ASCOM definitely has some advantages. 1 less cable is nice. Also you can save and restore your calibration data and PHD2 will automatically flip and dec scale according to your location. Which means I really only calibrate when I rotate the camera. Also I found on my mount that the pulse guiding results in overall rounder stars and better guiding (I tested this a while back).
Personally I don’t have any experience with the Paramount ME or TheSkyX. I think you still need TheSkyX to communicate with the mount and you’d use an ASCOM driver that would get routed through TheSkyX. But again I have no “real world” knowledge of this, just what I’ve heard.
No, I have the “old school” STL-11000 which has the build in guider behind the filters. I don’t generally guide this way because I mainly shoot narrowband and guiding behind a 3nm narrowband filter is as horrible as it sounds. I guide through an OAG and a Lodestar.
I’m contemplating selling my STL because of the cooling issues as well…it cools to within specs, but here in TX it gets hot.
I’m addicted to the massive FOV of the 11000 :-/ I haven’t decided what/if/when I’ll be picking up another camera. I used to have a Qhy9 that worked well and cooled very well. Thought about picking up a Qhy11. Unfortunately the upper echelon 11000 based cameras (FLI, SBIG, QSI, etc) are a little spendy for me!
They are pretty spendy. I do think that the STT borrowed the cooling from the high end cameras which is why it is so good. I have found with the small 5.4 pixels it allows me to go to a shorter focal length and maintain a decent FOV and sampling but have fewer tracking issues. The self guide wheel has the advantage of guiding in front of filters and I have yet to have problems finding a guidestar with my typical 5 second guide times.
I also came from an 11000M and also like the fact that optics are less critical for the smaller chip. I have a buddy that also made that switch (one of the guys contemplating SGP/PhD) and he says he likes the STT much better overall than the 11000M.
Just mounted the STi and guidescope so I can use that to compare behaviors.
OK, I just tried to connect PhD 2 via ASCOM as suggested. None of the options worked.
Error box one (yellow) appeared when I tried to calibrate using the Generic ASCOM hub
Error box two appeared when I tried to connect in PhD with:
TheSky controlled
ASCOM Dome
ASCOM Chooser
FocusMax Scope Hub
POTH
I will post this to PhD as well…
I am beginning to think that guide via ASCOM will not work on a Paramount ME. Can anyone enlighten me on this?
Finally, I just ran a sequence with the Sti and a guide scope guiding instead of the self-guide filter wheel on the main camera. There was no problem with the mount flipping and the guiding resumed properly. That seems to prove that this is a problem related to the way SGP/PhD are handling the optical arrangement of the SBIG self guide filter wheel and is not related to the connection or mount or other setup issues.
If the above is the case it would seem that in order for PhD/SGP to work with this camera/guider system, something would need to be done in PhD that would allow total user control of which guide axes flip after the mount flips. In other words allow the user to decide which axes to flip or not flip (neither, both, just RA, just Dec). This would seem a good idea to me as it would allow for any future optical arrangement to work by just ticking the appropriate boxes.
Perhaps using ASCOM interface to guide would have solved the issue as it is smarter than the cable, but as shown above, that will not work for it’s own set of reasons.
So I am stymied here. Unless anyone has something else I can try, I may have to reluctantly abandon SGP/PhD and go back to ACP. Yes, the guidescope with STi works for a flip, but does not guide as accurately due to a small amount of flexure. Why use a guidescope when the whole idea behind having the self-guide filter wheel is to allow better guiding and no flexure?
Of course there may still be something I am missing but for the life of me I cannot imagine what it might be. The difference in optics with this guider just makes sense in terms of the behavior I am seeing. The only way to know is
to find another SGP/PhD user with the same equipment who has it working. I would love to have them tell me how they did it if such a person exists!
The ASCOM driver needs to be the “TheSky Controlled Telescope” one and there is an option in it’s setup dialog to allow tracking. If that’s not set you will get the message about guiding not being supported.
I’m not sure about how everything is connected but I’d start really simple, just PhD using the ASCOM driver. You should be able to connect and use the manual guide buttons in PhD to check that guiding is working.
Then add things one at a time and check again. I guess that you need POTH to slave your dome so go PhD - POTH - TheSky.
I think that PhD2 can switch the guide directions after a meridian flip but the SideofPier property is only supported in TheSkyControlledTelescope for TheSkyX. There is a hidden option to turn this on. Hidden because I put it in as an experiment and never heard back if it worked.
The ASCOM driver needs to be the “TheSky Controlled Telescope” one and there is an option in it’s setup dialog to allow tracking. If that’s not set you will get the message about guiding not being supported.
