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Bought one!
Hi All
I had a look at this and it seemed like a good value product and after some investigation I have ended up buying one although I haven't received it yet so can't give a report
I can report though that the guy producing them (his name is Gene) is extremely helpful which I need as I am just starting in the autoguiding game and really still have little idea how all the hardware and software bits work together.
His reply to my query yesterday helped me understand things a lot more and I thought I'd share it in case others find it useful.
I understand the dilema with all the pieces of the puzzle.
> To get something working from a guiding standpoint,
> assuming the guide camera does not have a native ST4 output
> not needing help (e.g. the Orion Solitare), you would be
> looking at:
>
> PHD->ASCOM->USB->ST4->Mount
>
> Where PHD is fairly simple on the surface but offers quite
> a bit of tweaking if desired to tune it to your mount. It
> can talk to the 'camera', read the images off of it, keep
> track of star location in the image and given a star you
> choose will send commands to the scope to keep that star
> centered. Now PHD natively supports quite a few things
> camera and guide output wise but for things not natively
> supported it relies on ASCOM to abstract the view of the
> hardware. Note that PHD for the PC talks to the USB-ST4 via
> ASCOM but on MAC it talks to the unit directly.
>
> ASCOM is a set of software platform interfaces and
> utilities that provide a common interface spec so the
> program using it (PHD in this case) does not need to know
> about the details of the actual hardware. It is all
> abstracted by the ASCOM 'drivers' which talk to the hardware
> itself.
>
> For guiding, PHD makes use of 2 abstractions in the ASCOM
> driver
>
> 'Move this direction for this long' and 'are you still
> moving'.
> These are named 'pulseguide' and 'isPulseGuiding'
>
> Gene
>
One final note for now. I bought the nore expensive optical relay version in the kit version (I have built electronic projects all of my life) and the total price including shipping was a bit overAU$61 which seems pretty cheap to me.
The fully built and tested unit is about US$18 more but in addition includes both of the required USB and RJ-11 cables.
Regards
Steve M
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