Lodestar Replacing ST-i Guide Camera

[Oscar in Bin]

My ST-i has died and I am looking at replacing it with a Lodestar X2 for my guide camera. My imaging system is an EM200 mount with an STF8300, FW8-8300 filter wheel and OAG8300. Question is - will the Lodestar be a straight swap over for the ST-i?

[Merlin66]

John,
Should be a plug and play replacement....
I still use the original Lodestar....

[LewisM]

No issues at all so long as you install the Lodestar drivers etc (MaxIM and a couple other astro programs natively support Lodestar)

[gregbradley]

I had problems with Lodestars. Interference was bad and couldn't do an autodark unless you use Maxim. That meant the software often confused noise for the guide stars and I wold get massive corrections and wreck the image run.

I know they are popular but I would be sceptical.

The STi has been very reliable. I would get another STi.I have had 2 Stis and both were good. They do autodarks which is the key.
Far superior to a Lodestar which only has a bit more sensitivity and perhaps they are cheaper going for them.

Greg.

[LewisM]

Had no issues in 9 years using lodestar original and x2. Darks were never an issue either (manually). I always manually select guidestars so never had any software confusion.

[Slawomir]

I really like the original Lodestar, lightweight, 16bit, large pixels and a fairly low noise.

When I swapped old laptop for a new one though, most frames had random interference pattern that when overlapping with the guide star would confuse phd2 and cause rapid mount movements chasing apparent movement of the miscalculated guide star’s centroid.

Selecting an option to use only a small box around the guide star completely rectified the issue, which I believe has something to do with the new laptops USB ports.

[LewisM]

Absolutely right - and Terry fixed this issue to with the new firmware (he sent me a copy of the beta, which definitely fixed the issue on my new laptop). Never had the issue on the old laptop, and I continue using that same laptop (9 years old). My original Lodestar is incredibly "clean" with very few bad/hot pixels. I use 4 sec guiding and get an almost perfectly dark sky if I subtract darks.

I find MaxIM 6's guiding absolutely perfect, so not overly sure how it behaves in PHD2 these days. MaxIM uses a TINY subframe that is VERY tight around the selected star.

[gregbradley]

Its good to know its been fixed. It made the unit useless.
Still it does not have the ability to do auto darks should you need it.

Greg.

[Merlin66]

The original Lodestar works very well with PHD2 and AstroArt guiding.
No issues.

[Slawomir]

I’m still getting interference patterns on most full frames with my two Lodestars in phd2 and with the latest drivers on the new laptop (no sign of this on the old and slow laptop), but have no interference when guiding only with a small box around the star.