PulseGuiding on NexstarSE

[Carlos Schmitt]

Hello there, first sorry for my english, I am from Brazil.

I have a Nexstar 4/5 SE mount and I would love to autoguide it.

Turns out I too am having trouble with the "PulseGuide command to mount has failed - guiding is likely to be ineffective" alert.

But in my case NOTHING ever happens with the mount in terms of movement. 

In my ASCOM, I can control it very well, connecting the PC to the bottom of the hand control.

I tried it in Alt Az mode and also in Equatorial (south) mode. 

Tried before and after aligning it.

Tried automatic and Manual guiding.

I can only see "PulseGuide command to mount has failed - guiding is likely to be ineffective"

I have just recreated the error, with just the mount connected, and tried to manualy guide it.

I left the cammera off (asi120mc-s) to simplify things.

I clicked several times north, 3 times west, 3 times East, 3 times South, and once more on North.

The last command (to north) we can see at: 20:03:23.251

I am attaching both the logs, from PHD and from ASCOM.

Thanks in advance!

[carlos schmitt]

Just an update, I have read somewere that the win10 and its updates make it not work sometimes, so I followed this guys () and changed the info on register of windows.

The message does not show anymore o.O

but I THINK the mount is still not moving.

Anyway, here are the logs from my latest tests, AFTER messing with the register on windows.

Please look at 21:49:33.229, when I hit the first try on the manual align window.

Thanks again in advance!

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Carlos H. Schmitt   /   @Carlos1818

[carlos schmitt]

This guys: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/604521-explaining-why-win-10-security-update-kb4056892-breaks-ascom-drivers/#entry8326802

[bw_msgboard]

Hi Carlos, sorry you’re having trouble.  From the PHD2 perspective, the problem is that a pulse-guide command never completes.  This is determined by sending the pulse-guide command, then polling the IsGuiding property until it is reported as false.  That apparently never happens in your case – the IsGuiding property appears to stay ‘true’ until PHD2 eventually times out and sends the alert message.  So this is a problem in either POTH or the ASCOM driver for Celestron.  The Celestron driver log shows the same behavior – IsGuiding staying ‘true’ – so that might point to a problem with the mount firmware or an incompatibility between the Celestron ASCOM driver and your particular mount.  

 

Going forward, I would recommend that you simplify the situation by not using POTH.  With most modern mounts, POTH isn’t required and it may be introducing complications in your case.  Just connect directly from PHD2 to the Celestron mount driver.  If you continue to see the problem, you’ll know it’s in the Celestron driver, the way you’ve established the physical connection from the PC to the mount, or perhaps a mount firmware incompatibility.  The Celestron ASCOM driver is heavily used, so I’d be surprised it the problem was really there – assuming you’re running the current version of that driver and assuming it does support the particular Celestron mount and mount firmware level you have.  

 

With regard to the Cloudy Nights message, I think this is now obsolete information.  You have to be careful with this stuff, it is always specific to a particular time and context.  The original problems that arose from the Microsoft update were fixed by later MS updates, so I think most people are able to install and run ASCOM drivers on their Win10 systems without any special effort.  You do have to be running with all the Win10 updates, and you might have to re-install an ASCOM driver if it was installed prior to the original problem.  That said, you probably haven’t done any damage by changing the Registry assuming you did it correctly.  So I think your problem now is more basic, and removing POTH as the next step should help to figure out what’s broken.

 

We have a number of Celestron users and experts on this forum, so they may be able to add more specific advice.

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

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[Carlos Schmitt]

First of all, thanks for the detailed answer!

To my changes:

I uninstalled all ascom and ascom drivers, re-dowloaded it, and reinstalled. But prior to that, I made sure all windows updates were also installed.

Then I opened PHD. Connected to the driver directly (not POTH) and all were the same as before. No movement, I even opened the camera this time to see if the image moved just a little, but no.

The message didnt pop up, but I later found out that maybe I had clicked in "do not show anymore". I reset the messages and now it pops up again.

