EqAlign new version

[Enrique]

After several weeks of travelling, for working reasons unfortunatelly, I finally could set up the telescope and try the new EqAlign version (http://www.eqalign.net/e_downloads.html (http://www.eqalign.net/e_downloads.html)). The programmer, Antonio Fraga, corrected some problem for the southern hemisphere. I did some tests for him and suggested some improvements during the past few months.

It took me 20 minutes last night to do a very high precision polar alignment with a focal length of 3000 mm. I have not tried the autoguiding function yet, I am still using Guidemaster.

Try the program, if you have any problems let me know.

Enrique

[iceman]

Sounds interesting, thanks Enrique.

[Tandum]

Enrique,
I gave this a run tonight and it crashes on me. I see it connects to the mount and the guide camera but crashes shortly after with an unhandled exception. I have attached the error logs. I tried it on an eq6pro with both a gpusb and qhy5.

I'd say this function is at fault : EQA.Controls.UCProjection.Start()

[TrevorW]

Would this work with a Orion Autoguider ??:)

[Matty P]

Looks great, might give it a go tonight.

:thumbsup:

[AlexN]

Tandum's QHY5 is an Orion Autoguider.. (well the other way around considering QHY designed the thing)

Tandum's system did not like the program with the QHY5, I dare say it will have the same problems with the Orion..

[netwolf]

Alex, on the EQalign website they do give you the method to get the Qhy5 working. You need to copy the dll file to the Eqalign directory.

Edit: sorry just read Tandum's real life results.

regards
Fahim

[Tandum]

I don't think the camera was my problem, it did the same thing with a DSI and GPUSB. I'm pretty sure it connected to the camera and the mount just fine. I could be missing an MS redistributable or something, I run the laptop pretty lean, no crap installed :)

Did it work for any of you guys?

[AlexN]

since barambah i dont even let my laptop install updates... :)

I have actually even considered a clean install with nothing installed that is not required for astro imaging.

[Enrique]

Gents, sorry for the delay in answering, I have been away. I will pass this thread to Antonio Fraga (the programmer). The crash has to be resolved by him.

I have a QHY5 and I did the EQAlign testing for the southern hemisphere with it. In fact, EqAling detects the QHY5 and the imbedded web cam that my Toshiba laptop has. I understand that the Orion Autoguider is the same camera as the QHY5. It if uses the same drivers, it should work. Let’s see what the programmer says.

Regards,

Enrique

[netwolf]

Enrique,

You will find that the Orion uses a slightly diffrent driver, and hence is identified as a Orion Autoguider camera not a Qhy5 to the PC. So The EQAlign program would need to have specific support for the Orion Autoguider camera. The Qhy5 and Orion are similar and as such it does not seem that it would be that complex to add this camera.

If you wanted to you could change the firmware on your Orion camera and make it into a Qhy5 and then use the Qhy5 drivers. But I think better to try and get the author to add the Orion and other variations of the Camera.

Regards
Fahim

[Enrique]

Tandum: this is a message from the programer, Antonio Fraga, and transladed by me:

"Thank you for reporting the error file, it helps us to improve. This error was involuntary introduced while implementing the new auto guiding system and only occurs when the program is installed for the first time. It would have been very difficult for me to detect it without the reports from the users. The error has been corrected in the last version here http://www.eqalign.net/projects/EQAlign-2_1_2_beta.exe (http://www.eqalign.net/projects/EQAlign-2_1_2_beta.exe). Please test it and if you find any problems, please let me know.

Thanks to you and clear skies to all the Australian Amateur Astronomers"


Regarding to the Orion Autoguider: the programmer confirms that the drivers are different from the QHY5. This is the reason why the Orion Autoguider is not detected

Regards,

Enrique

[Tandum]

Cheers Enrique, I'll try this new version when the weather clears.

[PeterO]

I tried this last night and I can tell you it works well (my new favotite program), a big thanks to the programmer and any beta testers.

Peter

[TrevorW]

[

Regarding to the Orion Autoguider: the programmer confirms that the drivers are different from the QHY5. This is the reason why the Orion Autoguider is not detected



Enrique any chance of the programmer incorporating support for the Orion Autoguider drivers, this would be really helpful to a lot of people

Please

Amigo

[allan gould]

Just installed the 2-1-2-beta version and still getting the above error on first time installation. Do you have to have a webcam attached while starting the program?

[PeterO]

I don't know Allen, each time I've used it I have had the guide cam (CCD Labs QHY5) already hooked up.

