PHD2 Newb Alert...Help!

[Tangoringo]

Hi folks,

Having spent the last few months accumulating bits and bobs for my set up I'm now sat at the bottom rung of what appears to be a very long ladder!

I have, at last, got everything talking to one another but am hitting a rather large obstacle when it comes to PHD2:-

Having set up, balanced and polar aligned with Polemaster I have fired up PHD but the calibration seems to go awry very quickly. I'm guessing there is a very basic problem in settings somewhere but I cant seem to track it down. I'm using a QHY 5L II on an ST80 piggybacked on to my WO90 and HEQ5 pro using EQMOD and either NINA or APT.

The graphs shown below are what I seem to be getting so I was wondering if one of you goodly peeps wpould mind casting their knowledgable eye over the images and offer any thoughts?

Many thanks in adavance,

Ian

[Skipper Billy]

Uuuurrgghhh. !

It looks like your camera isnt working properly.

Have you installed the correct drivers for it? 

Have a read at the second document down on this page - https://www.davidbanksastro.com/how-to

If you follow it step by step you should end up with good guiding.

[Tangoringo]

Thank you for the reply and for the pointers to those handy resources.

I'm probably guil;y of trying to do too much too soon and losing precious clear sky time by making silly errors rather than being a bit more methodical but was hoping there may be a glaring error thatwould be obvious to the well trained eye.

Its all a rather steep learning curve as most, I'm sure, have found out previously not helped by the rather fragile state of windows and various drivers but fingers crossed for some more nights trying.

Thanks again.

[alacant]

3 hours ago, Tangoringo said:

calibration seems to go awry

 

2 hours ago, Skipper Billy said:

camera isnt working properly.

The camera is not connected or it is faulty. Hopefully something simple e.g. a usb cable, wrong driver...

Start from zero by making a profile using the new profile wizard. 

If you still can't get it going, post a -link to- the logs.

Cheers

 

 

[malc-c]

Ian, can you advise how you are connecting the camera to the computer.  If you are using a long (5m or more) passive USB cable then this could be your problem.  In passive (ie just direct wires running from end to end) the USB signals can become corrupted due to voltage loss and the PC then thinks the camera is disconnected or faulty.  This is easily fixed by using an active USB cable (these have electronics in them that boosts the signals.

One other thing I found was that I had to install the ASCOM driver for my old QHY5 mono camera, but that was basically due to older dedicated drivers not being supported in Sharpcap / PHD2 etc.

[michael8554]

Can't comment on the loss of camera situation I'm afraid, but your RA and Dec Guide Rates are horribly low.

Read these:

https://openphdguiding.org/phd2-best-practices/

https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/EQASCOM-Settings

Michael

[Tangoringo]

18 hours ago, malc-c said:

Ian, can you advise how you are connecting the camera to the computer.  If you are using a long (5m or more) passive USB cable then this could be your problem.  In passive (ie just direct wires running from end to end) the USB signals can become corrupted due to voltage loss and the PC then thinks the camera is disconnected or faulty.  This is easily fixed by using an active USB cable (these have electronics in them that boosts the signals.

One other thing I found was that I had to install the ASCOM driver for my old QHY5 mono camera, but that was basically due to older dedicated drivers not being supported in Sharpcap / PHD2 etc.

Thank you everybody for your replies.

Further to the above I had another try last night but again with no success with PHD. I seem to have everything working together ok with APT in addition to Stellarium,All Sky Plate Solver and PS2 for alignment/solving  and Polemaster for Polar Align. Mount balanced and checked free of snags.

QHY 5LII attached to 400m ST80 scope with no apparent flex.Cable from QHY to autoguider port and from QHY to hub.  Laptop linked to mount via Star Tech powered 4USB hub and HEQ5 Pro hand controller port ( no HC fitted ) First night ( above ) HEQ5 ascom selected for mount in settings whereas last night I tried ST4 with 'On camera' selected for mount but with similar awful results.

Attached below are the debug files from 2 nights and guide assistant recommendations...

Questions from this ( its the first time I've used the GA) -

1) Why is the polar alignment indicating such a big value (59.2 arc min ) when it was deemed pretty much spot on with Polemaster ?

