Using alignmaster

[seeker372011]

After seeing all the positive reviews here about alignmaster I finally requested a trial key

Unfortunately for me it didn't work

I gt a message saying I didnt have the right drivers to slew the mount

I have the latest ASCOM platform

I was connected to the mount through a GPUSB

Am I doing something wrong?
where can I find this missing driver?:confused2::confused2::confu sed2:

I also downloaded the latest EQMod, even though I dont use it..but didn't seem to help

Thanks in advance for any help

:thanx:

[troypiggo]

You need to be able to slew and sync your mount with ASCOM for it to work. Can you do that? How are you physically connected to the mount? Ie just the GPUSB or do you have an EQDIR cable etc?

[Marke]

Are you selecting GPUSB as the mount type

[seeker372011]

Yes I did. But Matthias has responded saying alignmaster won't work with GPUSB

It still doesn't explain the driver problem I am having..will reinstall EQMOD. And try agian

[troypiggo]

That's what I was getting at. GPUSB is a guide port interface. You need a telescope control interface such as Shoestring Astronomy's USB2EQ6 cable. This plugs into the hand controller port on your mount, not the St4 guide port.

[bmitchell82]

there should be a little cable that came with your mount that has a RJ12 on one end and a DB9/RS232 you then need a USB to Serial converter and your away.

[mymoon]

I find this useful

Click video of polar alignment using alignmaster (http://www.astronomyshed.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5121)

Cheers

[alistairsam]

Hi,
I've requested a trial key as well, but I use the EQDIR cable which is USB one end and other end is RJ12 I think which plugs into the mount.
will this work with alignmaster?
what I don't understand is that normally, the 3 or 2 star alignment routine is required for the goto's to work correctly, how would you do this with alignmaster, as without correct goto's it may not center the star as a result of unsync'd goto, rather than polar misalignment?

[seeker372011]

The EQ dir cable works fine with alignmaster

[bmitchell82]

alignmaster on the first pass it will ask you to centre the star in the eye piece/camera, as soon as you hit next it will save a sync in eqmod. you then do the same for the next star and it will place the 2nd sync in. when it asks you to align both axis at once you do it with the mount adjustments not touching the controller. once centred you hit done and it saves the 3rd one.

Now i don't know how anybody else does it but i then go into eqmod and clear all syncs. the reason why i do this is simple, because then you are 100% relying on your mount and alignmaster to get you the closest you can get!

[Peter.M]

I set eqmod to "dialog based" instead of "append on sync", which im pretty sure is what they tell you to do. This means that eqmod wont collect any sync data.

[alistairsam]

Found this while going through the eqascom doco related to alignmaster
http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/faqs/alignmaster.html

[technofetishism]

useful to note if i ever get a chance to use alignmaster anytime soon. damn house.

[alistairsam]

Hi
I finally tried out alignmaster with my heq5pro and eqascom, my goto acccuracy improved and I think I was less than a min on both axes from scp
which can be improved
Only issue I found is that the choice of best stars were very close to the horizon and unusable
I had to use the good pairs
Is this normal?
I thought it'd offer stars above horizon since it knows the time and location
Am I missing something?

[Moon]

Yep I do the same.


It seems to like stars low in the south for some reason, which is fine when I'm away, but at home have have a bunch of trees there
James

[Poita]

You can add your own star lists to get the stars you prefer.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=73052

[alistairsam]

Thanks Peter
Will try that out.

[Peter.M]

I have added my own stars using the below method but it still picks low ones most of the time. If I cant see the stars I just drift :)

[terrycorridan]

Can anyone please help? I have recently purchased the AlignMaster software. I have seen the video about how to use this product and in it they use GoTo software (EQMOD). I do not use any GoTo software with my setup. Do I need to purchase some GoTo software to be able to use AlignMaster effectively or can I just slew to the alignment stars manually?

Also, what should the initial orientation of the scope be?

[redbeard]

Hi Terry,

The goto is the hardware in the mount. ie - motorised mount RA and DEC. You also need a guide scope setup and the ability to setup your telescope in polar mode. Alignmaster communicates with the motorised mount to make its adjustments when setting up your scope. If you do not have a telescope with built in goto then Alignmaster wont work as it's got nothing to communicate with. If you do have a goto polar setup, then Alignmaster is a great tool for getting polar alignment. I have a lx200 on a wedge with a guide scope and QHY5 mono camera.
What equipment you are using, that will give others an idea to your setup and hope to get more help.

Cheers,

Damien.

