23rd September 2019, Derbyshire, UK
This will hopefully be the final part to this saga. My quest was a noble one but fraught with danger.
At the end of Part 2b I was to use the INDIGO platform to run my Altair guiding camera which should enable that to be seen by PHD2 (as Altair cameras are not yet natively supported on Mac with PHD2 v2.6.6).
This was indeed the case and everything connected fine, but again, it was when I came to run this as a system that problems occurred. These were:
• Camera being “dropped” - had to manually connect PHD2 to camera again which sometimes locked PHD2 - having to issue the Kill command to be able to re-run it.
• PHD2 - the slider near the brain symbol does not work so the on-screen gain cannot be altered making it very hard to focus and then acquire a guide star.
Now, I do not know if these were INDIGO issues or PHD2 issues alone or a combination of both, but after a couple of nights it became clear that this was not a workable or mature enough system to be stable enough to use.
So, ditch the Mac! Get a Windows PC! - Well almost.
I decided to install Oracle VM Virtual box with Windows 10 Home simply to run PHD2.
After the Windows install and it’s many updates I then installed PHD2 and the ASCOM platform with drivers.
IMPORTANT NOTE You need to enable the USB “ports” via the USB settings in Virtual Box for your guide camera and mount (connect cables first for them to show up - see below).
Now let’s talk cables. To cut a long story short, I had to ditch the ST4 cable as it had spat the dummy out of the crib so to speak. I kept getting problems with PHD2 trying to push the DEC axis and getting no response, and then saying the guide star had not moved, failing the guiding!
Guiding direct with ASCOM worked fine.
So the cables are connected as follows:
• Computer to guide camera (via USB A-B cable)
• Computer to mount (via USB A-B cable to SynScan hand controller) NO PC DIRECT MODE!
So, to conclude.
At the time of writing, I am not saying that auto guiding will never work solely on a Mac, BUT, from the perspective of your run-of-the-mill astrophotographer who doesn’t want to waste precious imaging time troubleshooting software issues, the Windows option is the best so far.
Clear Skies.
MJ.
SynScan Driver Versions
• Hand Controller - 4.39.05
• Mount Controllers - 2.04
http://skywatcher.com/download/software/
Software to install
• ASCOM Platform (v 6.4SP1)
-- Needs .NET3.5 and installs some C++ distributes
https://ascom-standards.org/
• Driver for mount
https://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/ScopeDrivers.htm
• PHD2 Guiding (v2.6.6)
-- Connects via ASCOM driver to SkyWatcher HEQ5 PRO mount
-- Natively connects to Altair guide camera (from v2.6.6)
(Camera: Altair | Mount: ASCOM | Aux: None)
https://openphdguiding.org/
This will hopefully be the final part to this saga. My quest was a noble one but fraught with danger.
At the end of Part 2b I was to use the INDIGO platform to run my Altair guiding camera which should enable that to be seen by PHD2 (as Altair cameras are not yet natively supported on Mac with PHD2 v2.6.6).
This was indeed the case and everything connected fine, but again, it was when I came to run this as a system that problems occurred. These were:
• Camera being “dropped” - had to manually connect PHD2 to camera again which sometimes locked PHD2 - having to issue the Kill command to be able to re-run it.
• PHD2 - the slider near the brain symbol does not work so the on-screen gain cannot be altered making it very hard to focus and then acquire a guide star.
Now, I do not know if these were INDIGO issues or PHD2 issues alone or a combination of both, but after a couple of nights it became clear that this was not a workable or mature enough system to be stable enough to use.
So, ditch the Mac! Get a Windows PC! - Well almost.
I decided to install Oracle VM Virtual box with Windows 10 Home simply to run PHD2.
After the Windows install and it’s many updates I then installed PHD2 and the ASCOM platform with drivers.
IMPORTANT NOTE You need to enable the USB “ports” via the USB settings in Virtual Box for your guide camera and mount (connect cables first for them to show up - see below).
Now let’s talk cables. To cut a long story short, I had to ditch the ST4 cable as it had spat the dummy out of the crib so to speak. I kept getting problems with PHD2 trying to push the DEC axis and getting no response, and then saying the guide star had not moved, failing the guiding!
Guiding direct with ASCOM worked fine.
So the cables are connected as follows:
• Computer to guide camera (via USB A-B cable)
• Computer to mount (via USB A-B cable to SynScan hand controller) NO PC DIRECT MODE!
So, to conclude.
At the time of writing, I am not saying that auto guiding will never work solely on a Mac, BUT, from the perspective of your run-of-the-mill astrophotographer who doesn’t want to waste precious imaging time troubleshooting software issues, the Windows option is the best so far.
Clear Skies.
MJ.
SynScan Driver Versions
• Hand Controller - 4.39.05
• Mount Controllers - 2.04
http://skywatcher.com/download/software/
Software to install
• ASCOM Platform (v 6.4SP1)
-- Needs .NET3.5 and installs some C++ distributes
https://ascom-standards.org/
• Driver for mount
https://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/ScopeDrivers.htm
• PHD2 Guiding (v2.6.6)
-- Connects via ASCOM driver to SkyWatcher HEQ5 PRO mount
-- Natively connects to Altair guide camera (from v2.6.6)
(Camera: Altair | Mount: ASCOM | Aux: None)
https://openphdguiding.org/
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