I am reluctant to believe that it may be hardware, because alot of other thinks works.

I am also thinking that my mount is capable of doing this because the config on ascom says [can pulseguide - true]. Although I have had trouble finding people that have this thing working.

Please help me with this little doughts:

- If I can move my mount in ascom software, does it mean that there is no chance that I have a problem with the cable OR the usb adaptor?

- Do pulseguide command travel in a diferent wire on the cable, than the move (slew) commands?

- Do I need to always perform equatorial align prior to the PHD testing?

[bw_msgboard]

Hi Carlos.  Before I answer your questions below, I’ll try to be a little more specific about where I think the problem lies.  I think the mount firmware is not behaving the way it should.  You must do an initialization and alignment of the scope so it’s completely ready to go in equatorial mode – otherwise, I think the testing is questionable.  If we go back to the ASCOM log you sent, we see this all the time when a pulse-guide command is issued:

 

20:02:42.274 PulseGuide                direction guideNorth, duration 5000, type AuxGuide

20:02:42.274 SendMessageCounted        send P[01][11]G[00][00][00][01], expect 2

20:02:42.306 SendMessageCounted         received [01]#

20:02:42.306 GetGuideRate              rate 1.63206039709043E-05, 0% sidereal

20:02:42.306 GuideRateRa               get 1.63206039709043E-05, count 0

20:02:42.306 AuxGuide                  Mc Guide, axis axisSecondary, rate 0, counts 500

20:02:42.306 SendMessageCounted        send P[03][11]&[00][FF][00][00], expect 1

20:02:42.337 SendMessageCounted         received #

20:02:42.464 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:42.464 SlewState                 update, count 1

20:02:42.464 Slewing                   state noSlew = False

20:02:42.464 SendMessageTerminated     send e

20:02:42.527 SendMessageTerminated      received C6AD9F00,1B96FB00#

20:02:42.527 GetRaDec                  Ra 18.626081943512, Dec 38.7981104850769

20:02:42.527 GetRaDec                  update, count 0

20:02:43.470 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

------------- Same behavior for the next 5 seconds…

20:02:48.857 SendMessageCounted        send P[02][11]'[00][00][00][01], expect 2

20:02:48.857 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:48.890 SendMessageCounted         received [01]#

20:02:48.907 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:48.938 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:48.970 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.016 SendMessageCounted        send P[02][11]'[00][00][00][01], expect 2

20:02:49.016 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.048 SendMessageCounted         received [01]#

20:02:49.064 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.095 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.126 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.157 SendMessageCounted        send P[02][11]'[00][00][00][01], expect 2

20:02:49.157 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.191 SendMessageCounted         received [01]#

20:02:49.191 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.222 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.254 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.288 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

20:02:49.288 IsGuiding                 isGuiding (False || True) = True

In this case, the PulseGuide command was for 5 seconds – so it should have completed in a bit over 5 seconds.  This is signaled by a return of ‘false’ for isGuiding.  As you can see, that never happens.  One thing I see here (shown in red) is that the mount seems to be set for a guide rate of 0x sidereal – this is probably not good!  

So this has nothing to do with PHD2, it’s a problem between the ASCOM driver and the mount firmware.  I think you should send this to Celestron and ask them to explain what’s going on.  As I said earlier, I would definitely question whether the firmware in the mount is current and working correctly and whether the mount is initialized properly for doing guiding.

 

Now to come back to your questions.  First, pulse-guide commands are fundamentally different than slew commands. All of the ASCOM commands pass over the serial link in the same way, with software at each end that issues ASCII-character sequences and interprets them on the receiving end.   But in most cases, PHD2 is the only app you have that knows how to do pulse-guiding, which often leads people to think that PHD2 is the problem.  Please don’t make that mistake. J   If you can use ASCOM to slew the mount around, that tells you a lot: the physical connection is fine, the serial-usb cable is probably ok, the port assignment is correct, etc.  However, if the mount isn’t correctly initialized, it may respond to slew commands but not to pulse-guide commands – I don’t know how your mount reacts in that case.

