Some issues with PHD Guiding

[Amra]

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.

How do I increase the usb buffer setting to 30 for the native driver then?

Thanks for your suggestions!

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Ahhhh forget what I said before... d'uh. Indeed, as others have pointed out, you should have the same permissions for all ascom applications. FWIW I don't run any of my applications as administrator.

I have previously had problems with PHD2 before, though, and it was mostly down to the usb ports and cables. I swapped all my cables for higher quality ones especially needed as I use mine at the maximum usb 2.0 single cable length of 5m. Also, when it comes to usb cameras, these are high bandwidth devices and you _may_ have to swap between usb ports to find one that operates at 'high speed' rather than 'full speed'. There is a useful usb resource here: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-should-know-about-usb-20-and-30/ (ignore usb 3.0 references). A problem I've had with PHD2 before is that if it crashes I've needed to reset the system and start again . This was because the PHD2 server remained running and couldn't be stopped in task manager. I'm not sure if this would be prevented by running everything as administrator, but maybe worth a try. PHD2 is under development so has known issues (https://code.google.com/p/open-phd-guiding/issues/list). v2.2.2 was released on 20th March so make sure you have the latest version. Of course, there is also the support group here: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/open-phd-guiding Always worth a look to see if anyone has similar issues Also, whenever you update ascom drivers make sure you remove the older ones from your system.

Regards

Louise

[Amra]

Thanks, I'll have a look at those links.

My laptop is 7 years old, it's a Dell Inspiron 9400. It has 6x USB 2.0 ports. I use the USB cable that was supplied with my QHY5L-IIc, it's a bulky grey cable and seems to be of godo quality, but I could be wrong, I connect it directly to my laptop for all this troubleshooting, but in the end I want to connect it to my USB hub.

I guess I will record in ezplanetary at different resolutions to see what speed of recording I get and determine from there if the USB 2.0 ports are performing well enough.

[Christopher Davenport]

How do I increase the usb buffer setting to 30 for the native driver then?

Thanks for your suggestions!

On PHD1 you select the Native windows driver and then when the box pops open you have two choices select the top one.

Then click the button next to the brain icon, thin it is called cam dialogue or something like this.

I box pops open when you can set the exposure times and the gain, last slider is the USB restriction. 

It will be on Zero, increase it to it's max ... 30. (untick the high speed option as well.)

OR

Install PHD2 and select the QHY5L II cam and PHD does it all for you

I just installed it last night and the new equipment profiles is awesome. They have pre-tuned it for common equipment.

So it is really just plug and play ....

[Amra]

I have another laptop now, everything fresh with Win 7 64 bit, can't wait to try it again.

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