best practices...is my thinking clear for better guiding

[roswella...@gmail.com]

Morning all. I've been reading through best practices and was experimenting last night with a couple of things and wanted some feedback as if I am on the right track.

1. I trained my PEC on my G11 and played it back while in Hysteresis mode. However, I got errors that the "mount slewed" and guiding stopped. As result, I turned off PEC. I did not run it when I was running PPEC in PHD2. Which is correct?

2. The manual says the best guiding for DEC in most cases is Low Pass. Should I be using Low Pass on DEC and only guide in one direction or is it one or the other?

3. When I run Calibration and Guiding Assistant, should the DEC already be set in one direction and PPEC employed as well? Should PEC from the mount be running as well?

4. I am running the G11 (Gemini 2) in King rate with .3x as was proposed by Losmandy in their manual for astro photography. Should .5x actually be used and should I keep it in King rather than Sidereal? Which does PHD like?

5. Multiple times when running Guiding Assistant, I got errors for not enough south star movement even though I would move backlash with manual guide prior to running. 

6. Other times, though rare, GA worked but I was off between the axis by as much as 121%. What does this mean? I double checked mount balance several times.

Unfortunately, I tried various different things last night to improve guiding over the course of 5 hours. In some instances, combinations of several things resulted in excellent results while others doomed to failure. Trying to get a good starting point for tonight if clear and get a decent log file to share to get further input.

CJ

[bw_msgboard]

Hi CJ.  To start from the end, here’s what you can do tonight:

 

1. Turn on PEC in the mount if you think you have a good correction curve.  If you have doubts about it, turn off PEC.  Set the mount guide rate to at least 0.5x sidereal, higher if possible, and run it in sidereal rate.
2. Set your PHD2 guide algorithms to Hysteresis in RA and Resist-switch in Dec, leave all the guiding parameters at their default values
3. Slew to a point near the intersection of the celestial meridian and celestial equator.
4. Set your exposure time to 2 seconds and start looping images in PHD2
5. Make sure you are well-focused – most beginners are poorly focused and don’t know it, especially if they are using a small finder-scope for guiding.  You can use the PHD2 Star Profile tool to help judge best-focus – there’s a section in the Help docs for how to do that
6. When you’re ready to try a calibration, move the mount north a bit, either by slewing or by using the hand-controller.  Then start the calibration there.
7. Try to get a calibration without any alert messages.  If you see alerts, take the time to read them and follow the help link so you can start to understand what’s going on.
8. Once you have a calibration done, start the Guiding Assistant.  Let it run for about 10 minutes so you can see at least one full cycle of the residual periodic error in RA.  Then let the GA measure the Declination backlash. 
9. Apply whatever recommendations the GA makes, but stay with bi-directional guiding in Dec for now.
10. Keep guiding for another 10-15 minutes so we can see how the mount performs while guiding.

 

You should do all of this with the latest PHD2 release – nothing older than 2.6.5 and, better still, the latest development release:

 

https://openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/

 

If you then post your guide log (using the Help/Upload Log feature), we can take a look at the results and help you know what steps to take next.

 

Now, some answers to your questions below:

 

---

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of roswella...@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2018 8:05 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: [open-phd-guiding] best practices...is my thinking clear for better guiding

Morning all. I've been reading through best practices and was experimenting last night with a couple of things and wanted some feedback as if I am on the right track.

1. I trained my PEC on my G11 and played it back while in Hysteresis mode. However, I got errors that the "mount slewed" and guiding stopped. As result, I turned off PEC. I did not run it when I was running PPEC in PHD2. Which is correct?

 

The ‘mount slewed’ error indicates a bug in the ASCOM mount driver, it shouldn’t have anything to do with PEC.  You should make sure you’re running with the latest mount firmware and ASCOM mount driver.  We have lots of Losmandy mount users and no one else is reporting this sort of error.  In general, you should always run with PEC enabled in the mount but you need to be sure the correction curve was computed properly and does, in fact, improve the native RA tracking in the mount.  This is true regardless of what guiding algorithms you’re using in PHD2.

 

2. The manual says the best guiding for DEC in most cases is Low Pass. Should I be using Low Pass on DEC and only guide in one direction or is it one or the other?

 

I think maybe you’re mistaken on this, I don’t think we’ve ever said it.  For now, you should use the Resist-Switch algorithm, which is the default choice.

 

3. When I run Calibration and Guiding Assistant, should the DEC already be set in one direction and PPEC employed as well? Should PEC from the mount be running as well?

 

Leave PEC on in the mount always (see above).  The guiding algorithms have no effect on calibration or the Guiding Assistant – they are essentially disabled at those times.

 

4. I am running the G11 (Gemini 2) in King rate with .3x as was proposed by Losmandy in their manual for astro photography. Should .5x actually be used and should I keep it in King rather than Sidereal? Which does PHD like?

 

There’s no reason at all to use the King rate while guiding.  The very slow and small adjustments needed for atmospheric refraction are easily handled by the guiding software.  

