Orion Autoguider/PhD

[mick pinner]

whilst guiding with the above setup last night after a couple of minutes l kept getting a low S/N message and the red flash on the lower screen, however it would return to normal for a few minutes and then start again, also the guiding in the bottom left corner stayed.
l was guiding on a moderately bright star with no cloud.
the result was a jump in guiding with dual stars if you know what l mean. any ideas appreciated. thanks.

[Bolts_Tweed]

Gday

I have had a similar problem with a QHY5/PHD set up. My problem was power to the QHY5 from the USB connection. I had it running through a powered USB hub along with everything else (camera, DSUSB, serial to USB adapter for the Sky etc.) When anything else wsa doing something serious (eg downlaoding an image from the CCD) the s/n ratio would plummet and the guider would stark doing crazy things..

My solution was to run a dedicated USB connection to the QHY5, another to the CCD and I left the rest on the powered hub. It all works fantastically now. Dont know if this helps - I use a desktop in the observatory and have 5 available USB ports - a laptop may impose limitation on the available ports. It might be worth a try if you are using a hub.

MB