troypiggo
21-11-2011, 02:30 PM
I have a Moonlite DC motor focuser on my 10" reflector, and use MaxIm DL to image. Been focusing manually with a Bahtinov mask to date, but wanting to avoid having to put the mask on and off between filter changes etc.
Reading the MaxIm manual, they recommend FocusMax for DC motor focusers.
I tried to capture my first V curves the other night by using the wizard. I had done some reading, but most of the tutorials I came across seemed to be for stepper motors, not the DC. I centred a 4th mag star, manually focused on it, then fired up FocusMax and clicked on the first light wizard to start getting V curves.
It took quite a while to run through. Could see it capturing subframes, gradually going out of focus, every so often it would give an error about star off screen or too out of focus (?) and retry. Eventually it looked like it was starting to reel focus back in again, and could see blue circles starting to form a bit of one side of a V for the V curve, but it never seemed to get the other half done and the wizard ended with a message telling me it couldn't complete. (Sorry, I should have screen captured the error messages etc)
Any tips/tricks for this focuser of mine? Is it even possible, or only for steppers? Is it a setting or something I'm doing or not doing? If you need any more info, please ask and I'll try to help you to help me.
Reading the MaxIm manual, they recommend FocusMax for DC motor focusers.
I tried to capture my first V curves the other night by using the wizard. I had done some reading, but most of the tutorials I came across seemed to be for stepper motors, not the DC. I centred a 4th mag star, manually focused on it, then fired up FocusMax and clicked on the first light wizard to start getting V curves.
It took quite a while to run through. Could see it capturing subframes, gradually going out of focus, every so often it would give an error about star off screen or too out of focus (?) and retry. Eventually it looked like it was starting to reel focus back in again, and could see blue circles starting to form a bit of one side of a V for the V curve, but it never seemed to get the other half done and the wizard ended with a message telling me it couldn't complete. (Sorry, I should have screen captured the error messages etc)
Any tips/tricks for this focuser of mine? Is it even possible, or only for steppers? Is it a setting or something I'm doing or not doing? If you need any more info, please ask and I'll try to help you to help me.