QHY5 drivers for osx/mac?

[milan]

In anticipation of our QHY5 arriving ive started to read a little about PHD, it has come to my attention that there dont seem to be any drivers for macs?

Am i going to be able to get the QHY5 working on a macbook running snow leopard or is it the Windows route? (we dont have a windows laptop!) Slightly confused as to why PHD is available on osx if there isnt a driver for the most popular guiding camera.

Do we even need drivers?

Thanks

[martin_h]

I think you might be out of luck there. There doesn't seem to be any Mac drivers for the QHY5

[James]

Slightly confused as to why PHD is available on osx if there isnt a driver for the most popular guiding camera.

Do we even need drivers?

Thanks

Ask Craig Stark (www.stark-labs.com)and see what he says, there may be a good reason why there's no drivers available.

PHD works fine for me using an SX Lodestar and Imaging Source camera's, I'd be pretty miffed if PHD wasn't available just because there wasn't a driver for the QHY5..

James

[milan]

From what i can see over at stark labs i could be out of luck. just going to suck it and see for now i think.

[beamish]

you could also try asking on the qhy forum

[milan]

Thanks, have had a quick look over there and it looks like a no go.

[dazza1639]

been there done that there aren't any mac drivers for the qhy5 there was a project for the linux version of the qhy8 driver to be ported but that was back in feb and I haven't heard anything since. I asked on the qhy forum and the developers said there wasn't any again that was back in Feb. Sorry I couldn't be more help. If you do manage to find some let us know I'm about to get a guide cam and was looking at getting a synguider but would much prefer a QHY5 as it doubles up as a great planetary cam. You could always try it under bootcamp or parallels

Good Luck

Darren

[milan]

Thanks, just found info relating to the details you provide above. Not sure it will run parallels as its quite slow running snow leopard.

If you buy parallels i presume you then need to buy windows as well?

EDIT : Actually this laptop uses a Power PC chip so parallels wont work anyway

[NickMorris]

Hi Milan,

If I was you I would switch to an Imaging Source firewire camera. Great for planetary and fully supported by Astro IIDC under Mac OSX for web cam and PHD for guide cam. Have the same setup up on my Macbook pro.

atb

photonboy

[milan]

Thanks, just looked at FLO and all the IS cameras seem to be USB, any pointers?

Imaging Source Cameras

EDIT:

having another look a those and thinking ahead i think that will limit future plans, in addition the cameras are more expensive and you have to buy the software, although still cheaper than a laptop, its only about £50 cheaper than a notebook.

Thanks though.

[NickMorris]

Hi Milan,

You can get the IS cameras in firewire rather than USB but they are hard to find at the moment. Maybe pick one up 2nd hand......Craig Stark has an application called Craterlet which is free and will run most DCAM compliant (firewire) web cams under OSX.

If you do decide to run under windows, I would seriously consider using Boot Camp on OSX as it will allow the Mac to boot up fully in windows and IMHO runs XP better than any PC i've had.

clear skies

photonboy (who is trying to keep Mr Gates out of his hobby entirely!)

[milan]

Trying to keep windo$e out as well but its not very easy. Unfortunately cant run bootcamp as its a older G4 macbook which runs on the PowerPC chip, which bootcamp doesnt support.

Thanks for the info though, appreciate it.

[beamish]

..... Gig E