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New Equipment =]


tony8690

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Hi All,

I have just got the Orion Mini 50mm Guide Scope and the ZWO ASI 120MC-S USB 3.0 Colour Camera.

looking to get a Pi3 and AstroBerry soon aswell to use as my portable guiding system.

looking for some advice on how to setup/use/configure these as i have never guided before.

going on holiday in a few weeks hopefully to a nice dark sky area so will have the perfect opportunity to test these out :) 

 

Many thanks

T

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Hello T !! I love to eat STRAWBERRY :icon_albino:, but else ! I really did never ever had to do with "Pi3 and AstroBerry" but I did search here in SGL and did find the following    thread handling same theme.. see here.. 

Regards & good luck

Martin

 

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Thank you for the link! i will see if i can get this setup when i get my PI3

 

In the mean time, i have my Mini Orion 50mm Guide scope and the ZWO ASI 120MC-S USB 3.0 Colour Camera now.

I used it for the first time on Friday night, really loving the possibilities this opens up to me now :), couldn't get Guiding to work... but i know nothing about it yet so still learning about it all.

I am Setting up my surface pro 3 at the moment with the software, PHD2 EQMOD and Stellarium. 

Does anyone have this setup themselves? and could pass on a few tips on how to get guiding setup in PHD2, what settings they have etc?

 

Thanks,

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Hi All,

 

Just an update :) i now have a Raspberry PI 3 and Astroberry installed on it. 

will be using this properly in wales in just over a weeks time, where I'm hoping there will be a break in the clouds for a night or 2 so i can get some AP in.

will test this hopefully in the next few nights and see how it goes. 

very excited about this setup and the potential it has!

 

on a sidenote, for guiding.... I'm using a 130PDS and sometimes i use the 2x barlow + comma corrector for some AP shots, when i start guiding will i need to put a 2 x barlow on my guide camera aswell??

Thanks,

Tony

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Hi Tony,

Looks like you have an interesting setup to build! I started out with a PI for guiding though moved on to Cartes du Ciel/PHD2/EQMOD/APT on a netbook via an AstroEQ to the mount stepper motors.

I too have the Orion 50mm guide scope and an AR0130 camera for guiding (same chip as the  ZWO ASI 120MC).

I'm curious about the Astroberry as I can only find references to using it as an interface to a focuser. Does it interface to stepper motors for guiding too? Or will you be using ST4 pulse guiding to a hand controller?

As far as using a Barlow - not a good idea for imaging. A Barlow in the imaging path will show guiding errors even more. No need for a Barlow in the guide scope.

Bob

 

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I control my whole setup with a Raspberry Pi, including guiding (st80 and asi 120mm)

I started out using the Pi only for guiding, as my old dslr wouldn't connect to any computer. I started with lin_guider, but switched to phd2. My impression is that lin_guider is easier to set up and use, but phd2 is slightly more accurate. I therefore switched to phd2.

Now that I have a new camera, I control everything from the Pi, and use the native guider in Ekos/kstars (based on lin_guider). The Pi runs indilib under ubuntu mate. So, mount control, focusing, plate solving, exposure control, and guiding in one package. The Pi sits on the mount and is connected to Ekos/kstars on windows through wifi.

But have never tried astroberry. And no tinkering with gpio; everything connects through usb, and the on-camera st4 port.

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Hi all,

 

Thanks for the advice/comments.

I tested it out the other night, tried to use phd2, it took all the darks needed, didn't seem to do any callibration or Guiding? 

It selected a star set it to start guiding and then the star moved away from the crosshairs and didn't see any trendline in the graph at all?

I'm a complete novice when it comes to phd2 so wouldn't be surprised if i missed something obvious. 

Any ideas? 

T

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All the cables connected, correct settings for guide control? E.g. if you use st4, you probably need to select your guide cam as the guiding device. If it's pulse guiding, you need to select your mount as guiding device. With so many cables to keep track of, it's easy to miss one. I have on more than one occasion forgotten to connect my st4 cable to the mount.

If guide calibration doesn't work, it's no use starting to guide anyway, because it's a clear indicator that something was overlooked.

Hope you get it sorted out.

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Btw, if you get an extra sd card for your Pi, you can have completely different setups for testing. Just swap the sd card and you have a new computer basically.

You could then try a standard linux/indi setup. It's pretty straightforward to install (using ubuntu/mate as OS).

Edit: just checked out Astroberry. While it should be the same as a full indi installation, it may not be updated regularly. When I installed indi, I just followed the guides on the indi website. Worked pretty much straight away.

St4 vs pulse guiding:

You probably get a better answer from someone else, or from the phd web site. Pulse guiding uses the computer - mount connection to send tracking corrections from the guiding software to the mount. St4 uses a dedicated cable to do this. The cable looks like a telephone cable. Pulse guiding "knows" where the mount is pointing, and can use this information when correcting the tracking. St4 doesn't know this, and just corrects for deviation. Both will work, but with st4 you need to recalibrate between targets. The electrical signals are different, so you can't mix them.

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