Guide Camera

[JohnH]

Hi all,

Anyone care to recommend a guidecam? I use an LPI at the moment but am limited to bright stars due to the lack of long exposure support in the tools Guidedog and GuideMaster. LPI support appears problematic. I would like to guide on fainter stars as I use a small apature guidescope, any recomendations - the DSI springs to mind but is there something cheaper?

[JohnG]

I use an ST-4 but they are like hen's teeth to get, no mine is not for sale. I would hang on a while with the LPI, the author of GuideMaster has indicated that LPI long exposure support is not far away, he stated that tests have proved it is capable of long exposure autoguiding, the only requirement is you will have to use .Net 2.0.

JohnG

[[1ponders]]

Hi JohnH. Striker has an ST-4 (or he did a while ago) and FOOTPRINT has an SBIG ST-5 for sale.

Alternatively maybe a modified ToUcam?

[Striker]

Paul...have you been drinking again.....lol

I dont have a ST-4...I have sac 4.2 for sale sitting in a box but I dont recommend it for guiding as you have to use it's own guide program which is crap.

My Sbig ST402XME is incrediblle....no matter where you point it in the sky you will see a guide star...well everywhere I have tested...I just need to get over some technical issues with this camera....not as easy like the toucam...having probs with the internal filter wheel....almost time to get rid of the wheel.

[Merlin66]

I've got the ST-4 but got to say I'm very impressed with the performance of a modded ToUcam for guiding, much cheaper and available.!!

[[1ponders]]

I knew there was an S and a 4 in there somewhere Tony. :)

[avandonk]

It is not just the guidecam it is the whole assembly. Even a cheap achromat will do. What you need is a small F ratio and a wide field. I routinely guide with stars less than mag 8 using a toucam. See here

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=3798

and here
http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/891477/page/4/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

and here for clarification

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/891601/page/2/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1



Bert

[Striker]

The toucam works ok but I am constently having to move the guide scope to find a bright enough guide star...I dont have this problem at dark sites only in Brisbane.

But with the Sbig there will no more moving the guide scope...it's amazingly sensative....what I can see in just 1 second is equlivent to what I could see in 15 seconds on the LPI...but the Sbig is very expensive and probably over doing it.

I'm doing a 12 minute autoguiding test image as we speak....yes it will be overexposed but i'm testing guiding errors over a longer exposure.

[JohnH]

Mmmm patience - not my strong point....the modded ToUcam sounds good but I have a question does it require more than a single USB port to run? All the other interfaces on my laptop are in use, parallel, ethernet and usb...

[JohnG]

The way I understand it is that you can use a USB Hub to plug the LPI or whatever in and you can also get USB adapter from Shoestring Astronomy instead of the parallel adapter, GuideMaster works with it. Someone else might be able to clarify this.

JohnG

[[1ponders]]

Yep it's a two plug puppy. Usb and parallel.

[sheeny]

If you are not using your PCMCIA slot yo can get a parallel PCMCIA card that works. I have one. If you want to go this way, I'll dig out the details, but they should be in another thread on IIS already.

Al.

[sheeny]

Here's the link to the parallel PCMCIA card I got which works flawlessly.

http://www.transdigital.net/info.htm (http://www.transdigital.net/info.htm)


Al.

[allan gould]

I had my qickcam pro 3000 modded by a friend but now it appears that there is a single pin mod to make it a long exposure webcam and is far simpler to do

[rogerg]

Given the money I'd choose an SBIG or similar (perhaps there's a Starlight Xpress that would work well too) for guilding, not a ToUCam or similar.

I use my ST7 for autoguiding and like other have said about other SBIG's, the sensitivity is amazing, you always have stars, not always in the little guide chip of the ST7 but always in the main chip. And you have low noise.

The problem I've had with the ToUCam mod'd for long exposure is noise is I've always had lots of noise from in the image, lots. In theory it wouldn't interfear with guilding if you get a good enough contrast on the guide star, but it just makes everything a little harder in my opinnion.

Problem of course is cost of the SBIG type cameras, I don't think I would have ever managed to save the money needed for one to use primarily for guiding.

But, having said all that, I've read this thread with interest as I've considerred options for a guide camera for my portable setup, where I don't have my ST7. I've been wondering about a Meade DSI (cheap simple non-pro version) - would that interface with something like CCDSoft for autoguiding? anyone know? Or the Orion one? I'm never quite sure how compatible the DSI's are with other software.

Roger.

[JohnG]

Hey Roger

Have a look at the GuideMaster thread in tips and techniques.

LPI support soon

JohnG

[allan gould]

The program that I suggest you have a look at for a modded Toucam is Guidemaster. This program subtracts a dark frame of the field at the exposure settings you are using, thus eliminating the noisy field you see with guidedog.
Meade LPI interface for long exposure coming for guidemaster [so I'm told]