GSS (Green Swamp Server) alternative to EQMOD

[david_taurus83]

Just a bit of a heads up. I've ran into a couple of issues when doing a fresh calibration in PHD. The mount ended up doing weird things and wouldn't calibrate properly. Would either give a bad orthogonal angle or would track the star out of the fov during calibration. Think I've nailed it down tonight. I had PPEC enabled when trying to do a new calibration. When calibrating, deselect PPEC first in the GSS dashboard. Do the calibration as normal in PHD and afterwards switch back on PPEC. Personally, I do a fresh PEC training after calibration as well as it doesn't take long. Seems to have fixed things. Will look further into this and see if it's a bug or if PPEC should be disabled before calibrating in PHD.

[scotty38]

I'd have to check but I think I'm sure the manual says to turn it off when calibrating.

Edit:

From the manual:

"When using PHD2 for guiding it’s recommended to turn off PPEC during the PHD2
calibration process and turn it back when finished."

Edited March 20, 2022 by scotty38

[david_taurus83]

10 hours ago, scotty38 said:

I'd have to check but I think I'm sure the manual says to turn it off when calibrating.

Edit:

From the manual:

"When using PHD2 for guiding it’s recommended to turn off PPEC during the PHD2
calibration process and turn it back when finished."

Manual?! What's one of them?!

Guess that'll be why then!

[scotty38]

3 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Manual?! What's one of them?!

Guess that'll be why then!

haha, but seriously have a look at the windows start/GSS programme menu and the link to the PDF is under there

[david_taurus83]

Will do, thanks!

[Stuart1971]

Well, I had a nightmare last night, and had to switch back to EQMOD, it would guide for a few mins then the guide star just went off the graph in DEC, RA was fine, almost like it was actually pulsing it off the screen with commands, so re started and same again after a few mins….

So I know what you are thinking, this is a PHD issue, me too, so I swapped back to EQMOD and all was good, went back to GSS and same again off the screen in DEC after a few mins…very frustrating TBH, as I was really enjoying using GSS…..☹️

[scotty38]

Any chance it was related to a flip, was guiding ok before?

[Stuart1971]

2 hours ago, scotty38 said:

Any chance it was related to a flip, was guiding ok before?

No, this was all before the flip…

I think I have, or should I say Rob from GSS has, sorted it, apparently there is a setting in PHS2 that says, “change DEC direction after flip” and for EQMOD this should be left unchecked but GSS requires it to be checked, and I have never had it checked, so I am assuming that it was working fine while imaging on one side of the pier, but last night I was Imaging on the other side right from the off, so I guess this was the issue….or should I say I hope….

so in effect there was a flip from one session to the next…also he says you should have a separate Profile in PHD2 for GSS and make sure you calibrate with GSS and not use a cali ration that was done in EQMOD….again I had….so I learnt a few things….

[scotty38]

1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

No, this was all before the flip…

I think I have, or should I say Rob from GSS has, sorted it, apparently there is a setting in PHS2 that says, “change DEC direction after flip” and for EQMOD this should be left unchecked but GSS requires it to be checked, and I have never had it checked, so I am assuming that it was working fine while imaging on one side of the pier, but last night I was Imaging on the other side right from the off, so I guess this was the issue….or should I say I hope….

so in effect there was a flip from one session to the next…also he says you should have a separate Profile in PHD2 for GSS and make sure you calibrate with GSS and not use a cali ration that was done in EQMOD….again I had….so I learnt a few things….

Yep that's exactly what I was going to mention.

[Stuart1971]

I did mange this from last night, M81 & M82, but am not super impressed for 4 hours and 40 mins of 2 min subs….🤔🤔

 

 

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Stuart1971

[tomato]

Not sure where you are  located but both seeing and transparency were poor from Shropshire last night, not often that both are bad. I could see a lot of slow moving hazy high cloud on the All Sky Cam, FWHM numbers were well off par until late on, despite frequent refocus routines.

[Stuart1971]

2 hours ago, tomato said:

Not sure where you are  located but both seeing and transparency were poor from Shropshire last night, not often that both are bad. I could see a lot of slow moving hazy high cloud on the All Sky Cam, FWHM numbers were well off par until late on, despite frequent refocus routines.

Not too far from Shropshire….

[david_taurus83]

I've also been having a few issues unfortunately. With PEC enabled it's just not been as good as it was when I first tried it. Its like PHD is fighting against the PEC curve. I've tried with Alternate PEC switched on and off, not much difference. The mount is always parked before I switch it off. Last night I was capturing Lum data so I switched off PEC and guiding was more stable, the usual 0.5/0.7" RMS. Should be clear again tonight so I might just enable PHDs PEC algorithm and leave GSS PEC off as want to get as much Lum as I can while we have the weather. I might check and redo my PA tonight and tighten things up as there's a big weight difference between the Redcat and the Esprit so maybe adding to the mounts struggles of late. 

