0 slots, luckily. When those 61 calibration steps kept happening it would only calibrate west and then fail, never switch to another direction, but on the one or two occasions it has worked it did it properly with those 15 calibration steps as mentioned.

Doesn't look like it will be clear this evening unfortunately. 

[Gasman]

I'm using PHD V2.2 with a Lodestar and ST-4 cabling....no issues, no drama, it calibrates in around 30 steps per direction.

I can keep my target star image on a 25micron slit indefinitely.....what more would you want.

Hi Ken

Any chance of a screenshot of your settings please?.  I have an EQ6 and guide with a Lodestar but my EQMod/pulse setup doesn`t seem to like PHD 2 maybe I should try the ST4 cable connection?, never tried that way yet.

cheers

Steve

[Merlin66]

Steve,

See attached.....

I use EQMod and CdC to control the NEQ6pro...

(To be absolutely honest, I've recently changed back to AA5 guiding now that Fabio has upgraded the guide capabilities to "Slit Guiding")

[Amra]

The solution that seemed to solve my issue:

In EQMOD ASCOM SETUP choose pulse guiding. Then in EQMOD ASCOM the default pulse guide settings are x 0.2 in each of RA and Dec - these need increasing to 0.5 or thereabouts. That was what was preventing guiding in my case.

Hope that works for you.

Dave

I think it's working now, I changed back to pulseguiding and set above mentioned setting to 0.5, calibration was successful the very first time. I'm running some 600/900/1200s sub tests now with a not completely perfect polar alignment.

this thread helped resolve my issue, basically my pulseguiding was set to 0.1 on both axis I changed it to 0.5x and it seems to be working.

[Amra]

Wow! 10 minute exposure with not perfect polar alignment looking like this:

I'm very pleased.

[Amra]

But it only guided that one sub and then crashed. but at least now I know 10 minute guiding is possible with my setup.

[GuillermoBarrancos]

Did you try running PHD2 With "Run As Administrator" privileges?

Can´t hurt to try.

[Amra]

I will tick it on for the .exe file so it always runs in administrator mode.

I've also read that you should connect the camera as an ASCOM camera, I've been connecting the one on the list called 'QHY5L-II', but I noticed just now that on the list is also one called 'CMOS QHY5LII Camera (ASCOM)' and I remember installing those ascom drivers, so I have normal drivers & those ascom drivers for my camera, maybe it's a conflict issue or maybe I'm just supposed to run it as an ASCOM camera. Now I have more things to try, splendid, hope weather is decent tonight.

[Amra]

Okay guys, another short session of troubleshooting and I've run into another possible factor that might help me resolve my guiding issues.

I use StellariumScope to control my mount for go-to, the first thing I do when I boot up my astrophotography laptop is as follows:

1. Boot DS3 Tool for my PS3 controller bluetooth control

2. I fire up StellariumScope, make sure it finds the mount on a com port and then connect. I always test to see if it responds to my gamepad

3. I boot up Stellarium.

4. Then Backyard EOS into framing control, I center a star and sync it properly with Stellarium so my EQMod is displaying correct info.

5. At this point I'll use AlignMaster to perfect my polar alignment with 2 stars out of the list. Now AlignMaster knows that there is a EQmod 'session' active, because when I want to go check the com port on it, it just says 'there's already a session active, just press OK' (not those exact words, but similar) I complete 1-3 iterations of the AlignMaster procedure and then re-sync Stellarium to the star I stopped on.

6. Now it's time for guiding and this is where I think I might've figured out the culprit for my particular setup; I fire up PHD Guiding 2.0, select 'CMOS QHY5L-II ASCOM' as camera & 'EQ5/6 EQMOD' as my mount. Camera connects fine, BUT the mount connection tab opens up a NEW instance of the ASCOM interface instead of using the one I've got running currently, then shortly after says PulseGuiding failed etc., because the com port wasn't available for this second instance of ASCOM.

I tried the usual and it wouldn't work, sometimes it'd just calibrate west and not even move. I believe what was happening was that PHD was trying to communicate to this new failed instance of ASCOM and thus couldn't send any PulseGuiding commands to my already active ASCOM session.

So I centered on a star, closed all instances of ascom (it continues sidereal tracking until I re-connect another instance of ASCOM), then I re-connected in PHD Guiding 2.0 only, to the same camera & mount, and at this point it connected properly because the com port was available. I set it back to sidereal tracking and started guiding calibration, and it completed it on the first go. Sadly it's overcast and started raining now so I couldn't check if this was working properly for a longer duration.

Anyway, does anyone know how I could get the StellariumScope & PHD guiding instance of ASCOM to be the same one? I haven't had this 2 instances of ASCOM problem on the other nights, so I must be doing something different?

[Amra]

I've thought about something.. Maybe I shouldn't even connect to mount in phd when I select ASCOM QHY5L-II as I'm already connected to it? Maybe the QHY will then start using my already active ASCOM session.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

I have a similar setup to you - not quite the same, but still. I use APT rather than bye, and astrotortilla rather than alignmaster. What I usually do is:

1) start eqmod

2) start stellariumscope

3) start stellarium

4) start APT

5) start astrotortilla

6) start PHD or PHD2

I get all the above running and connected to the mount/guide cam/camera. Seems to work without any ascom driver hitches.

It's only after everything is up and running that I think about checking alignment, slewing to a target, getting PHD/PHD2 calibrated.

I'm not certain, but it sounds like alignmaster might be causing the problem. You don't mention closing it? I imagine that phd thinks the mount is still being used by another process i.e. alignmaster. So maybe close that down before trying to connect to the mount via phd. Also, maybe check that it's not still running in memory via task manager if there's still a problem.

hth

Louise

[IanL]

Here's the solution:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/180292-eqmodascom-multiple-connections/?p=1864908

Basically all the applications that wish to talk need to run with the same permissions, so you need to set everything to run as administrator including EQMOD - you can do that from the right-click menu on the files in windows explorer.  If you don't, this 'two instance' thing is the usual result and leads to the kind of odd behaviour you are seeing.

[Amra]

Here's the solution:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/180292-eqmodascom-multiple-connections/?p=1864908

Basically all the applications that wish to talk need to run with the same permissions, so you need to set everything to run as administrator including EQMOD - you can do that from the right-click menu on the files in windows explorer.  If you don't, this 'two instance' thing is the usual result and leads to the kind of odd behaviour you are seeing.

Nice Ian, thanks. That explains the behavior because I ticked 'administrator' on for the phd.exe file so it always ran in administrator, now I just need to do it for all the other .exe's.

[Christopher Davenport]

Just a thought,

My qhy5l-ii can max out my usb 2 buffer. This causes the driver to crash. Best way to stop this happening is to increase the usb buffer setting 30. Especially helpful if you choose 800x600.

Ezplanetary has this set by default, but native driver does not. Reason why ez can be more stable.

On eqmod pulse guiding I set my RA to 0.5 and my DEC to 0.9, with these in place I leave PhD setting at default.

Hope this helps.