 

So this is why I think you should get in touch with Celestron and ask them to explain the detailed problem shown above. 

 

Good luck,

Bruce

 

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[David Majors]

Carlos:

I have a few comments about the SE mount.  I currently use the 8" SE for visual as well as both DSLR photometry (I'm an AAVSO nerd) and astrophotography. Bear with me if a lot of this covers things you already know. Everything here I had to learn the hard way. 

First- you need to make sure you are using the latest firmware -i.e both the mount and hand control.

There is a lot of information on this and many other peculiarities of the SE mount at Mike Swanson's Nexstar site. You will find this site vastly superior to the Celestron one- simply because Mike's site is designed for us users. 

https://www.nexstarsite.com/

   You also need to make sure you are using the latest ASCOM version and driver. I ran into inconsistent communications issues with a previous Celestron driver. I am currently using ASCOM v 6.1 with the Celestron Telescope Driver on Windows 10. I was never quite sure whether the problem was with the ASCOM platform and driver or with the mount and hand control firmware. But upgrading all solved the problem.

   I have also had to replace the USB-USB mini cable more than once. I'm not sure how old your set-up is or whether your cable is a USB with a USB/Serial adapter or the current straight USB-USB mini type. I would suggest you get a more robust cable. It will be stiffer so you have to be careful in routing to avoid dragging. II also found it necessary for to use an amplified USB cable extender if the run exceeds 15 ft. 

   While it doesn't look from your post that you have reached this point yet I'm including the rest anyway just to give you a head's up. 

For the mount itself. The SE was designed around visual work. The lack of clutch releases means that you will simply not be able to properly field balance the scope and will damage the RA gears if you try. I had to determine my balance points for my various configurations on the table top and found I needed a counterweight forward of the fork for balancing. And with the single fork arm you will simply not be able to balance it across the arm at all. Because of the way the forces act at various angles I constantly fine tune by moving the counterweight slightly. 

   The SE mount and tripod is very light and uses spur gears rather than worms.  By PHD2 standards the backlash is extreme. At motor speed 2 (1x sidereal) the time to clear backlash exceeds 10 seconds. Guiding Assistant has not once been able to measure backlash  because the mount never moves south at all before GA hits it's limit. Consequently when you set up your framing for your image you need to set it so that you can run the decl motor north for  20 seconds before you perform calibration.  You will also need to set it to do decl corrections in one direction only. 

When you align the mount I would suggest that you first do two full Celestron polar alignment cycles-i.e do a 2-star alignment followed by a polar align. Follow that up with another 2-star align and polar align followed by another 2-star align. My experience is that you can get pretty good alignment this way in a short time. PHD2 Guiding Assistant will tell you if you need to do a better alignment. I rarely need to do so using the above procedure.  If my guiding indicates the need I use the PHD2 Drift Polar align tool  followed by one more 2-star align. Needless to say- most of this complication goes away if you have a permanent mount. 

Performance. My experience indicates that without guiding and with everything balanced as well as possible -I can expect to throw out 30 percent of images at 30 sec, up to 60 percent at one minute and  2 minutes is an exercise in futility.   With PHD2 guiding  I can extend my exposure time to 2 minutes with 40-50 percent rejection of images. The limit here is not PHD2 but the mechanicals in the mount-especially the small spur gears on fairly long motor shafts. For dimmer objects there will simply be no option but to increase the ISO setting to compensate.

This post may read like I think the SE mount is a piece of garbage. That is not the case. I can't tell you how often I have gone from dusk to dawn with this. And go to bed in a happy but exhausted state.   I simply recognize that I am using it for things it was not really designed to do. After all -not all of us can afford a dream Losmandy G-11 GEM on a permanent pier. We use what we have and strive to get the most out of it. I have gotten some outstanding images with my set-up. You just have to understand that you will have to put a lot of effort into this. 

