Autoguiding with PHD-any suggestions

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Hi all:

i have been successfully autoguiding with PHD for the last several months and have had sessions where I have imaged the same target for up to 4 hours or longer-10 minute subs. I use an Orion DSI and 900mm guidescope. I plug the autoguider cable into the hand controller-I dont use a shoestring adapter/ST4 port..but it has always worked like a charm

as far as i know I have changed nothing. Yet the autoguiding is simply not working. I spent the last two nights and tried everything I could think of -including a factory reset for the mount, changed various settings in PHD guiding, calibrated and recalibrated in PHD, changed the power supply more than once, tried guide stars near meridian and near the pole and absolutely nothing worked. I even purchased a new power source yesterday ( a 17 amphour gel battery) but that didn't help either. Polar alignment was good if not very good-I took over an hour to get it right. I tried various anti-backlash settings but that didnt seem to help either

PHD would calibrate, say it was guiding-and within seconds the guide star would move out of the the target area. Its almost as if the autoguiding commands were reinforcing the drift rather than countering it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I am going to post this over at the PHD forum as well

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions

Narayan


I am simply at my wits end. I have just downloaded the latest version of PHD guiding and will install and try that but other than that I am not sure what to do.

[Terry B]

Have you checked the cable doesn't have an open connection with a multimeter?

[g__day (Matthew)]

I don't think this will show any problem if your PHD run calibrates - but try downloading GPINTCheck from Shoestring astronomy - and manually slew in all four directions to command guide instructions are reaching the mount / hand controller frioomyour PC.

One other small things I know if I calibrate then do a large slew, say greater than 60 degress, I'm probably best of to force a calibration again - less I see exactly what you described - PHD works against the mounts tracking!

Craig at stark-labs is pretty good; no actually he's excellent. See what he says and it might help to post all your PHD setting here - all of them!

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

No but I can use the virtual hand controller in PHD to move the mount in all four directions-and its calibrating as well..just falling down when guiding

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by g__day

Craig at stark-labs is pretty good; no actually he's excellent. See what he says and it might help to post all your PHD setting here - all of them!

I have posted over at the yahoo forum, hopefully Craig will see it soon

My settings used to be

RA aggressiveness 115
RA hysteresis 10 (default)
DEC guide mode Auto
Dec algorithm Resist switching
Calibration step 500 (default)
min motion 0.25
search region 15 (yes and it used to hold tightly in this relatively small region before)

time lapse 0 (default)
usually guided at 2 sec long exposure

Narayan

[JohnH]

Narayan, turn logging on and have a look at your traces. Or Post them in here so we can take a look...

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by JohnH

Narayan, turn logging on and have a look at your traces. Or Post them in here so we can take a look...

will do, as soon as I have a clear night.

Narayan

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Ok Craig didnt have anything to suggest but that's because the problem turned out not to be with the very wonderful PHD software but with a faulty handcontroller-Alex (WSAAG) came along home tonight and very kindly lent me his hand controller -and my mount autoguided just fine

so I'm up for $250 for a new hand controller-but hopefully my guiding issues will be resolved with this

frankly I have been looking at other mounts -including the Losmandy G8 and the Vixen SXD-and browsing yahoo user groups and there is no such thing it appears as a truly reliable mount that will just do the job out of the box--even these high end mounts seem to have their share of issues and seem extremely finicky

so I a replacement hand controller does the job I will reckon I am well out of the bunker ..fingers and toes crossed of course

[Stephan]

Do you use a relay between the pc and your mount controller? If not you should consider getting one, otherwise you might fry your new controller sooner or later too.

Clear Skies!

Stephan

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by Stephan

Do you use a relay between the pc and your mount controller? If not you should consider getting one, otherwise you might fry your new controller sooner or later too.

Clear Skies!

Stephan

what sort of relay?do you use one?

BTW i dont plug into the ST4 socket but into the hand controller..but why do you feel the hand controller is at risk?

[Stephan]

Originally Posted by seeker372011

what sort of relay?do you use one?

BTW i dont plug into the ST4 socket but into the hand controller..but why do you feel the hand controller is at risk?

Sorry, the relay only works for the st-4 socket. However I remember that I read once that somebody had trouble with his PC killing at least 2 celestron hand controller before he realized that.... but I can not find this webpage anymore...