Maintenance on a Paramount MX

[Paul Haese]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

You're Mr. ME to his Mr. MX. Or he's Mini-Me and you're Dr. Evil. Take your pick. Speaking of which, I'm still very much looking forward to viewing your ME video if you'll please upload it to Youtube and post the link.

Thanks for the reminder Ernie. Been a bit busy and it had slipped my mind.

[cventer]

Ok Good news is the new worm block sorted out my PE.

Raw uncorrected PE is now 5.6 peak to peak. I am very happy with that and its a VERY smooth line that will be very easy to guide out.

Hans while its true it should not have slipped via QC the fact that within a few days of me sending data to Software Bisque they wrote instructions for me and shipped me a new block with no questions asked makes up for it.

Darn good service in my view.

These mounts being new are bound to have a few gremlins. Even so they have so many more features than NJP and Astrophysics equivalent that in my view its not even a comparison.

[cventer]

Marcus not sure but if the graph you posted below. (ie first picture) is RAW uncorrected PE then your mount is well within SPEC.

Looking at that graph the fitted curve stays within 2 pixels either side. The overal scale is 3.7 but you can see all your data is within first 2 lines of graph either side. Each line is 1 pixel. So your data is all within 4 pixels. At 1.29 arc sec per pixel x 4 pixels this puts your PE at 5.16

Originally Posted by Mighty_oz

raw data pec shows 4.1 to 4.1, corrected 3.3 to 3.3 not good, waiting for better nights To top that off neither my DSI II pro or the QHY5 guiders work with this mount for me, they connect but don't work properly. I've tried a 258 t-point model asa well for protrack hoping i could take 10 min + unguided images. ROFL as iff ! it's better without protrack than with !
Anyways mustn't ramble on anothers posting

[cventer]

I just loaded the log file data in your post that you attached as well into pempro.

Its shows your RAW pe as +2.7 - 1.4 ie 4.1 peak to peak which is none too shabby.

[Mighty_oz (Marcus)]

Hey thanks for that But thinking on it, is't it supposed to be 7 peak to peak ie 3.5 to 3.5 making it 7 whereas mines 4.1 to 4.1 = 8.2 ? Now all i goto do is work out why i can't do more than a couple minutes unguided without squiggly lines with or without protrack on. Next couple nights maybe good so more testing.
Glad yours is sorted out now.

[frolinmod]

Marcus, the graph from TheSkyX that you posted clearly shows the maximums of the graph on each side to be +3 and -3 arc seconds respectively. Even if your mount's PE went full scale on each side, which it did not, its peak to peak would not exceed 6. Your mount's PE is just barely exceeding a peak to peak of 4. That's good. Now all you need to do is measure it again after programming the PEC to make sure your PE went down and didn't double instead.

[cventer]

Originally Posted by Mighty_oz

Hey thanks for that But thinking on it, is't it supposed to be 7 peak to peak ie 3.5 to 3.5 making it 7 whereas mines 4.1 to 4.1 = 8.2 ? Now all i goto do is work out why i can't do more than a couple minutes unguided without squiggly lines with or without protrack on. Next couple nights maybe good so more testing.
Glad yours is sorted out now.

No, Yours is +2.7 to -1.4 peak to peak. Ie 4.1 total PE.

Last night I tried PEC correction again and could not get it to have any impact. If I selected data on west it got worse by 2 - 3 arc sec but if I selected east it pretty much stayed the same.

I am thinking there is a software glitch with my version or combination of software.

[frolinmod]

Did you reboot your mount after programming the PEC?

[cventer]

Originally Posted by frolinmod

Did you reboot your mount after programming the PEC?

No i did not reboot. Instructons did not say I had to.

I assume you mean from TCS to choose reboot ? I notice there are 2 reboot options. One normal and one for index.

what is this reboot for index ?

[gregbradley]

Chris,

An oddity I noticed about PEC was I did a PEC curve and it seemed similar to my PME's. I uploaded it and its supposed to save it. Next time I turned on mount the PEC part of the menu says no PE data. I click the get button and a different much more stepped and jagged curve uploads.

I wonder if this part of the software is bugged. Its not what it looks like on my PME.

Its worth asking. I'll redo my PEC curve and the upload and reread the manual on this point and see how it goes.

Greg.

[cventer]

Just finished an automated 150 point T-Point run

Results below. 11 arc sec accuracy. Yeah baby. I am pretty happy with that. See evidence attached.