[bw_msgboard]

Hi Dave.  Thanks for posting this, it’s really very helpful.  It’s probably the best kind of advice – suggestions from someone with the same gear who has learned how it works and has managed to get the best performance it’s capable of.  The PHD2 developers generally can’t do that unless the gear in question happens to be something we own personally.

 

Thanks again,

Bruce

 

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From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Majors

Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2018 2:00 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding

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[Andy Galasso]

Thank for the info, David.  I added a link to your post to the Celestron Mount Info section of the PHD2 Wiki.

Andy

[carlos schmitt]

To all, thank you for trying! I used this couple of days to try what you said, but I remain at the same spot.

- I have already updated my mount and my HandRemote +, but I double checked it to be sure.

- I am using latest ASCOM version (6.4)

- I am using latest Celestron Telescope Driver

- I am using latest PHD version (also tried the one that came today)

- I updated windows 10.

- I tried on 2 different computers

My cable is an RJ on the bottom of hand controler, to serial, attached on a serial to USB conector. It is still the same, but again, it is communicating well.

The message is still the same, PulseGuide command to mount has failed

I am really questioning myself if indeed Nexstar 4/5 SE mounts are capable of autoguiding, since I cannot find this information anywere.

If I read any other advices on this thread I will sure try and post results, but for now I am giving up.

I will follow David´s tips and will continue to use the mount without guiding, crossing fingers not to waste to many nights trying this also :P

On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 5:15 PM Andy Galasso <andy.g...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank for the info, David.  I added a link to your post to the Celestron Mount Info section of the PHD2 Wiki.

Andy

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[Brian Valente]

Hi Carlos

 

I think I’m late to the game here so I apologize if you’ve already covered this, but have you tried st-4 type connection for guiding? I would be surprised a mount like yours would support pulse guiding

 

I googled some but didn’t find any details regarding pulse guiding

 

Brian

 

portfolio https://www.brianvalentephotography.com/

 

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of carlos schmitt

Sent: Wednesday, September 5, 2018 2:38 PM
To: open-phd...@googlegroups.com

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[carlos schmitt]

Thank you for your email Brian, 

Unfortunatly my mount does not have an ST4 port, I think only the SE 8 or above have one :P

[David Majors]

Carlos:

   I noticed that you mentioned you were using a RJ serial connector - indicative of an earlier model SE. PHD2 should be capable of communicating with the port on the hand control as it is functionally the same as the Celestron Aux port. Unfortunately however many stock RJ-22 to RS-232 serial adapters will simply not work properly on not the Celestron telescopes. You do need to make sure yours is certified to work on the Celestron Nexstar mounts. A number of manufacturers still make these. 

[carlos schmitt]

David, thanks for your email

I have a limited access to this kind of cables on the market, so I did it myself

here is a photo of it.

Maybe I could try to put my hands on a new one, but so far this one is moving the mount with ascom driver.

On Fri, Sep 7, 2018 at 1:11 AM David Majors <dave...@charter.net> wrote:

Carlos:

   I noticed that you mentioned you were using a RJ serial connector - indicative of an earlier model SE. PHD2 should be capable of communicating with the port on the hand control as it is functionally the same as the Celestron Aux port. Unfortunately however many stock RJ-22 to RS-232 serial adapters will simply not work properly on not the Celestron telescopes. You do need to make sure yours is certified to work on the Celestron Nexstar mounts. A number of manufacturers still make these. 

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[mj.w...@gmail.com]

Congratulations on getting control of your mount !

For completeness, please would you tell us what you have changed from your original no-working setup ?

Michael
Wiltshire UK

[carlos schmitt]

Hello Michael

As for today, I am still not beeing able to move it on PHD app.

I CAN move it from inside ASCOM app, pushing the direction buttons and also from inside Stellarium, setting a target and asking to slew to it.

Both this programs move the mount, but as far as I understand, they do not move it with PULSEGUIDE commands, wich is used by PHD.

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