 

5. Multiple times when running Guiding Assistant, I got errors for not enough south star movement even though I would move backlash with manual guide prior to running. 

 

Are you thinking of the calibration process here?  Or are you talking about the backlash measurement test in the GA?  We need to see your log files to clear this up.

 

6. Other times, though rare, GA worked but I was off between the axis by as much as 121%. What does this mean? I double checked mount balance several times.

 

Again, this sounds like calibration.   If you’re using the Manual Guide tool, you should move the mount north for at least 20 seconds to be reasonably certain you’ve cleared the backlash.  Or you can just make sure the last slew direction on the mount was north.  Once we see your guide logs, we’ll be able to see what’s going on.

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

Unfortunately, I tried various different things last night to improve guiding over the course of 5 hours. In some instances, combinations of several things resulted in excellent results while others doomed to failure. Trying to get a good starting point for tonight if clear and get a decent log file to share to get further input.

 

CJ

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[Roswell Astronomy]

Thanks Bruce. I'll set up again tonight if it is clear and follow your lead.

Cj

[roswella...@gmail.com]

Hi Bruce,

so yes and no. Files uploaded through Help and also a time line snap shot so you know what I was doing. Also I was right around Altair when I started the tests.

Created new profile with mount and camera connected.

Connected everything with G11 PEC on

-8:56 was the slew error with PEC on. Checked on cloudy nights and suggested to un-tick "stop guiding when mount slews". Pulse guide failed. 

-8:58 I reset everything, ticked the box back and turned off PEC on mount. Success!!!

-9:35 said what the heck as I couldnt get the GA to work and slewed to M31 to try again. Turned on PEC on a whim and of course, errors.

Finally just decided to record guiding as is to see how it would perform. there is a little action around 10pm due to some high clouds rolling around.

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_i9D0.zip 

Suggestions? FYI - Gemini 2 software seems up to date release and running 2.6.5 PHD2

Appreciate any help!!

Thanks. CJ

On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 12:24:13 PM UTC-4, Roswell Astronomy wrote:

Thanks Bruce. I'll set up again tonight if it is clear and follow your lead.

Cj

On Sat, Oct 6, 2018, 11:46 bw_msgboard <bw_m...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Hi CJ.  To start from the end, here’s what you can do tonight:

 

1. Turn on PEC in the mount if you think you have a good correction curve.  If you have doubts about it, turn off PEC.  Set the mount guide rate to at least 0.5x sidereal, higher if possible, and run it in sidereal rate.
2. Set your PHD2 guide algorithms to Hysteresis in RA and Resist-switch in Dec, leave all the guiding parameters at their default values
3. Slew to a point near the intersection of the celestial meridian and celestial equator.
4. Set your exposure time to 2 seconds and start looping images in PHD2
5. Make sure you are well-focused – most beginners are poorly focused and don’t know it, especially if they are using a small finder-scope for guiding.  You can use the PHD2 Star Profile tool to help judge best-focus – there’s a section in the Help docs for how to do that
6. When you’re ready to try a calibration, move the mount north a bit, either by slewing or by using the hand-controller.  Then start the calibration there.
7. Try to get a calibration without any alert messages.  If you see alerts, take the time to read them and follow the help link so you can start to understand what’s going on.
8. Once you have a calibration done, start the Guiding Assistant.  Let it run for about 10 minutes so you can see at least one full cycle of the residual periodic error in RA.  Then let the GA measure the Declination backlash. 
9. Apply whatever recommendations the GA makes, but stay with bi-directional guiding in Dec for now.
10. Keep guiding for another 10-15 minutes so we can see how the mount performs while guiding.

 

You should do all of this with the latest PHD2 release – nothing older than 2.6.5 and, better still, the latest development release:

 

https://openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/

 

If you then post your guide log (using the Help/Upload Log feature), we can take a look at the results and help you know what steps to take next.

 

Now, some answers to your questions below:

 

From: open-phd-guiding@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd-guiding@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of roswella...@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2018 8:05 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: [open-phd-guiding] best practices...is my thinking clear for better guiding

 

Morning all. I've been reading through best practices and was experimenting last night with a couple of things and wanted some feedback as if I am on the right track.

1. I trained my PEC on my G11 and played it back while in Hysteresis mode. However, I got errors that the "mount slewed" and guiding stopped. As result, I turned off PEC. I did not run it when I was running PPEC in PHD2. Which is correct?

 

The ‘mount slewed’ error indicates a bug in the ASCOM mount driver, it shouldn’t have anything to do with PEC.  You should make sure you’re running with the latest mount firmware and ASCOM mount driver.  We have lots of Losmandy mount users and no one else is reporting this sort of error.  In general, you should always run with PEC enabled in the mount but you need to be sure the correction curve was computed properly and does, in fact, improve the native RA tracking in the mount.  This is true regardless of what guiding algorithms you’re using in PHD2.

