Using PHD2 with CCD Autopilot

[Bruce Waddington]

I've uploaded a new PHD2_Broker package that lets you use PHD2 with the latest CCD Autopilot automation package (v 5.09.8 or later).  You can manage your imaging sessions with CCD Autopilot while letting PHD2 handle guiding and dithering in a coordinated way.  Details are provided in the help document that’s part of the Broker package. 

I'm also fairly confident it will work with CCD Commander although that hasn't been field-tested.  If that is something you're interested in, let me know and I'll provide some instructions for how to give it a try.

The package can be obtained from the PHD2 web site - just follow the latest news link on our home page: http://openphdguiding.org/

Have fun,
Bruce

[Donghun Kim]

Hi Bruce

I tried PHD2 Broker package last night with CCDAP 5 and everything worked great.

Thank you very much for developing this.

Donghun

[bw_msgboard]

Glad to hear it!  Thanks a lot for reporting back.

 

Bruce

 

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[Donghun Kim]

You should set 'realign to target frequency' option in the guiding/unguided operation tab in CCDAP to 0 minutes to turn off that feature.

The default value is 30 minutes.

I should've done that but I missed this so CCDAP kept trying to reslew to the target after 30 minutes while PHD2 kept trying to guide.

I was puzzled for a while and I realized that realign feature was causing that problem.

Bruce I think that this should be part of the manual.

Other than that the combination has been working great for me last 3 nights.

Cheers.

Donghun

[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Donghun, thanks for reporting this problem, it's not something I knew about.  I suspect there may be a problem in CCDap where it's not firing the "stop_slew" operation for the target re-slew.  But I will need to see the log files to really know what's going on, so could you please send them to me.  I'll need the CCD Autopilot session log and the PHD_Broker log, both of which should be located in their respective folders in "My Documents."

 

Thanks,

Bruce

 

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[Donghun Kim]

Hi Bruce

The logs are here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1jwdjn0tewfzgx3/Broker_Server_08232016_225313_log.txt?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rnbnb30nc64g4ld/ccdap20160823_232236.log?dl=0

You can see the realigning in CCDAP log

00:01:10 Realigning scope to target...

However I think there is no need to re-align the mount while I'm using PHD2.

This feature is for unguided sessions.

[Bruce Waddington]

Yes, you shouldn't be doing the periodic re-alignment.  As you say, that's for completely unguided operation in CCDap and you don't want to do that for the same reason you don't specify dithering on that same config tab.  I'll update the documentation in the broker package to make this explicit.

 

Thanks,

[Kristian Schlanbusch]

Hi

I tried a few image runs with PHD2 and CCDAP and normal operation worked well, but when CCDAP was performing a meridian flip, PHD2 didn't stop guiding, and after the flip was done, PHD2 still was looking for the missing guide star and was not able to start guiding as even I rotate camera 180° on flips, the star was not in the same pixels.

So is this a phenomena in my setup/settings or will not CCDAP stop PHD2 guiding during a flip, for then to start guiding with new guide star after the flip is done?

Is there anyone that managed this?
I went back to Maxim guiding when I use CCDAP as this works well during meridian flips...

Clear skies

Kristian

[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Kristian.  Meridian flips were one of the main things that were tested with this set-up and they work well AFAIK.  Could you please send me both the CCDap session log and the PHD_Broker log so I can see what went wrong for you.  They are located in their respective folders in 'My Documents."  I'll also need to know the approximate time when you did the meridian flip.

 

Do you have an automated rotator on your set-up?  That's a possible point of difference from other users.  Meridian flips should behave the same as any other kind of slews, all assuming you have the post/pre slew events configured in CCDap:

 

 

It sounds like CCDap isn't calling the slew-start script for some reason.  Does it work correctly for you when you CCDap does other kinds of slewing, for example to switch targets?

 

Bruce

 

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From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kristian Schlanbusch
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 6:59 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Cc: deepbl...@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [open-phd-guiding] Re: Using PHD2 with CCD Autopilot

 

Hi

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