PHD not responding

[Ouroboros]

OK after working quietly away at this problem I thought I'd report back on progress.

Eventually I emailed QHY for advice on drivers to use with the QHY5-II camera to work in PHD2. They came back with the following links to drivers which they suggested I try:

QHY5II-M driver： www.qhyccd.com/file/repository/Driver/QHY5IIDriver140831.zip

QHY5II-M ASSCOM www.qhyccd.com/file/repository/ASCOM/QHY5IIASCOMSetupV03.zip

Well it seems to work. The camera now runs stably in PHD2 with no lock ups, or at least none except initially when the camera seems to run correctly on first connection.

Last night I had a chance to test guiding. I now realise the camera/PHD have probably never really worked properly, even when I managed to guide before. Sometimes it's only when you see something working properly do you realise it wasn't working correctly before. The calibration took place relatively quickly (it used to take forever) and the camera and PHD just did their job.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions. Below is an image of M27 from last night. I need to work on the processing, but it illustrates that guiding is working reasonably well. 13 x 300s light subs (ISO800) + darks, biases and flats. Stacked in DSS followed by a quick stretch in Photoshop. Unmodded Canon 450D on a 200P telescope. QHY5-IIM Finder guider.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Glad you got it working. Um, did you not have the "V03" Ascom driver before? I mentioned it in an earlier post...

Happy guiding!

Louise

[Ouroboros]

I'm not sure. I've rather lost track of which bits of software I tried along the way. I notice the camera driver recommended to me by QHY is one back from the current version on their website. Interestingly the camera now no longer works with EZPlanetary but does work in PHD2 and SharpCap. That's OK because I don't use EZPLanetary, but it's a bit of a mystery.

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Ezplanetary will use the native, non Ascom driver i.e. QHY5II-M driver： www.qhyccd.com/file/repository/Driver/QHY5IIDriver140831.zip

Louise

[Ouroboros]

Hi

Glad you got it working. Um, did you not have the "V03" Ascom driver before? I mentioned it in an earlier post...

Happy guiding!

Louise

Which is the version I have installed and which enables my camera to work with PHD2. Odd init? As I say, I don't use EZPlanetary so maybe I'll just accept the fact. Incidentally, FastCap works OK which is useful for checking the camera works and for getting the camera focused.