Homebre guiding - not sure what's happening here.

[SteveBz]

I'e written a homebrewed guider based on a webcam.  While I think the webcam is never going to work, the guiding sort of does.  So here it is guiding, but without the corrections being applied. I went out to wash the car and just left it.

I can see a nice cyclical error, which maybe I'll put into a PEC system.  I can see a steady drift in RA, I think I can also deal with this.  But what are all those jagged spikes?  Is that wind, or what?

Thanks for your ideas.

Steve

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Not sure what your scales are or how you've implemented guiding corrections? 

Um, it doesn't seem worth the effort with PHD2 freely available but I guess you are an enthusiast!

Louise

ps without guiding corrections you'll get a mix of drift, any PA error, and PE. Plus fluctuations caused by seeing, wind, possibly odd mechanical defects.

[MarsG76]

Compare your guiding graph to a graph generated by PHD2... see if its the same? This will determine whether its a hardware or software problem.

 

[SteveBz]

17 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

ps without guiding corrections you'll get a mix of drift, any PA error, and PE. Plus fluctuations caused by seeing, wind, possibly odd mechanical defects.

Interesting. I've done an analysis. There is a constant drift of about 1 guiding pulse every 150 secs. But given that it might include PA, it may not be the same every day.

The Periodic Error seems to be 10 mins plus or minus a second or two, and I imagine that this won't vary from day to day.

Maybe the right way to do this is to implement a 5-10 minute test at the start of every session to confirm. Where we are in the cycle and the magnitude of any drift.