PHD2 woes with ZWO and EQMOD...advice please

[Russj (Russ)]

Originally Posted by peter_4059

Are you using pulse guiding via eqmod or st4 connection?

I've tried both I managed to get PHD2 to calibrate in St4 , the cal was flaky to say the least, but it guided for 10 minutes or so and then stopped, I hav'nt been able to get it to calibrate since.

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Might be time to start a new thread with a description of how you have things connected and the connection info from phd2.

[gregbradley]

Also it might pay dividends to ditch PHD2. I used it for a while. It has some nice features but I found it was not as robust and reliable as CCDsoft.

Pulse guiding may also be an issue. I thought that was an AstroPhysics Ray Gralak invention. I did not know it was available outside of that. So is the software capable of utilising it? It may be easier to use the more usual guiding cable and ST4 style relays. I have used both and I don't see a lot of difference in guiding accuracy. Perhaps there is some gain but its not obvious.

In general in astrophotography, because everything really tends to be a but fussy and precious it makes sense to use the thing that works every time rather than a newest and latest that potentially is buggy. That's where these forums are good as you can find out what's reliable and what's not.

If you had PHD2 working in the past perhaps revert back to what worked in the past or if it was some other software than use that.

The SkyX now seems mature and stable and has been for a while and runs everything, mount, camera, focuser, autoguider.

Greg.

[Imme (Jon)]

I had major issues with phd2 dropping out and doing all sorts or weird things. Spent ages trying to get a basic guide happening......now it's working perfectly.

What did I do you ask.....in eqmod I unchecked the "mount limit" box......has worked flawlessly since.

[GOTO (Geoff)]

Darn, I managed a little more progress last night but still no luck.

So, I took manual control in PHD2 and by increasing the duration to around 3000 I was able to drive the mount in each direction. As soon as I clicked on a star the PHD icon would turn green but then when I would try to select it to start guiding it change from green back to grey and then give the message "Star lost"...aw man this is frustrating.

Any other ideas please?

Cheers
Geoff

[kens (Ken)]

Your issues sound like they are most likely mechanical or electrical.
You need to approach this methodically and elimnate as many variablea as possible while testing.
As a first step my approach would be to conduct a star cross test using first just EQMOD or hand controller and then using PHD2
https://openphdguiding.org/man-dev/Trouble_shooting.htm

[Russj (Russ)]

Greg it might be worth trying another computer to mount interface to eliminate the shoestring this outfit in Melb sells a TTL/usb device that does the same job as the Shoestring, it is a quarter of the price of the shoestring,

https://www.shop-dontronics.com/usb-...onverter-cable

You will need to buy a db9 plug from Jaycar and replace the header with the db9, details are on the page, or here-

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/tutindex.html

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Originally Posted by GOTO

Yes Peter all is well with EQMOD. I can drive the mount with the game pad or from the EQMOD control panel.

I doubt the problem is with the cable if he can successfully drive the mount in both directions with eqmod.

[GOTO (Geoff)]

Hi all,

Thanks for your help and patience. I managed to get a few hours last night and got it to track but not as well as I could with PHD. I used to be able to get 0.17" RMS but as you can see it wasn't so good last night. The sad thing is I'm not sure why it worked when I did everything the same as before.

I did have trouble though trying to force it to calibrate away from zenith and take new dark frames but I suspect that's just user impatience or error.

The star in the pic is Alpha Cen after a slew to check pointing, which was pretty good.

Anyway onwards and upwards hopefully.
Cheers and thanks again
Geoff

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Geoff,
I note your guide exposure is only 0.5s.
It would be better to guide on a nearby fainter star and get the exposure up to 1.5 or 2 sec. This would better average out the seeing.

[simon_rl (Simon)]

Hi Geoff,
I have been having pretty much had the same issues as you. My mount is an AZ-EQ6 with EQMOD and guide camera is an ASI120 MM-S.

I had to do a few things to get everything stable:
1. Make sure you have the latest drivers from ZWO, they recently released a new version.

2. I find the ZWO drivers are quite unstable, both native and ASCOM, so I make sure I only run everything after a clean boot and only run the software I absolutely need to for imaging.

3. I confirm I can connect to my guide camera and that it is working as expected each session. I usually do this in PHD2 once I have connected to the camera and then hit the loop button, I also fine tune my exposure settings at this point.

4. When start EQMOD I make sure off PPEC is off.

5. In PHD3 I always make sure the exposure is 2 seconds or above.

Hope this is helpful.

Forgot to mention, I am using pulse guiding.

[GOTO (Geoff)]

Thanks Ken and Simon, I’ll try longer exposures and reboot too.
Cheers
Geoff

[Crushellon (Tim)]

Originally Posted by GOTO

In the connect to equipment tab on the bottom left I've tried two different ways
Firstly
Camera: ZWO Camera
Mount: On camera
Aux Mount: EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5/6

If you're using pulse guiding the mount shouldn't be set to "on camera" in PHD2, with that setting it will be trying to guide though the st4 port on the camera. You should be using the "EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5/6" option in mount when setting up.


Edit, Didn't see that someone else already said this

Tim