ASI290MM Mini and PHD2 settings

[trist...@gmail.com]

I've been struggling to find the correct settings for my 290MM mini in PHD2. I've tried many different settings but haven't been too successful. I get the guide scope properly focused first with the provided zwo camera software. I can get an image but I have to drive the camera gain, in advanced settings, down to almost 0, have the screen brightness almost full right, and have exposures at 1 sec or less. Is this similar to what others are getting with this camera? I see most people recommend exposure settings of 2 - 4 secs so as not to get too many guide signals sent to the mount. Maybe the ASI290MM mini is too sensitive to have exposures that long even on the darkest night (doesn't seem right though).

tristarcapt

 

Posts: 1

Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2018 6:44 am

[Andy Galasso]

tristarcapt,

Are you trying to test in daylight, or are you testing at night with the mount tracking and the guide scope pointed at a star field?  For guiding and nighttime testing the default gain and 1-2 second exposures should work very well.

Andy

[Brian Valente]

I use the 290 mini all the time

 

My gain setting is around 50. I use an OAG. Works great and is a great camera for guiding – very sensitive

 

Are you mixing up camera gain with PHD2 gain, which is how to view the image?

 

 

Thanks

 

Brian

 

portfolio https://www.brianvalentephotography.com/

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[trist...@gmail.com]

Good question, I found out it pretty quick  was useless to try setting up during the day!  So this was at night.  I could get images with stars and was able to start guiding but due to the low exposure times it was sending a lot of corrections to the mount.  There was quite a bit of moonlight out though.  Could that have been the issue?

[trist...@gmail.com]

Glad to hear you have it working.  I am impressed with the camera and pretty sure I can get it working well for me too, once I figure out the right settings.  As to your question, I'm not sure.  The camera gain setting I was referring to was the one in PHD2 in advanced settings, under the camera tab.

I could get images and guide but due to the low exposure time was getting a lot of guide signals sent to the mount.  There was a lot of moonlight that night.  Maybe I should have set the time lapse up a bit to get a little longer gap sending guide signals?

Scott

[bw_msgboard]

Hi Scott.  Are you trying to guide with some bright naked eye star?  Using longer exposure times should just enable you to use faint stars in the field of view, the ones that you should be letting PHD2 auto-select.  And if you can’t see faint stars in the field, you probably aren’t focused sufficiently.  There’s a procedure in the help file for refining focus, it’s in the Tools section for the Star Profile tool. The gain setting you’re talking about, the one on the camera tab, is the correct one to be using.  Try setting it at 50 as Brian suggested.

 

You don’t want to go down the road of fooling with the time lapse parameter, that’s not where your problem lies.  Set the exposure time to 2 seconds, slew to some part of the Milky Way, and start looking for those faint stars. J

 

Good luck,

Bruce

 

 

 

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[trist...@gmail.com]

I'll try tonight (although the forecast looks a little iffy), thanks for the recommendations Bruce.

Scott

[trist...@gmail.com]

Was able to get a few hours in last night before the clouds shut me down. Short story is - I was able to get working very nicely. Long story is - I started a little after sunset just as Polaris was becoming visible. Fired up PHD2 plugged in the settings that were recommended and nothing but noise. Again, had to drive down the gain and exposure to get anything and it still wasn’t pretty. As it continued to get darker I could gradually increase the gain and exposure toward what was working for others. Once it was completely dark I could set the gain at 50 and exposure at 2 and get close to an image on the screen but still quite a bit of noise. Knew I was pretty close to focus but thought I’d tweak that a bit and see what happened. As a got closer to focus then noise began to disappear and was totally gone with many stars visible at focus, as I moved through focus noise again began to increase rapidly. Lessons learned: pretty dark and pretty close to focus just aren’t good enough! you need to be real dark and real close to focus, at least with my setup. Anyhow, once I got that figured out it worked perfectly.

Thanks for all the suggestions, they got me on the right track.

Scott

[Andy Galasso]

great, thanks for reporting back and letting us know.

[Brian Valente]

great to hear, nice work!

Brian

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Brian 

Brian Valente

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