[Stuart1971]

4 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

I've also been having a few issues unfortunately. With PEC enabled it's just not been as good as it was when I first tried it. Its like PHD is fighting against the PEC curve. I've tried with Alternate PEC switched on and off, not much difference. The mount is always parked before I switch it off. Last night I was capturing Lum data so I switched off PEC and guiding was more stable, the usual 0.5/0.7" RMS. Should be clear again tonight so I might just enable PHDs PEC algorithm and leave GSS PEC off as want to get as much Lum as I can while we have the weather. I might check and redo my PA tonight and tighten things up as there's a big weight difference between the Redcat and the Esprit so maybe adding to the mounts struggles of late. 

I was told by Rob at GSS, to make sure you have a separate profile in PHD for GSS. And to calibrate on that profile, and make sure that the setting “ swap Dec direction after flip” is enabled…( this has to be un checked for EQMOD) that is very important, and I had done none of this….

Hope you get it sorted, also you have to disable PPEC during calibration of that can cause issues, and the DEC goto option must also be disabled during calibration, although I don’t use that…

I have to say up till the other night PPEC was working very well, and made a big difference…

[david_taurus83]

Rob has recommended I update the motor controller on the mount. Sure enough, my mount was on 3.09. Just updated to 3.17 which came out a few weeks ago. GSS was also updated a few weeks ago so will give it another bash tonight with a PEC train.

[Stuart1971]

22 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Rob has recommended I update the motor controller on the mount. Sure enough, my mount was on 3.09. Just updated to 3.17 which came out a few weeks ago. GSS was also updated a few weeks ago so will give it another bash tonight with a PEC train.

Hmmm, yes he also recommended I upgrade my EQ8 mount motor card driver, but it’s not to a skywatcher produced one, but to one produced by Rob, so am a bit hesitant…TBH….🤔

[malc-c]

Provided the bootload which normally resides in protected area of memory isn't overwritten then you can always re-flash the PICs with the SW firmware if you find the GS firmware makes the mount behave differently than expected.  Either way if you are not sure then drop a post on the GS user group

[Stuart1971]

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

Provided the bootload which normally resides in protected area of memory isn't overwritten then you can always re-flash the PICs with the SW firmware if you find the GS firmware makes the mount behave differently than expected.  Either way if you are not sure then drop a post on the GS user group

Sorry but no idea what this means…🤔

I am sorted now but thanks….I think….🤔🤔

Edited March 26, 2022 by Stuart1971

[david_taurus83]

Well, no spectacular results with PEC again tonight. Done a fresh calibration and retrained PEC. Unfortunately while recording, there were 2 or 3 large RA spikes and GSS recorded them and they playback when enabled and overwhelm PHD. I must have just been lucky to have good guiding when I tried it the first time. I've set the PHD algorithm to Predictive PEC and it's working just fine tonight so will probably stick with that. It would be better if GSS could record a few worm periods to average out the guiding errors. 

[Stuart1971]

11 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Well, no spectacular results with PEC again tonight. Done a fresh calibration and retrained PEC. Unfortunately while recording, there were 2 or 3 large RA spikes and GSS recorded them and they playback when enabled and overwhelm PHD. I must have just been lucky to have good guiding when I tried it the first time. I've set the PHD algorithm to Predictive PEC and it's working just fine tonight so will probably stick with that. It would be better if GSS could record a few worm periods to average out the guiding errors. 

Hmmmm, I asked Rob, the same thing, why it would not do a few worm periods, and it’s because he uses the skywatcher code that it already in the handset, which just does 1 worm period…EQMOD has its own code that does a few…and does not use the skywatcher code.

Have not tried the PHD PEC yet…must give it a go….👍🏼

[david_taurus83]

17 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Hmmmm, I asked Rob, the same thing, why it would not do a few worm periods, and it’s because he uses the skywatcher code that it already in the handset, which just does 1 worm period…EQMOD has its own code that does a few…and does not use the skywatcher code.

Have not tried the PHD PEC yet…must give it a go….👍🏼

It's a shame as the PEC works really well. I done a GA in PHD last night and with PEC enabled with no guiding pulses the total RA movement over a full worm rotation was less than 6 arc seconds compared to near 40 without PEC. I may give EQMod a go in the future and see if I can get it working but this evening PHD with its own algorithm is chugging along at 0.4/0.5"RMS so don't think there'd by any huge improvement tbh.

[david_taurus83]

PHD algorithm just as good as PPEC?

[Stuart1971]

32 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

PHD algorithm just as good as PPEC?

I would like to try the PHD pec, but not sure what setting I need to fill in to it…🤔 as I think it requires worm wheel cycle time or something….

[david_taurus83]

11 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

I would like to try the PHD pec, but not sure what setting I need to fill in to it…🤔 as I think it requires worm wheel cycle time or something….

It works it out itself. I'm sure these are the default settings straight out of PHD.

 

[Stuart1971]

11 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

It works it out itself. I'm sure these are the default settings straight out of PHD.

 

So how does it know the worm period for the attached mount…? And have you tried running this alongside the GSS PPEC, or,is that not possible, I thought I read somewhere this can be done…🤔