PHD and 900NC Serial LX Modified

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Hi all,

Just a quick one. I am trying to get an image using a LX Modified 900NC webcam through a finderscope. All I seem to get is a picture which is very contrasty, but has squares all over it. Black background with pixelated white/grey boxes. Which seem to correspond to where a star or hot pixel is. Occasionally a good picture would pop up, but then it would quickly disappear and return to these boxes... I tried adjusting the exposure times and also the contrast bar, with not much help. I also adjusted some settings in the setup window, but this had little effect also...

If anyone is using a similar setup 8x50 finderscope (Skywatcher) and Philips 900NC with Serial LXmod could you please be able to point me in the right direction on what settings to use...

BTW the camera works fine in SharpCap with the LX mode turned on, it's only when I use PHD the picture is all yuk...

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

okay sort of getting there now, but another problem has arisen. As you can see from the youtube video below the picture keeps flickering between a good image and one which is barely showing the brightest stars.

This is still with the Philips 900NC webcam and an LX modded serial connection...

Click here to load the video

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[2stroke (Jay)]

Looks like the LXmod is failing and your going from 2secs to 250ms back and forward, like first read 2secs then a few 250ms shots then back to 2secs. Is that a stock toucam or a bw ccd or 618 upgrade? If thats stock lol i might have to ditch the dsi for the lighter toucam haha. Have an LXmodded one here though parallel port style, will have to test.

Just read its working fine in sharpcap, hmm try another system maybe or version of PHD

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

The thing thats confusing me is the camera works fine in Sharpcap under LXmode. The 900NC is a straight camera, with colour sensor. I changed the Parallel connection to a serial one for ease of use with my laptops. Even though it is all working perfectly in Sharpcap.

[2stroke (Jay)]

What version of phd are you using? Looks like more people are having better luck with guidemaster when i googled it up, will look into it myself when i have some time.

[2stroke (Jay)]

just found this on sl

I use an LX-modded webcam on a 300mm-focal-length f/4.5 lens. I had trouble with PHD for a while but it's a lot better now (maybe one bad exposure in one night). First of all, get the latest version of PHD. Then, keep the frame rate to 5fps and the exposure at 1 second (or maybe 2 seconds, I usually find a guide star by repointing the lens in its rings). Auto Exposure OFF, Auto White Balance OFF, Black & White ON, as you have. The parameter to play with to avoid dropped frames in PHD's "brain" is the "LE read delay", I think mine is set to 12.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Thanks Jay, will try it tonight, I am using the latest PHD 1.14 I think.