Also did another PE / PEC run an PE was showing as +2.5 to - 2.5 ie 5 peak to peak. Did not try PEC again tonight

[Mighty_oz (Marcus)]

Can u do me a favour Chris and try Protrack and say a 10 min unguided photo at F5 with the FSQ ?

Just redid my PE as well about 4 peak to peak so i'm stacked as well.
Also if u use the right cable for ST4 u can guide well too
Here's a 20 min guided photo of M47 as a test, it's a largish image so u can see the nice round stars, hehe.
Thanks all for the help

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by cventer

Just finished an automated 150 point T-Point run

Results below. 11 arc sec accuracy. Yeah baby. I am pretty happy with that. See evidence attached.

Also did another PE / PEC run an PE was showing as +2.5 to - 2.5 ie 5 peak to peak. Did not try PEC again tonight

That's impressive. Is this with the new worm SB sent you?

Greg.

[cventer]

Originally Posted by gregbradley

That's impressive. Is this with the new worm SB sent you?

Greg.

Yes Greg, but I dont think the new worm has much to do with the pointing accuracy just the PE. Tightening the camera, rings, adaptors, dovetail to mount, cables, pier etc... are all the things that improve the pointing accuracy.

[frolinmod]

I had my mount tripod standing atop a moving blanket that I had spread out over a concrete patio. Bad idea. Just removing the blanket made my pointing twice as good.

[gregbradley]

Originally Posted by cventer

Yes Greg, but I dont think the new worm has much to do with the pointing accuracy just the PE. Tightening the camera, rings, adaptors, dovetail to mount, cables, pier etc... are all the things that improve the pointing accuracy.

True. I was also referring to the PE. So that is good that SB sorted that out and you have the low PE you wanted and paid for.

Greg.

[cventer]

Just an update

Finaly got PEC working tonight. Very stable clear night so spent time getting 6 worm cycles.

Used latest version of pempro to generate my curve,. Loaded it into the MX and my PE with PEC is now +.4 / - .5 .

Less the 1 arc sec peak to Peak
Looks like you can believe the hype!!!!!

[gregbradley]

Wow, Chris. That's great. But it took Pempro to do it eh? The Bisque PEC does not work?

I am wondering about mine as I have been using it the last few nights. I see some erratic PE coming into the guiding that should not be there given the level of PA (I think) I have.

Also the curve that is in the mount does not appear to be the same way I recorded originally. I wonder if it alters the recorded curve when uploaded and there is a bug in that process.

Also with my PMX/Sky X I have to tell it to get the curve instead of it being there when I click on Bisque TCS like with my PME. That seems bugged as well.

I'll get a copy of Pempro and use that.

By the way the polar alignment tool in Pempro is the best I have used in any software apart from the much longer process with t-point.

So if you wanted to get a very close PA before you did the T-Point magic then that is a good way to get it done.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

Chris,

Per PEMPRO website PMX is supported but it says like the PME direct upload is not available to the mount.

Were you able to upload the PEMPRO PE curve into the PMX or do you have to load and play PEMPRO everytime you use the PMX and PEC?

I did a PEC on my PME using PEMPRO and it would not upload the curve even though it had a menu button to do that. I assumed at the time it was because I was using a trial version of PEMPRO and that the upload function was disabled as you really only have to do PEC once and the curve is valid for a long time.

Greg.

[cventer]

Greg,

There is no direct upload capability.

You use pempro to aquire the data after doing a mount calibration routine. It connects to skyx and ccdsoft, takes image. finds a star then aquires the data for as many worm cycles as you allow

It gathers data. Then you generate a PEC curve using highest order that keeps RMS from growing. i used quadtratic.

Once done there is a button that says"Create Paramount PEC file"

All this does is take the curve and copies it into memory and also notepad. Make sure you copy to notepad and save it in case you need it later.

You then go to bisque TCS in the skyX , clear current curve. Then click the paste button. It pastes the curve into tcs. You then choose save to mount and it updates the PEC table.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Chris,

Per PEMPRO website PMX is supported but it says like the PME direct upload is not available to the mount.

Were you able to upload the PEMPRO PE curve into the PMX or do you have to load and play PEMPRO everytime you use the PMX and PEC?

I did a PEC on my PME using PEMPRO and it would not upload the curve even though it had a menu button to do that. I assumed at the time it was because I was using a trial version of PEMPRO and that the upload function was disabled as you really only have to do PEC once and the curve is valid for a long time.

Greg.