2) Could it be the min move which is the issue or is it a somehwat bigger problem?

3) I'm assuming using the ST4 cable plugged in when using pulse guiding would have no issues if not selected in the mount settings on set up?

4) Fundamentally, what am I doing wrong????

5) One thing I did notice using ST4 was the more rapid refresh rate on Live view through my imaging camera although I still have a very sluggish touchpad on my laptop with everything connected. Could this be a sign of the USB being overloaded with traffic?

 

Thank you all so much for the help/pointers so far and apologies for taking up your time. SGL is such a great community with so much knowledge and expertise and so many helpful souls and I cant tell you how much I appreciate every word of help that is typed. I can only apologise for my hamfisted and rather bungling approach! :-))

Hope all the attachments below make sense......no laughing please!

Cheers all and stay safe.

Ian

PHD2_DebugLog_2020-04-09_201624.txt PHD2_GuideLog_2020-04-09_201624.txt

Edited April 10, 2020 by Tangoringo

[Tangoringo]

10 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Can't comment on the loss of camera situation I'm afraid, but your RA and Dec Guide Rates are horribly low.

Read these:

https://openphdguiding.org/phd2-best-practices/

https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/EQASCOM-Settings

Michael

Hi Michael,

Sorry, I missed your post before posting my last. The guide assistant picked up on this last night. I wonder if you may be on to something with that?

Certainly one avenue worth investigating.

Many thanks.

Edited April 10, 2020 by Tangoringo

[malc-c]

Ian,  I can't help much as I've never used the ST4 port for guiding.  I connect directly to my HEQ5 using a DIY EQDir cable, with my QHY5 camera connected to a 6 port USB hub, which in turns connects to the PC via a Startech active USB cable.  It could be that there is issues with ST4 guide ports.  If it were me I would try connecting the QHY5 direct to the laptop using a straight through cable direct to the laptop.  Your problem seems to be with communication with the camera rather than the mount, and if using the handset PC connection (don't you still have to have the handset connected to the mount for this to work ??) works and you can slew the scope around then leave that as is for now.

With the camera connected directly, select it in the PHD2 settings and see if that works better.  As mentioned I've had to use an ASCOM driver with my QHY5 in order to stop Sharpcap crashing or PHD2 to recognize the camera. 

[bottletopburly]

I used a qhy5L-11 no problem , have you shut down sharpcap as it may be still connected to guide cam , is server enabled  In phd2 can’t remember if that need enabled or wether that’s only to do with dithering I’m sure others will confirm 

Edited April 10, 2020 by bottletopburly

[Tangoringo]

That’s another thing worth investigating as I’ve never been able to get Sharpcap ( 3.2 or 3.1 ) to work with the regular 5L driver as it always shuts down ( trying to write over protected memory was the message if I remember rightly ) Will give the ascom driver a whirl.
 

Unfortunately I only have one USB port on my laptop which precludes me from ditching the hub but I could try it direct to narrow down the fault, Will report back....

Thank you. 

[bottletopburly]

Actually if using Eqmod ditch st4 and pulse guide  no need for st4 

Edited April 10, 2020 by bottletopburly

[alacant]

Hi

Do you have a cable to connect the mount directly to your computer? If so, lose the st4 cable and choose EQASCOM EQ5/6 as the mount in a new profile.

st4 cables are known for their flakiness plus they give us little information to be able to help.

If you are going with on camera anyway, increase the mount guide rate to 0.9x. It doesn't look as if you're starting with a successful calibration. We'd need to see the logs from that too; your last two attempts didn't work...

Cheers

[bottletopburly]

As Alcant says go into Eqmod setup and pulse guide setting increase to at least 0.8for Dec and Ra as default setting  is low at 0.1 .

Edited April 10, 2020 by bottletopburly

[malc-c]

1 hour ago, Tangoringo said:

That’s another thing worth investigating as I’ve never been able to get Sharpcap ( 3.2 or 3.1 ) to work with the regular 5L driver as it always shuts down ( trying to write over protected memory was the message if I remember rightly ) Will give the ascom driver a whirl.
 

