EQ6R Pro PEC Training & Subsequent Guiding

[Christopher Miller]

I created a new profile in order to do a fresh calibration and then record a PEC curve using EQMOD.  Not sure if my process flow was in the correct order (or the correct actions) - but here are my steps from last night (as I recall them):

1. Calibration
2. Initial Run of Guiding Assistant for ~ 7 minutes
3. Applied Recommendations
4. Set EQMOD to record 9 worm cycles to create a PEC curve
5. Guided using recommended settings while PEC training
6. Applied PPEC to mount
7. Changed RA Guiding from Hysteresis to Predictive PEC & Ran Guiding Assistant
8. Applied Recommendations & started guiding again
9. Made a few tweaks to various settings trying to get the guiding to "behave"
10. Started questioning my process and ran calibration a few more times - wondering if I should have done that after the initial implementation of PPEC
11. Gave up & went to bed.....  :)

I appreciate if I can get some advice / guidance on if my process flow for this was correct or if I've either left out steps or need to do something differently.  The short of it is that I didn't feel like the PPEC implementation made a positive impact on my guiding - but I am also questioning if the output from EQMOD on that is best or if I should try creating the curve via PEMPro (though I'd prefer the free option of EQMOD).  I have included images of my PEC Curve from the EQMOD run both viewed in EQMOD & PEMPro in case that's helpful.

Perhaps I was changing too many things at once.  If there are specific steps I need to take to better establish a baseline (which was what I was trying to do with this process) - I'm happy to do so on my next clear night.  Thanks in advance for any help!

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_EPDZ.zip

[Christopher Miller]

Hardware / Software Specs

Mount: EQ6-R Pro
OTA:  William Optics GT71
Focuser:  ZWO EAF
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 2"x5
Guide Scope: William Optics 50mm UniGuide Scope 

Guide Camera: ZWO ASI 290MM mini
Software:  

• NINA 3.0 Nightly #064 
• PHD2 2.6.11dev6 
• ASCOM 6.6 SP2 (6.6.2.4195)
• EQMOD v2.00w

[Bruce Waddington]

Hi Chris, sorry for the slow response.  I suggest that you go about this a bit more methodically and do longer guiding sessions to analyze your results.  Each time you try to program a PEC curve - using whatever tool - you should be sure that the resultant curve actually improved the tracking.  As a general rule, I would say that PemPro is likely to produce a more accurate correction curve because it will analyze multiple worm periods and reject tracking errors that aren't truly mount-related.  Simple "playback" approaches that use guiding won't generally work as well.  You also want to be sure you're working under reasonable seeing conditions or at least seeing conditions that are typical for your site.  Again, using data over multiple worm cycles will help with that.  At each step, I would do a guided session of at least 15 minutes before trying to judge results.  The Guiding Assistant is useful in two ways for this kind of work.  For short, 2-minute runs, it will help to insure your min-moves are reasonable.  Beyond that, you would need to run the GA for at least one full worm period to see what the native RA tracking looks like after whatever step you've taken regarding PEC training.  All of that said, it looks to me like whatever training you did before 02:11 resulted in a good improvement.  Despite what the GA told you, I think you should revert to Resist-Switch in Dec guiding while you're still tuning things and disable PHD2 Dec backlash compensation.  You should also use the Dec guiding results as a rough assessment of seeing conditions - notice that in later guiding sessions, your RA and Dec RMS results were quite similar.  Assuming that nothing is loose or moving around in your guiding assembly, big Dec excursions are presumably the result of seeing or some other contributor outside of the mount.

Good luck,

Bruce

[Christopher Miller]

Thanks for that feedback!  I'll take these steps into account and try again on my next clear night to get things improved taking this into account.  

I've been thinking I may need to go ahead and make the investment in PemPro - so that certainly points me in that direction - more than worth it if it handles things more effectively.  I recently discovered the PECPrep EQMOD tool - but seems PemPro is likely the way to go.

Thanks again for the advice!  I'll report back after I've had some time to work through all the steps.

[Brian Valente]

Christopher - PEMPro has a long (60 day?) free trial period for full product, only limit is 30 mins max recording, which should get you at least a half dozen cycles

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Brian Valente

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[Christopher Miller]

For my EQ6R Pro the worm cycle is 8 minutes - so the trial will get me 3.76 cycles in the 30-minute period.  Would this be enough?  That's only a third of what I always hear is recommended.  Of course, better than nothing and maybe extends the time a bit before I have to purchase.  :)

[Brian Valente]

It will be enough to make an assessment as to whether it improves 

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[Christopher Miller]

Makes sense!  Thanks!