Going to RGB ???

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Hi guys,
Haven't been around the forum a lot for a while but still been out there plodding away.
Anyway you will have seen the QSI 583WSG camera for sale recently, well I bit the bullet and purchased it from Pete and so am making the jump from an unmodded SLR to a cooled RGB camera.

My question is what software is popular for controling the camera and guiding etc as I will be going to OAG with the Loadstar on the QSI and oviously driving the new camera.

I currently drive the mount Thesky6 and PHD2 guiding with a ST80 guide scope on my NEQ6 Pro and EQMOD and that all works a treat.
So what changes can you see me making with the software, what's popular?

All comments welcome.

Cheers
Ken

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Have you looked at Metaguide ? I'm still learning it's foibles but seems quite good so far.

[graham.hobart (Graham stevens)]

Hi Ken, if you don't want to spend big bucks then you can guide the lodestar still with PHD/2 and maybe use APT Astrophotography Tool which I believe now has support for QSI cameras. It also integrates with PHD and so can do dithering. Nebulosity will do it too.
I use Maxim but this is more expensive.
Plenty of software out there-depends on how much you want to pay.
I like the simplicity of Maxim for capturing LRGB or even NB filters.
Good luck
Graham

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Have a look at Sequence Generator Pro. It has all the features for camera control etc and is quite reasonably priced. For guiding it integrates nicely with PHD2 and Metaguide.

[Amaranthus (Barry)]

APT or SGP are both robust, lower-cost options for camera control. Nebulosity is more basic, and to sequence events you need to write a script, but it is otherwise really good, cheap, and drives QSI cameras. It's a great bit of software overall, as it does nice image calibration too (I use it for calibration and DSS for alignment).

[lazjen (Chris)]

I have to agree re: APT. I'm using it to control an SBig camera and it's pretty good and easy to use. The integration with PHD is useful. Setting you imaging plans is a breeze.

There's an auto focusing routine that's recently been added that I hope matures - I haven't had much luck with it yet, but I haven't debugged the issue properly.

[Nico13 (Ken)]

Thanks for the replys everyone, it appears there's more out there than first thought and while asking around off line I've found that I have a couple of people close to me that use Maxim and I may well go that way as I can bounce questions of them and may even get one on one help with the learning curve if I ask real nice.
I like PHD2 a lot but I'm also told maxim will handle the guiding as well quite nicely and it would save another program running as I currently have so will most likely give that a try as well.
So wish me luck as I get stuck in and weather dependant I hope to produce some images soon to show you.
Cheers
Ken.