Wow, I don’t know how I missed that, I have been to that dialog a hundred times, recently to uncheck “inhibit synch”! Just never saw the last two checkboxes, I guess. I assume you also need to check “Enable Offset Tracking” since “Enable Pulseguide” is greyed out until you do.
I’m not sure about how everything is connected but I’d start really simple, just PhD using the ASCOM driver. You should be able to connect and use the manual guide buttons in PhD to check that guiding is working.Then add things one at a time and check again. I guess that you need POTH to slave your dome so go PhD - POTH - TheSky.
Just to clarify that, you would use “Generic Hub (ASCOM)” in PhD and POTH in SGP under [Other] - [Dome Options] (and in my case select “Maxdome II” within POTH as my roll-off uses a Maxdome board). Or would you suggest POTH for both dome and PhD (and for that matter SGP under “Telescope” - see last question below)?
I think that PhD2 can switch the guide directions after a meridian flip but the SideofPier property is only supported in TheSkyControlledTelescope for TheSkyX. There is a hidden option to turn this on. Hidden because I put it in as an experiment and never heard back if it worked.
It did. I recall that as one of the early issues I dealt with last year and had to activate that property order to get the Paramount working with SGP. It did eliminate the (sorry Dave, I can’t do that) message so I assume it is correctly reporting pier side (I hope). I just went in to ASCOM profile explorer and verified that CanGetPierSide (I assume you meant that) is still indeed set to “true”.
I just tried all of the above and connections worked fine.
One final question.
Does the “Telescope” selected in SGP have to match the mount selected in PhD?
Using one driver set for the example below:
Option #1:
a) Go straight to TheSkyControlledTelescope in SGP.
b) PhD has Generic Hub (ASCOM) with TheSkyControlledTelescope selected under that.
Option #2
a) SGP has Generic Hub (ASCOM) with TheSkyControlledTelescope selected under that.
b) PhD has Generic Hub (ASCOM) with TheSkyControlledTelescope selected under that.
Or does it matter?
In any case thanks for the help and I will try all of this on a crossing meridian object tonite. I suspect if this works for the guiding before flip but not for the guiding after flip then the “bad guiding after flip with STT self-guide” issue is truly is not solvable without some programmatic modifications and is probably due to the unusual optics. I will hope that it does fix the issue but Murphy seems to have taken up residence so am not optimistic about that.
POTH or Generic Hub for everything. AIUI trying to control things from two drivers at the same time won’t work. It is possible that more than one device could use TheSky Controlled Telescope at the same time but I’ve not tried it.
Yes, you need to enable tracking offsets as well because that’s how PulseGuide works. People with SB mounts would prefer an interface to the guide functions but they aren’t available for non SB mounts and the tracking offsets seem to be more universal.
I don’t think there’s more I can do. I don’t have a SB mount and the only use I have for TSX is for testing. There’s a limit to the amount of free support I’m prepared to provide for SB.
POTH or Generic Hub for everything. AIUI trying to control things from two drivers at the same time won’t work. It is possible that more than one device could use TheSky Controlled Telescope at the same time but I’ve not tried it.
Makes sense. I will start with POTH as I trust Jon Brewster’s stuff - he used to be my astronomy friend’s boss at HP and has a lot of both astronomy and SW knowledge.
Yes, you need to enable tracking offsets as well because that’s how PulseGuide works. People with SB mounts would prefer an interface to the guide functions but they aren’t available for non SB mounts and the tracking offsets seem to be more universal.
What I figured.
I don’t think there’s more I can do. I don’t have a SB mount and the only use I have for TSX is for testing. There’s a limit to the amount of free support I’m prepared to provide for SB.
You have helped a lot already. It is now a matter of seeing if the guiding after flip works properly. I suspect the guiding via ASCOM should be fine now, at least pre-flip. Weather looks OK so I should know about the flip/guide issue by tomorrow.
OK, It is now working. I was able to use the generic ASCOM hub for telescope and PhD and POTH just for the roof. It has now flipped and made a dozen or so corrections in each axis so I am confident it is now working. “Flip DEC” was selected in PhD, FYI. The roof is still not working with SGP but that is another and smaller issue so I will start a new thread for that.
The bottom line is one MUST use ASCOM guiding and not the relays and guide cable if you are using an SBIG STT with the self guiding filter wheel and SGP/PhD (at least if you need it to guide correctly after a flip). I hope this post can prevent others from having this issue.
It may well be that others have used the same camera setup with SGP (really PhD but you need that for SGP) but never knew about the issue because they just happened to use ASCOM pulse guiding by default and never even tried the relay/cable interface. Since I have been taking CCD images since 1993 and it was all-cable-all-the-time in the early days, I am used to the guide cable and relays and have one permanently wired into the Paramount. I have always used the cable.
Thanks to everyone for their help. Now on to dealing with the roof issue and taking actual images…