[terrycorridan]

Hi Damien,

Thanks for replying. I have a Takahashi EM 200 Temma 2 Jnr mount. I have installed AlignMaster and ASCOM with a connection to my computer which all seems to be working okay. I don’t have any trouble slewing. I also use an Orion 80 Guidescope and the Orion Starshoot Autoguider with PHD software. All this works fine also. If only I can get polar alignment sorted. But no GoTo software (like EQMOD). Is it possible to use AlignMaster for polar aligning with this setup? Also I’m not sure what the initial orientation of the scope and mount should be. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Many thanks, Terry

[alistairsam]

As the sterne.txt file had stars that were hard to locate, i edited the file and left just 10 of the brightest and easy to find ones in there. I removed the ones that weren't visible now and this has made it really easy to locate stars to align on.
best thing would be to have one file for winter and one for summer with the common ones. you normally won't need more than a few stars to align on.

Cheers
Alistair

[redbeard]

Hi Terry,

There is no goto software as such. the goto is in the mount on my setup. For example, once polar aligned, I use the hand controller on my scope to goto an object in its database. The telescope has this built in and that is why it's called goto. However, if I use the software that came with my scope and the scope is plugged into the laptop, then you can give the scope goto commands from the software, but the scope has the smarts built in. Perhaps on your mount, you have to use software to control it in this way, I had a quick read online of your mount so you should have the Takahashi software to control it already, unless they make you pay for it seperately.

What have you actually been doing and in what order? You may be close...

My mount is different to yours but I think the concept is the same. Perhaps someone who uses a GEM mount could clarify.

Here is a slightly modified post I did a while ago in reference to Alignmaster:

First step is to align all the bits hanging off your scope, so for me I aligned my finderscope to the main telescope, attached the guide scope and then aligned this as well. This process is really easy and I got close enough, just use a bright star. You can use finder scope cross hairs, illuminated reicles, normal eyepieces if you have a good eye etc. The finderscope simply makes it easier to get a star in the FOV. A laser will work even better in my opinion as you can stare into the sky instead of up a weird angle, (align this to the main scope too).
By the way, I have had my guiding gear for just 2 weeks now and it all worked on the first night I was out. My friend gave me advice over the phone as to how to set it all up and the steps.
Oh, don't foget to focus everything of course and ensure that the tripod is very level.
OK, now everything hardware on the scope is aligned, then it is time to setup the tripod and wedge to point south. What I do is get a cheap $15 dollar compass, (the one with the flip out lid with the thin wire in it and the fold out magnifier), and as best as you can, line up the tripod so it points in that direction. I use 172 degrees, (for Adelaide), as that seems correct for where I am. I also ensure that my wedge's adjusters are set to their central position. I also set the alt on the wedge to about 36 degrees. These for me are excellent starting points.
Now that my scope is pointing close to south, I put the scope into its home position, (get this info from the telescope manual), and fire up Alignmaster. Although, I can't see why I have to do this as I manually slew to the first star anyhow manually. But it cant hurt.
The next bit is to select 2 stars. I have an updated star list which does help a bit, but I did have to wait an extra hour before I could see the stars I needed. (I have read that you can update the star list, sterne.txt, in Alignmaster with all the stars that you can see in your area and then Alignmaster can have more available. Just make sure that the coordinates are correct. I will try this next week). I then fire up PHD in the camera mode, QHY-5, and turn on the bullseye.
Now I slew and align the first star that Alignmaster asks for by either using a finderscope or laser pointer. This always gets the star to appear on the PHD screen and I then centre this star using the hand controller. (Orientation is a little tricky at first, especially if you are used to ALT/AZ like I was, but practice this and it will become second nature in no time).
Next accept this star and repeat the process with the second star.
After this Alignmaster will ask you to physically align your scope, then it will offset the last star you chose and expect you to bring the star back to the centre of the line, not centre of screen, just centre of line. Do this for both axis.
Once done, Alignmaster will ask you if you want to do it again, I do 3 to 4 times all up and it works fantastically.

The trick here to find out how close you are to good polar alignment is to look at the numbers at the bottom of the Alignmaster screen.
I'm at work now so I don't have a copy of Alignmaster to screen dump, but, once you have done the part in Alignmaster where you centre the first two stars and click Next, but before you manually move the mount, there will be 2 sets of numbers that are shown at the bottom of the Alignmaster software and look something like: 00:03:34 00:01:22 . The numbers will be different to what you see here but they tell you how close you are to good polar alignment. What you want to do is repeat all the Alignmaster steps untill both of those numbers are very low. If I get 00:00:12 00:00:32 then I am happy with that and auto guiding will fix the rest. Ensure that there are only numbers in the last 2 digits and get them as low as possible. Once you see the numbers and you are happy with the values, don't do any more adjustments and shut down Alignmaster as you are done.