 

As mentioned I had the same issue and I resolved that issue by using the ASCOM driver  There are several variants for the QHY5 (QHY5, QHY5-V and QHY5-T - no L??), and each have an ASCOM driver - I would have thought that as its somewhat generic it should work with any QHY5 camera - https://www.qhyccd.com/en/Download.html

Worth giving that a try

You will need to have the ASCOM platform installed as well https://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/Index.htm

Edited April 10, 2020 by malc-c
link for ascom platform added

[Tangoringo]

ASCOM/EQMOD etc all up and running. Will try the other drivers later to see how it goes. I think QHY do a generic ascom guiding driver now as part of a 3 driver package. Will give that and the specific ascom 5 L ii driver a go later.

Thank you.👍🏻

[Tangoringo]

1 hour ago, bottletopburly said:

As Alcant says go into Eqmod setup and pulse guide setting increase to at least 0.8for Dec and Ra as default setting  is low at 0.1 .

Thanks. Will give it a whizz 🤞🏻

[malc-c]

I would also agree with the others with regards to the EQdir cable and pulse guiding.  You can make your own using an FTDI  5v logic USB to serial adaptor and crimp on the RJ45 connector (or use a network cable and terminal block inside a small plastic case to make the connections) for around £20, or buy the same thing made by Hitech for around £35.  Run the active USB cable to the USB hub from your single USB socket on the laptop.  Plug the EQDIR cable into the mount in place of the handset, and the other end into the HUB.  Connect the QHY5 USB port to the USB hub.

This, plus the use of the ASCOM driver should resolve the issue.  If not then there is an issue with either the USB cables or the Port on the laptop

[malc-c]

Whilst refreshing my mind with the virtues of PHD I came across this tutorial....  

https://youtu.be/Mt0luBLaHDw

It explains what to do with your ST4 and on camera settings

[Tangoringo]

I just wanted to pass on my thanks for all the help and advice offered here over the last few days. Although I missed the clear skies on Friday night I managed about an hour last night before the clouds unfortunately rolled in. Not much time for experimentation but with a very rough ( 20' accuracy ) polar align I was getting semi reasonable'ish  guiding to within 1.5" without any tinkering. The deviation graphs were a bit spikey buit compared to where I was just a few days ago it was a comletely different world. Removing the ST4 cable and increasing the pulse guide setting to 0.9worked a treat and also seemed to partially solve my USB overload/slow mouse symptoms as well bizarrely. I'm wondering if the cable was increasing the mount-laptop traffic somehow? Plenty of fine tuning to come but a hugely positive step. One of the best bits of advice which I hadnt quite taken on board ( as I'd done the initial  profile ages ago ) was in the video that Malcolm mention regarding using the set up assistant. If in doubt run again as its amazing how simple thi ngs can be picked up as a result.

Either way, although time was limited I was still able to get a few 90sec subs of the Beehive as reward which will never win any monthly competitions on here but are at least a couple of steps up the long ladder. With everything all up and running wrt Stellarium/ASCOM/EQMOD/Plate Solving/APT and PHD at least I've got a decent platform to work from so standby now for a hoard of questions on debayering/flats/darks and general image processing!!!

Thank you all once again for your help. I cant tell you how useful all the posts and advice were and what a great resoiurcew this forum is.

Cheers,

Ian

Edited April 12, 2020 by Tangoringo

[malc-c]

Ian,

If you haven't already stumbled across my thread on resolving my issues with tuning the guiding on my HEQ5 have a read here https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/351622-phd2-graph-comments-please/

The attached screen grab is after a 40 minute run - I'm able to take 4 minute exposures with no issue.  Its all down to balancing the mount, polar alignment and removing the backlash.  I would recommend spending £10 and purchase SharpCap Pro if you haven't already done so.  Use its polar alignment routine and get the polar alignment as good as you can.  Ensure the scope is balanced and the center of gravity is as close to the balance point (Astronomy shed videos on youtube are an excellent resource).  Then its just a matter of fine tuning the backlash on the mount...  I was about to throw in the towel as it took me several attempts, but patience is a virtue