Peter

[AdrianF]

I have just downloaded the program and it locked the PC as soon as I tried to use it. The PC just froze until I hit the reset button

Adrian

[Enrique]

Gents: sorry for the delay. I am travelling again.

Allen: I always have the camera connected and recognized by windows before I run the program. I do not have the program with me to test if it could detect a camera that is connected after the program starts. I recall it does not but I am not sure.


TrevorW: Antonio informed me that as soon as the drivers for the Orion Autoguider are available for him to use, he will be able to habilitate the program to recognize the camera. I understood there are license issues or something like that, non technical, to define first.

PeterO: did you make the program work the first time you tried it?

AdrianF: I will request the programmer to read this thread. Please report any problems you find.

Regards,

Enrique

[PeterO]

Enrique,

I can not say for sure, prior to using it proper I had it open and closed a few times (no camera) just messing around and looking at it then later on hooked the camera up and used it. If your asking if it crashed/locked the computer at any time no it did not.

Peter

[Enrique]

Peter, sorry, let's change the question. How many nights did it take you to have the program running? I am trying to find out how easy or difficult it is for a first time user to make the program work. It sounds it was relatively easy for you.

Regards,

Enrique

[Enrique]

Peter: I forgot to ask. Did you use the simulation camera when you were messing around with it? I did the first time I tried the program and it helped a lot.

[PeterO]

Enrique,

I had it running the first night, once I fired it up for real it only took a few minutes to work it out. I didn't discover the sim camera till later and have not tried it yet. One thing I remember now is that the slew pad control would slew the scope but it would not stop slewing, however the goto slew worked ok. I then just used the slew pad in EQmod for the red circle star placement.

Peter

[leinad]

Confirmed. I experienced the same problem today with the slew pad control. The stop button did not seem to work. I had to press stop on the EQMOD control panel. I'll try to recreate and check out further tomorrow.

I havnt been able to test live as yet; Skies are terrible tonight.

Enrique; even though I chose English, the prompts(error prompts) did not appear to be in English.

[Enrique]

Thanks for your feed back. I already requested the programmer to have a look at this thread. I will try to reproduce the problems in my set up.

Regards,

Enrique

[Tandum]

Sorry for my lack of input Enrique. It's been over cast and stormy since October here.

[tiggere]

Thats wierd on the slew pad issue...with mine (running ASCOM) the slew pad will only work is short bursts...if I bump it in the up direction I have to bump it in another direction before it will let me go up again...I finally gave up and hooked my gamepad up to EQMOD and it worked fine...

problem I am having is I polar aligned...then slewed to Sirius (thru EQALIGN's GOTO)to have a good bright star to focus and calibrate on...once calibrated I went to the align sequence and chose a star on the big dipper...well instead of slewing back around it went down from Sirius to the approximate location that the star would have been...180 degrees off...

should I have parked the scope back to the home position prior to trying to run the align sequence?

anyone that has it up and running want to do an english walkthrough?

[sadia]

I asked Antonio on possible surrport for Orion starshoot autoguider in near future and following was the response.



"Well, EQAlign is an open source platform and we’d like EQAlign not only to be useful by itself but to be useful for other programmers to build another open source projects (astronomy projects or generic ones) We think this is more than a free program.
We want it to be useful and so we must give access to all common cameras; with this in mind we contacted Orion several months ago asking for information to acquire images from their Orion starshoot Autoguider cameras without response.
But we project to include access to any ASCOM camera driver and i think Orion Autoguider has an ASCOM compatible driver, so you could use your camera through ASCOM driver. Please, give me some weeks to finish it and I’ll contact you again.
We’re just working on EQAlign 2.2 version release, but you can download beta version from here:
http://eqalign.net/projects/EQAlign-2_2_beta.exe
The 2.2 version will include:
-All SBIG range camera support
-ASCOM Camera access (not in beta yet)
-ASCOM/LX200 drivers improvements
-Direct Sphinx SXD http conection (not in beta yet)
-Star multi-selection
-On screen direction pad buttons
-Linear regression autoguiding model
-Projection is shown with S up for Southern hemisphere
-Chinese user interface translation
If you have any question or a whish list, please contact me again. Also you can participate in EQAlign forum at:
http://apps.sourceforge.net/phpbb/eqalign

[legoman_iac]

Hey Guys ... still new to all this and found in many places people looking for the drivers for the Orion StarShoot Autioguider, am having trouble getting the StarShoot to work with EQAlign ... does anyone have the StarShootASCOM.exe or something similar to get it working?