What guiding software do you use?

[peter_4059 (Peter)]

Jase,

Thanks for the PDF article - very interesting reading.

[Terry B]

I have done the opposite of the suggestion in the poll.
I started with PHD, found it crashed lots, tried guidemaster and like it. I then tried PHD again but still found it unstable compared to guidemaster and have gone back to guidemaster.
It gives me much easier control and never crashed whilst I find that PHD will freeze regularly

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by RobF

Yep. I still reckon Guidemaster has more control and better displays for feedback on tracking etc. Phd is so good and so many people happy with it don't want to bag it though....

As I use the (original) Orion Deep Space Star Shooter (ODSSS) as my guide camera, unfortunately I can’t use Guidemaster or Metaguide, although I did try Metaguide recently with my DMK21AF04.AS and it worked fine.

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by Terry B

I have done the opposite of the suggestion in the poll.
I started with PHD, found it crashed lots, tried guidemaster and like it. I then tried PHD again but still found it unstable compared to guidemaster and have gone back to guidemaster.
It gives me much easier control and never crashed whilst I find that PHD will freeze regularly

PHD has always been stable with my (original) Orion Deep Space Star Shooter although when I have CCDSoft running for my SBIG ST7 as well as The Sky 6 Pro for controlling the mount, PHD appears to take quite some time to respond to e.g. simply dragging the PHD Window, or, stopping the auto guiding.

That’s on a 6 year old IBM ThinkPad R40 with Centrino 1.4G CPU and 512MB RAM.

Cheers

Dennis

PS – I know I should never write that PHD has always been stable. This rash act will undoubtedly cause it to crash the next time I use it!!!!

[Tandum (Robin)]

Originally Posted by Terry B

I have done the opposite of the suggestion in the poll.
I started with PHD, found it crashed lots, tried guidemaster and like it. I then tried PHD again but still found it unstable compared to guidemaster and have gone back to guidemaster.
It gives me much easier control and never crashed whilst I find that PHD will freeze regularly

I've never had this problem but a few people have said this, Doug(Hagar) being the last one I saw. His problems went away when he changed to another PC, go figure

[allan gould]

We are lucky that we have a great choice of programs with the added benefit that most are free. I guess it really comes down to using the program that works best with your combination of laptop, camera, and other peripherals. Big cheer for PhD and Guimaster.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I used to use K3CCDTools. Tried guidedog, guidemaster and most of the others. Unfortunately before the time of GPUSB so couldn't get most of them to talk to my guide emulator that I used with the Losmandy Digital Drive. I haven't tried them since geting the GPUSB, but now I use pHD pretty much exclusively unless I'm SBIGing then I use CCDSoft.

If I'm out in the field away from 240V I use my TV Guider. Even at home it's a toss up at times whether to use pHD or the TV Guider. pHD usually wins 'cos I've already got the laptop out and going connected to other gear. TV Guider is sweet to use though for a stand alone.

[leon]

PHD for me, so far, it has proved very effective and simple to use and hasn't let me down as yet.

Leon

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Wow. While I was expecting PHD to be a favourite among users, I wasn't expecting it to dominate so much - nearly 60% of users. And 40% of them have tried other software and switched back. Interesting.

Keep them votes and comments coming please!

[Bassnut (Fred)]

The main reason I use Maxum DL is it has a guideing error graph. Its been the single best tool in setting guiding parameters and stabilising guiding, allowing endless tweaking until it was just as best as I could get it (often under 2 arc secs RMS without PEC). Wouldve been impossible without it. Does PHD have an error graph?.

[allan gould]

Originally Posted by Bassnut

The main reason I use Maxum DL is it has a guideing error graph. Its been the single best tool in setting guiding parameters and stabilising guiding, allowing endless tweaking until it was just as best as I could get it (often under 2 arc secs RMS without PEC). Wouldve been impossible without it. Does PHD have an error graph?.

No but Guidemaster does as well as several features not in PhD

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

..., I wasn't expecting it to dominate so much - nearly 60% of users.

Verbatim from Stark Labs PHD Guiding webpage, (with my bold highlighting):

“The results are in from the 2007 AstroPhoto Insight survey run by SkyInsight and in the category of Guiding Software, there was a stand-out winner - PHD Guiding. Out of over 700 votes, PHD Guiding came in #1, beating the second most popular piece of software, the de facto standard Maxim DL, by over 50%. In fact, it did better than ACP, Astro IIDC, Equinox, Guide Dog, GuideMaster, K3CCDTools, Maxim Essentials, Maxim DSLR, and Meade Envisage... combined! I knew many people used PHD Guiding, but to say I was stunned at these results is an understatement on a grand scale. I wrote PHD Guiding to take the hassle out of accurate autoguiding and I give it away free as a way to help pay back the amateur community I've gotten so much from. With results like these, it's clear PHD Guiding has helped a lot of amateurs enjoy the hobby more and take better shots. Thank you all for helping make PHD Guiding what it is today.”

Cheers

Dennis

[g__day (Matthew)]

I've switched from PHD to MaximDL back to PHD so I have a few comments.

First I image at long focal lengths (2300mm) for say 10, 20 or 30 minute shots maximum. I use a Lumicon OAG into a Meade DSI II Pro Mono 2*2 binned. So by my calculations each pixel in PHD is 2.2 arc seconds and in my main DSLR each pixel is 0.7 arc seconds.