NOTE: Alignmaster will change the stars in its list that are available as the time in the night goes by so sometimes if you dilly daddle, you may have to pick some other stars, but so far I have not had any major issues.
After this process, I shut down Alignmaster , locate the object that I want to photograph and add telescope control to PHD, tell it to auto find a star, select 'Guide' and it just works!
There may be something I have missed apart from some obvious things but generally from the top of my head this is it.
So basically,
1. Align all the hardware. This is usually only done once unless knocked badly.
2. Level scope and focus. Nightly
3. Use a compass to aim tripod south 172 degrees (for Adelaide). Nightly
4. Run Alignmaster/PHD bullseye and adjust tripod/wedge. Nightly
5. Start autoguiding. Big smiles.
This takes me between 15 and 25 minutes at this stage.
This is my experience of what simply works very well, I was lucky to have about 5 nights in a row that were cloud free so I could experiment and this process worked every night first time.

Cheers,
Damien.

[Forgey]

Hi Alistair, you wouldn't be able to send me the txt file for alignmaster would you?

[alistairsam]

Hi Paula,

Sure, I'll send it to you or upload here, but its quite easy to edit as well, just remove the unfamiliar stars and keep the bright and familiar ones.
I added a few that we're missing.
The file Is under program files\alignmaster\sterne.txt and can be edited in notepad.

You could keep stellarium open and verify if the star is above the horizon after dark.
I kept about 20 in my list. You just need a few opposing ones really.
So one file for summer and one for winter.

Cheers
Alistair

[alistairsam]

file attached.
just rename the existing one to something else in case you want to revert.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Alignmaster\

Cheers
Alistair

[Forgey]

Thanks Alistair :)

[terrycorridan]

Hi Damien,

The goto software I refer to is something like EQMOD or SkyX where you can select a star and get the software/mount to slew to it. I don’t use any such software. I have to do all the slewing using the Takahashi Control Box. Is this a problem?

I had a couple of nights to try out AlignMaster again but no success. I get messages like “stars are below the horizon” or “error is too great”. Also “select a sync star east of the meridian”. What’s a “sync star”? Would it be something to do with the fact that I am on daylight saving time? Should I put my computer clock back an hour? What about the start point of my mount/telescope? Should the telescope be pointing East or West? Or maybe South? Any ideas?

Cheers, Terry

[Peter.M]

Hi Terry, from what it sounds like you are trying to use alignmaster without computer control over your mount. This will not work, the computer has to slew the mount to the stars so that it can work out the error when the goto isn't perfect it then slews away from the second star a magnitude equal to the error so you can adjust the PA. It will not be able to do any of this if you don't have computer control over the mount.

[terrycorridan]

Hi Peter,

I don’t have a planetarium program that allows me to pick a star and “GOTO” it. I do, however, have computer control over my mount ever since I installed an ASCOM driver (see attached screenshot).

I’m thinking that the problem is the “SYNC to a known star”. Will I need a planetarium program like ThsSkyX to do that?

Many thanks for you help.

Regards Terry

[redbeard]

Hi Terry,

OK, I think we will be able to get you there.

After reading all this thread, I think you are very close.

Alignmaster will act as the 'goto' software in this case as all you are doing is aligning the mount which has nothing to do with looking for stars, deep sky stuff etc, that is different and comes
later. Don't use any other software at this point.

You mentioned the Ascom driver and that is the clue because Alignmaster uses this so it knows your mount and communicates with the computer.

Only Alignmaster, a compass, your mounts hand controller, an Ascom camera so you can see the star to centre, I use PHD software with the bullseye in conjunction with the camera to centre the star
and a computer is needed to polar align.

1. You need to align your scope as best as you can with your hands, (position of mount on the ground), using a compass to point to celestial south, not magnetic south. I'm not sure what that
setting is for you for your location, but for me on my compass the setting is 172 degrees. You will need to find out from your mount manual, which way to point your mount so that it is correct.
Somehow work out how to tell by the compass that you are correctly pointing as best as you can with a compass. NOTE: If that is not done correctly, nothing will work after that. Once done,
Alignmaster is there so that you can fine tune the mount for much better polar alignment than what you can achieve by eye. Also you need to as best as you can set the correct height of the mount
according to your location. For me it is 35 degrees. I'm in Adelaide Australia.

