TheSkyX/PHD2 not guiding after Meridian Flip

[Julian O'Leary]

Hi All,

I have using PHD2 (2.6.11), SGP (4.1.0.882), and The SkyX (10.5.0 build 13339)  with my Paramount MX+ for many years now. Everything has worked great until Saturday night and all of a sudden I can't guide when the scope flips across the Meridian.  Its been failing with SGP so I've tried just with the SkyX (64bit) and PHD2, pointing the scope to a target EAST and guiding, then charging target and pointing West and guiding, it will only guide in Dec on the side I calibrated on.  I have reverse Dec output after meridian flip unchecked , as per various posts/websites.  Uninstalled and reinstalled various bits of software but nothing makes a difference.   Any help greatly appreciated, I am currently picking targets that won't flip through my imaging session, so a few late nights recently!

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_AmRN.zip

thank you

[Brian Valente]

Hi Julian

Have you tried the Calibrate Meridian Flip tool under Tools menu?

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[Brian Valente]

Looking at your guidelog, there are corrections in both RA and Dec on both sides of the pier

It's too little guiding data to really know what's going on, only a few minutes/seconds

So I don't know if you really need the calibate meridian tool at this point, but if you would like a more in depth review of your guidelog, please consider doing a baseline guide log that includes a calibration run - follow these steps:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zrf0au7jaisvt85/How%20to%20create%20a%20baseline%20for%20guiding%20results%20using%20OpenPHD2.pdf?dl=0

Brian

On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 1:09 PM Julian O'Leary <julian...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Julian O'Leary]

thanks for the quick response Brian, the clouds have just rolled in however whilst I wait for them to clear, I've uploaded the log file from Friday and Saturday night (sorry started happening on Friday night).  The sky was crystal clear but you can see that after it meridian flipped at around 01:10 both night, the logs show West going to East, but it then goes horrible wrong.  When you watch, PHD2 starts correcting and moves it out of the star profile window pretty quickly.

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_Afgx.zip

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_Vr2A.zip

thanks very much

Julian

[Brian Valente]

okay - can you try the calibrate meridian flip tool?

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[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Julian.  I think you're confused about what's happening - the problem is in Dec, nothing to do with RA.  As Brian said, this looks the flip-Dec setting is wrong so you should get that sorted out.  As i recall, TheSkyX is one of the drivers that needs to have this flip-Dec setting turned on so I don't think there are really any surprises here.

Good luck,

Bruce

[Tony Cooper]

This is quite interesting. I have used a Paramount for years and known that the ASCOM driver does not report the side of the pier. That means manual reversal of the calibration after a flip.

Are you telling me that the meridian flip calibration tool can fix this? The manual doesn't really say much about the tool.

Cheers

Tony

[bw_m...@earthlink.net]

Well, what you’ve “known” all along isn’t really true.  If you use TheSky ASCOM plug-in and configure it correctly, the driver reports side-of-pier very nicely. 

 

 

It has nothing to do with the PHD2 meridian flip tool.

 

Bruce

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[Brian Valente]

a little more info on TSX settings for PHD:

https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/SkyX-Settings

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[Tony Cooper]

Thanks for the advice. I'll check that out next time I'm at the (remote) observatory. I suspect that we have the old driver:

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[Tony Cooper]

The fix worked. PHD2 now recognises the pier side.

Want to know something funny? Somehow, before I accessed the dialog, the "Use DirectGuide" setting became unticked. I didn't notice it. So this is what I got when I went to calibrate the guide camera. I guess that when the PHD2 developers say something is important it really is.