Yesterday I shot M16 and combined just over 3 hours of shots (7 shots) - in DeepSkyStacker and was interested in the stacking error to give me a sense of the guiding precision between frames. The errors in pixels (dx, dy) from the first shot were (-0.01, -0.30), (-0.76, 0.21), (0.15, 0.08), (-0.25, 0.19), (0.12, 0.18) and (0.18, -1.25). So read that back as I understand the stacking processes - over 3 hours using combinations of 10 to 30 minute shots the net tracking error was 0.35 arc seconds - which is pretty impressive!

I usually guide on 3 second shots, and I focused first the main camera (using a Bhatinov mask) then the OAG CCD (Bhatinov mask on Jupiter - works well)! I find that either MaximDL 4.5 or PHD 1.10.6 do an equivalent job judging by tracking error in the correction graphs. MaximDL is more sophisticated - PHD appears simpler to use.

With PHD (given you have a tight, bright but not over saturated star - so the centroid calculation is fine) - you still have to think through your controls carefully.

For instance how do you minimise seeing errors (think of this as a signal / noise challenge - balancing false positives (over-steering) vs false negative (under correcting) guide commands):

1. Take longer shots so each shot averages the seeing wobble (bloating stars slightly) or
2. Take shorter shots and lower the RA aggressiveness to the smallest value that will track well without over shooting (but takes longer to correct, minimising over corrections though).

You need to see how stars are jumping at your image scale to guess this one right.

PHD can see well down into sub pixel movements - reasonable case 0.10 pixels, best case 0.01 pixels accordng to Craig. But take my case where seeing pixel is 2.2 arc seconds (with only average seeing conditions). Do I really think trying to track with 0.22 or even 0.44 arc second precision is optimal and achievable - that may be over reaching. The higher I raise minimum distance before a pulse is sent - the more I will not send false positive guide commands causing yo-yoing due to seeing errors (but the more true errors I let in). You have to get a feel for this.

Next is Hystersis in RA - some nights I set the RA aggressiveness to 30%, hystersis to 40% and get great results. I think by the screen shots Craig did in a debug run 1.10.7 will have a RMS error tracking bar - this will help optimising setting PHD parameters. Note Craig often seems to debug PHD on very short focal length shots - so his tracking graph is a near perfect straight line - but not as good as mine < +/- 1 arc second traking error). If I set RA aggressiveness right down OSC index goes from about 0.45 down below 0.20 - but occassionally corrections get large - +/- 1.5 - 2 pixels. With it higher > 75% OSC Index is around .045 but errors tend to stay within +/- 1 pixel.

Guiding isn't too hard - guiding really well is very challenging. My guiding is now sub arc second (but I still think there is room for a bit more improvement). Having used PHD for 2 years now and watched it grow I am very fond of it. I love MaximDLs plug ins - Ijust haven't invested sufficient time to try and master it.

I wish all these guide programs had a really smart brain to analyse your set up and optimise their parameters. I am trying to discover how to optimise auto-guiding - but its more brute force then elegance at present.

As a suggestion - why not have a thread on how to optimise PHD - folk can try different parameter settings so we can get more data on to optimise the parameters.

As a hint do you turn on PHDs error longs and look at how it is deciding how and when to switch and how far to correct? Do you run PHD Analyser on the normal log to check for bias or over correction in your tracking runs?

From experience guiding programs require significant investment to tune to their full capabilites - but the results once you get there are impressive!

Matt

PS

Fred - both PHD and MaximDL having tracking graphs - I like MaximDL's better as there are seperate graphs for each axis, whereas PHD super-imposes the errors on the one graph. However PHDs error log is a grat idea - it shows you how PHDs brain is thinking at each step, whether it is thicking to switch direction (and why) so - so you can get alot of control over how it is performing and why.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

I use a QHY5 as a guider ( 12" Lx200, HEQ5pro) and AstroArt4.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Matthew - thanks for the very detailed explanation! I'll have to admit I have nowhere near the depth of understanding of PHD that you have, so will try to tinker with your suggestions next time I test it.

[citivolus (Ric)]

I unfortunately have to change my answer from Maxim DL to PHD, as Maxim does not work with the DMK 41 cameras. There is a third party written ASCOM driver in development, however all I get is a black image with that. TIS blames Maxim and states that the issue is out of their hands, and Difraction Limited have been silent on the issue.

I find it amusing that a free product has better compatibility than an expensive commercial one.

[multiweb (Marc)]

I have used PHD for years. That's the first and only program I ever used for guiding so I can't really compare. IMHO guiding is the icing on the cake. Doesn't matter what software you use. If your mount can't react exactly to guiding pulses because of mechanical limitations or can't track properly on its own for a reasonable amount of time there is no guiding program that's going to "correct it all" for you. I think over time people have become too reliant on auto-guiding and cut corners in setting up more and more often ...... myself included

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

PHD
It does crash on me at times. But that's probably due to the fact that my lappy is quite old.

[Robbie]

Yep PHD everything else I tried was a pain in the butt
PHD was so simple it made all others look lame.
Loaded it and never had any problems from then on.

[Bassnut (Fred)]

Robbies post was 27/11, yet shows as today, whats up mods?