Starshooter trouble..help!

[peter brown]

I have tried my new Orion Starshooter autoguide camera thru my polar mounted Meade LX200GPS and can't get it to calibrate and lock on. I click on a star, the yellow square goes green and never finishs locking on and guiding my scope.
Do I have to do something with the lx200 like turn off the PEC and/or the autoguide control?
When it is slowly following the chosen star, clicking on any of the guider control buttons does nothing.
Advertised as a "breeze" to use does nothing for my germinating confidence

[Hagar (Doug)]

Hi Peter, What guide software are you using?

[renormalised (Carl)]

It'll be PHD if Peter is using the software that came with the guider.

[peter brown]

It's the PhD that came with the camera

[Hagar (Doug)]

OK Peter, First things first, Download the latest version of PHD from Stark Labs.

1. Start PHD.
2. Connect the camera.
3. Select mount from the top menu, Select "On Camera guiding"
4. Click on the Brain Icon and set camera gain to 100%
5. Make sure the "Forced Calibration" is ticked.
6. All the default setting should be OK at this stage.
7. Close this menu.
8. Cover your guide scope and set the time interval to say 1 second. click the take dark frame button. When this says redo dark frame you have completed this stage.
9. Click on capture button and ensure you have a star or two visible. This will require you to focus well. The focus point is quite small so it may take a while to get a good image. I sugest you use a quite bright star like Canopus for this.
10. while the capture is running, click on one of the visible stars and a green box will open around the selected star. You should notice the numbers in the lowe left changing slightly as the centroid tracks the changes in position of this star.
11. If you are happy with this just click on the PHD button and calibration should start. You will see a set of cross hairs appear over the image and your star should start to move off the center of your cross hairs this process takes a little while.
12 when the calibration process is finished you will see the dotted cross hairs disappear and a solid green box around your target with a solid set of cross hairs. and the words on the info line at the bottom should read " Guiding"

If you move the telescope to another target you have to go through the complete calibration process again from the start. eg 1 open the brain icon and select force Calibration..... and so on. the only thing that should remain constant is the focus.

Give me a call if you are still having problems.