PhD (or ASCOM) issue - anyone seen this?

[Jon]

I'm having a strange issue with PhD, or with ASCOM.

I have a Meade LX80 with Audiostar, and run Windows 7 64 bit. I have the latest version of ASCOM and the latest handset firmware.

ASCOM tends to generate an error randomly (?) when I connect, from any ASCOM application, about a third of the time. But if I do succeed to connect, the applications work as they should.

Except I have never managed to get PhD working. It connects to the camera just fine; says it connects to the mount. But when I hit autoguide and PhD starts to calibrate, PhD seems to do nothing. it says it is issuing calibration commands, but there is no discernible movement. It seems disable the sidereal tracking - as soon as I hit autoguide, everything starts to drift West.

Wen I give PhD manual guide commands, nothing happens either.

My polar alignment is fine - good enough for 30"-60" unguided subs, anyway.

Has anyone seen this before? Any advice?

[peter_4059]

Have you tried increasing the calibration step size to get movement during the calibration process?

[Jon]

I did, Peter. To 2000 ms in RA and 1000 in Dec. Seemed to make no difference.

Is it normal for PhD to stop the regular sidereal clock tracking? Seems a bit odd.

[mithrandir]

Jon, have you had a look through the ASCOM and Stark Labs archives on those two Yahoo! groups? I seem to recall problems like those but as I don't run an ASCOM camera or use a Meade mount I didn't pay much attention.

[Merlin66]

If PHD is not responding to the manual direction controls - it's not "talking" to the mount......
Cables/ connectors???

[Jon]

Thanks guys - Ken, I wondered about cables, but with some programs/functions the connection works fine. Andrew - thanks! You were right, there are some threads with some tips. Looks like a buggy update to the handset firmware. Is worth turning on PEC and fiddling with some other settings. I'll give it a go.

[Oscar in Bin]

I had exactly this problem although different camera/mount. It was a cabling issue. The connections at the guide camera were flipped compared with the mount. Check the pin orientations shown in the respective manuals.
John