PHD2 + Mac + AVX = no guiding

[DavideBar]

Hello all,

I'm returning to the hobby after a few years, due to a malfunction on my AVX and the repair being too much money at the time. But now with everything settled in, and on my parents in laws house I have access to almost unlimited clear skies 

After setting up, balancing and aligning the telescope/mount/dslr/guide cam I started PHD2 and this is where the trouble began. I'll list below my equipment and pictures of my settings in hope anyone can help me 

Mount: Celestron AVX

Tube: Newtonian 8" F/4

Cam: Nikon D3100 (plan on upgrading in the future for sure)

Guide Cam Combo: Orion StarShoot AutoGuide + 50mm guide scope

I'm running the software on a macOS Big Sur 11.6.8.

PHD2: Version 2.6.11

INDIGO Server (CloudMakers): Version 4.5

INDIGO Drivers: - Nextstar Mount

                           - SSAG/QHY5 Camera

I'll now share pictures showing what I have turned on:

If its necessary I can show the contents of each driver.

On PHD2 I try this settings for the equipment:

But after I click on Connect All

When I go again to check my equipment it show without the Aux Mount

Either way the mount never moves, but I hear it moving very silently, and the star on the PHD2 starts drifiting and If I take a picture of around 10s I get trail. So no guiding is being applied.

What am I doing wrong? Can someone help me please 

PS: I forgot to mention that I have an ST4 cable connected from the guide cam to the mount and if I select the guide cam and on the mount I choose On Camera it doesn't move either.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Cornelius Varley
white text corrected

[newbie alert]

So not being familiar with indi or ST4 or the starshoot autoguide( isn't that a stand alone guider?) 

With a Windows setup you would need the Celestron ascom driver, ascom platform and the driver for your guide camera..

I would connect the guide camera and make sure you can see stars, IE focus and exposure settings, can you see stars within phd with the camera looping?

If you're not guiding I'd check your pa as you shouldn't have drift in your stars in a 10 sec sub , your mount should easily track for far longer than that.. to do decent guiding you need decent pa, decent balance and then decent calibration.. Using the ST4 method you will need to calibrate on every target, and after every flip.. not sure if you can run the guiding assistant but if you can I'd advise you to do so

[malc-c]

From reading up on the guide camera it seems to use its own dedicated software for guiding

Quote

The Orion StarShoot AutoGuider provides a user-friendly, dedicated autoguiding camera for long-exposure astrophotography. It's compatible with virtually any mount equipped with an autoguider port and comes with all the software and cables needed to work right out of the box!

In practice the camera looks like an original QHY5 camera so in theory should be comparable with PHD2.  One thing you haven't mentioned is how you are connecting the mount to the MAC.  I'm not familiar with your mount, but assume it has either a USB port or some kind of serial connection.

Must admit, reading up on imaging on a MAC it seems a lot of people, if their MAC supports it, run a windows platform with ASCOM rather than messing about with INDI.  It's doable but requires a lot more work as someone put it.

I would brake down each step rather than trying to get it to work as a whole.  Connect the mount to the MAC and establish communications.  Once you have control of the mount, then get the camera working via the USB port with whatever software it came with.  Then install PHD2 and see if you can connect to the camera, then the mount.  I would try this method first before connecting the mount to the camera via and ST4 port.

I did find this quote from another forum on an old thread

Quote

 KStars/EKOS runs on multiple platforms including MacOS X. It works pretty well for guiding an AVX mount. Guiding module is part of EKOS. This software is open-source and free of charge.

Maybe you are missing a component for the INDI platform ? (I'm a windows user so have no idea !)

[michael8554]

Try "On Camera" for the PHD2 Mount selection.

With or without the Aux mount selection,

Whichever works, but with is best.

Michael

[rockinrome]

Hi @DavideBar 
I had a mac a few years back and had these kind of headaches too which I wrote about on my blog here which may be of use:

https://mmastrogroup.blogspot.com/2019/07/astrophotography-auto-guiding-setup_16.html (Part 1)

https://mmastrogroup.blogspot.com/2019/08/astrophotography-auto-guiding-setup_28.html (Part 1b)

https://mmastrogroup.blogspot.com/2019/09/astrophotography-auto-guiding-setup.html (Part 2)

I eventually went back to a (used) Windows laptop to drive my image acquisition as it was WAY LESS painful than running a Mac for this.

Kind regards
Matthew