2. When the above is done and some stars are in the sky, you start Alignmaster and PHD so you can see the stars in your camera view, pick a set of stars from the list and MANUALLY slew with your
hand controller to the first star. Once you have centred that star in the PHD software, (use the bulls eye overlay in PHD to help get it centred), press the next button and Alignmaster will ask
you to slew to the second star. Do this with your hand controller and again centre this star. Make sure you know your stars and are pointing at exactly the correct stars or all will fail. It is
easy to find the wrong star in the sky, (I do that from time to time, and you will get big errors).

Then at that point, Alignmaster will communicate with your mount, (Ascom), and slew away from the last star you selected, at this point watch very carefully which way the star moves off the PHD
screen as you will have to bring it back by adjusting your mount manually, NOT USING THE HAND CONTROLLER and NOT by loosening your mounts bolts, but using the mounts alt/dec adjustments, (not sure
what your mount has), and physically bring the star back to the centre line in the PHD screen. Most likely it can't be centred in the middle, but as close to the line it is heading for when you
bring it back. Now I'm not sure what adjustments your mount has to do that but you are only doing one axis at a time. Also don't overshoot the line in PHD, if you do, start again and do it very
slowly. Once done, then Alignmaster will ask you to do the other axis. Again Alignmaster will talk to your mount and move your mount a little and the star will shoot off from centre again and you
will then have to bring it back into view using the OTHER axis adjustment on your mount.

NOTE: Sometimes depending on how good you were with manually lining your mount up with the compass, will depend on how far the star slews
away from PHD screen, the better you are it will be always somewhere in view, the worse, it can shoot right off the screen view, that's why you have to watch it.

So once the above is done, then repeat the process, Alignmaster will ask you if you want to do that, and start again by selecting the same two start from the list in Alignmaster, NOW, this is the
good bit, Alignmaster will remember where these stars are and instead of using your hand controller to centre the stars, there is a little button in Alignmaster called goto, press this and your
scope will slew automatically to the first star, once done, use you hand controller to centre the star and click next. Again, Alignmaster will ask you to slew to the second star as before, and
again, use the goto button in Alignmaster and it will slew to the second star. Centre this star and click next.

NOW at this point don't do anything else until you observe the numbers at the bottom of the Alignmaster screen, these will tell you how good your polar alignment is. If they are good, then you do
not need to adjust the mount anymore. See earlier in the post as I have already explained that bit.

If they are not all zeros except the last 2 digits on both axis, then repeat the whole process as before by selecting the same stars again in Alignmaster. You may need to do this a few times to
get the numbers down but by being careful, it will work. I do it about 4 - 5 times and it only really takes about 1/2 an hour ish.
Once done, you are aligned.
NOTE: when doing the manual alignment with the compass, do it in the daytime and once done, wait for dark when you can see the stars to use Alignmaster.

Now you are polar aligned, you will need to synch your mount, (if it has that feature, you will need to speak with someone who has one of these mounts or get the info from the mount manual), to the stars in the sky and either have a GPS thing or manually put in location/date/time etc and then slew to the object/s you want to
photo and use PHD or whatever you use to guide.

I really like Alignmaster, as once you crack it, it is so easy and quick to use compared to drift aligning.

Good luck!
Cheers,
Damien.

[Peter.M]

With my heq5 pro you can simply click the GOTO button in alignmaster and it will roughly place the first star in the reticule, depending on your rough alignment of course. Then for the second star you click the GOTO button again, this eliminates the need to manually slew to any stars. You do need to turn EQmod to Dialogue based instead of append on sync though.

[terrycorridan]

Hi Damien,

Thanks for all that advice. When I next get some clear nights I will have another go with AlignMaster, hopefully with some better success.

Many thanks, Terry

[terrycorridan]

Can anyone help? I am trying to get TheSkyX software to do the GOTO thing in AlignMaster. However, I cannot get both programs to run at the same time (Access denied messages in AlignMaster). I have installed the ASCOM driver and have a port (COM 6) that I can use, but they don't seem to want to share. Do I need to install another port? How would I do this? Any help would be most appreciated.

[netwolf]

Damien thanks for your write up, just to confirm are you saying we should not do any star alignments on the mount goto control at all before running alignmaster?

For my g11 I did a cold start to clear any pointing model, and do the first star align. Then I start the alignmaster process. I would think if you don't do this then the first star you goto with alignmaster maybe quite far of. The reason I did the single star align is that this is the process you do when you use the inbuilt POlar alignment assist on the Gemini 1. That process is similar to alignmaster so I thought perhaps same rule applies, but it maybe wrong here. But the bigger problem I have is that when I get to the part were u manually align azi and then alt, I can't get the star in the middle of the bullseye in PHD.
Best I can do is get it on the horizontal or vertical centre lines respectively for az and alt.

[Peter.M]

Im pretty sure you need to get alignmaster to do your GOTO for you, when I do it I dont have any planetarium open



Im not sure about the alignment points because I set up every night so I always clear my previous points before running alignmaster. The only time that I couldnt bring the star back to the center of the frame was when I didnt bother to level the mount before I started, or when the mount was playing up (bad backlash).

[redbeard]

Hi NW,
It's all about getting the physical mount as best as you can polar aligned.
I ensure that the mount is level and at the correct angle using a protractor and compass for my location. If this is not as close as you can get by eye, any polar alignment will be harder to do. It's about the mount and the earth, not the sky at this point.

Once done, I don't worry about any star alignment and go straight into Alignmaster and use my guide scope and camera to see the stars.

So, when using Alignmaster, and after slewing and centering the first 2 stars that you selected in the list, Alignmaster slews away from the star for the first axis and asks you to adjust to bring it back. When you adjust and bring the star back, the star will not go into the middle of the bullsye because you are not well polar aligned yet, this is normal. You need to bring the star back just on the line and do this slowly and carefully as you do not want to overshoot the line as backlash will then cause issues if you go past and bring it back.

I put the star right in the middle of the line. Repeat this for the other axis and again, the star won't go right in the centre of the bullseye yet, but put it right in the middle of the other axis line.
Make sure you do these steps using the mount adjusters and not the hand box. When I say middle of line, I mean that the line is in the middle of the star.
Once done, you will not be polar aligned yet as you need to do it a few times as it gets closer each time. Now as I think I mentioned in the previous posts, after you have picked the 2 stars from the list, then centred with the handbox on both those stars, at this point and before you click on the Alignmaster button to do the alt/az adjustments, you will see the numbers at the bottom of the Alignmaster screen, and these tell you how close to good polar alignment you are, if they are very low, then you are done, if they are high, then continue, to to do the alt/az adjustments on the mount and repeat until the numbers are low.

As soon as they are low, shutdown Alignmaster without doing any other
steps. When I first used Alignmaster, I didn't know about the numbers and was always adjusting the mount as the last step, but this is not correct as Alignmaster calculates whatever it does after you have centred the stars, not after adjusting the mount. It is like after the mount has been adjusted manually, the next run of Alignmaster checks this when you centre the stars and reports on the alignment. You will notice that each time you do this, the star will get closer and closer to the centre of the bullseye each time, which is a sure sign that polar alignment is getting better and better.

Again the numbers I look for for both axix should be 00:00:20 or less. Once I got them down to about
00:00:07 but usually I get between 00:00:30 and 00:00:12. Anyway anything below 00:00:30 should not matter that much as PHD will tighten up the rest.

Now your mount is nicely polar aligned, you can do the scope part. I then with my scope, don't even bother with the automatic 2 or 3 star aligment, rather, I go to the star of my choice, and use the bullseye in PHD to centre it and select that star in the scopes handbox database, and use the hand box to sync the star. I do this on 3 sometimes 4 different stars, and once done, I then tell the scope via the hand box to slew to one of the stars I have already sync with and hit goto, it then slews directly to the star.

On my scope, at that point in time because it is the first time that I have told the scope to do a goto, it kicks in the GPS and gets the co-ordinates for my location. The scope now knows what it is looking at and where it it located. If you don't have GPS, then your location in LAT and LON needs to be accurately entered into the mount. Also the time, date and daylight savings info.
All this takes a little time but a few extra minutes settting up, makes everything ready for great tracking/guiding.
By the way, I have the Meade LX200GPS on an equitorial wedge for my setup.
This works for me everytime, unlesss Murphy is hiding somewhere about. The issue I have if I do an auto star alignment after polar aligning, is the scope sometimes does not slew very accurately to the star that it should and I have a camera that does not clear the fork mount so I have to be careful. Putting my scope in the home polar position at startup did help a bit but the way I describe above, works everytime.

Different mounts do different things but the concepts are the same. I have heard that on some EQ mounts, auto star alignment rather that manual works well so good luck and see how you go.
Cheers,
Damien.