 

2. The manual says the best guiding for DEC in most cases is Low Pass. Should I be using Low Pass on DEC and only guide in one direction or is it one or the other?

 

I think maybe you’re mistaken on this, I don’t think we’ve ever said it.  For now, you should use the Resist-Switch algorithm, which is the default choice.

 

3. When I run Calibration and Guiding Assistant, should the DEC already be set in one direction and PPEC employed as well? Should PEC from the mount be running as well?

 

Leave PEC on in the mount always (see above).  The guiding algorithms have no effect on calibration or the Guiding Assistant – they are essentially disabled at those times.

 

4. I am running the G11 (Gemini 2) in King rate with .3x as was proposed by Losmandy in their manual for astro photography. Should .5x actually be used and should I keep it in King rather than Sidereal? Which does PHD like?

 

There’s no reason at all to use the King rate while guiding.  The very slow and small adjustments needed for atmospheric refraction are easily handled by the guiding software.  

 

5. Multiple times when running Guiding Assistant, I got errors for not enough south star movement even though I would move backlash with manual guide prior to running. 

 

Are you thinking of the calibration process here?  Or are you talking about the backlash measurement test in the GA?  We need to see your log files to clear this up.

 

6. Other times, though rare, GA worked but I was off between the axis by as much as 121%. What does this mean? I double checked mount balance several times.

 

Again, this sounds like calibration.   If you’re using the Manual Guide tool, you should move the mount north for at least 20 seconds to be reasonably certain you’ve cleared the backlash.  Or you can just make sure the last slew direction on the mount was north.  Once we see your guide logs, we’ll be able to see what’s going on.

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

Unfortunately, I tried various different things last night to improve guiding over the course of 5 hours. In some instances, combinations of several things resulted in excellent results while others doomed to failure. Trying to get a good starting point for tonight if clear and get a decent log file to share to get further input.

 

CJ

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[Brian Valente]

Hi CJ

how did you train PEC for your G11?

do you have the spring-loaded worm gears on that mount (i.e., is it relatively new)?

Brian

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of roswella...@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2018 8:05 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: [open-phd-guiding] best practices...is my thinking clear for better guiding

 

Morning all. I've been reading through best practices and was experimenting last night with a couple of things and wanted some feedback as if I am on the right track.

1. I trained my PEC on my G11 and played it back while in Hysteresis mode. However, I got errors that the "mount slewed" and guiding stopped. As result, I turned off PEC. I did not run it when I was running PPEC in PHD2. Which is correct?

 

The ‘mount slewed’ error indicates a bug in the ASCOM mount driver, it shouldn’t have anything to do with PEC.  You should make sure you’re running with the latest mount firmware and ASCOM mount driver.  We have lots of Losmandy mount users and no one else is reporting this sort of error.  In general, you should always run with PEC enabled in the mount but you need to be sure the correction curve was computed properly and does, in fact, improve the native RA tracking in the mount.  This is true regardless of what guiding algorithms you’re using in PHD2.

 

2. The manual says the best guiding for DEC in most cases is Low Pass. Should I be using Low Pass on DEC and only guide in one direction or is it one or the other?

 

I think maybe you’re mistaken on this, I don’t think we’ve ever said it.  For now, you should use the Resist-Switch algorithm, which is the default choice.

 

3. When I run Calibration and Guiding Assistant, should the DEC already be set in one direction and PPEC employed as well? Should PEC from the mount be running as well?

 

Leave PEC on in the mount always (see above).  The guiding algorithms have no effect on calibration or the Guiding Assistant – they are essentially disabled at those times.

 

4. I am running the G11 (Gemini 2) in King rate with .3x as was proposed by Losmandy in their manual for astro photography. Should .5x actually be used and should I keep it in King rather than Sidereal? Which does PHD like?

 

There’s no reason at all to use the King rate while guiding.  The very slow and small adjustments needed for atmospheric refraction are easily handled by the guiding software.  

 

5. Multiple times when running Guiding Assistant, I got errors for not enough south star movement even though I would move backlash with manual guide prior to running. 

 

Are you thinking of the calibration process here?  Or are you talking about the backlash measurement test in the GA?  We need to see your log files to clear this up.

 

6. Other times, though rare, GA worked but I was off between the axis by as much as 121%. What does this mean? I double checked mount balance several times.

 

Again, this sounds like calibration.   If you’re using the Manual Guide tool, you should move the mount north for at least 20 seconds to be reasonably certain you’ve cleared the backlash.  Or you can just make sure the last slew direction on the mount was north.  Once we see your guide logs, we’ll be able to see what’s going on.

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

Unfortunately, I tried various different things last night to improve guiding over the course of 5 hours. In some instances, combinations of several things resulted in excellent results while others doomed to failure. Trying to get a good starting point for tonight if clear and get a decent log file to share to get further input.

 

CJ

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Brian 

Brian Valente

portfolio brianvalentephotography.com 

[Roswell Astronomy]

PEC train was done with a lighted reticle eye piece. The OPW's are last year's units but have had the Belleville washers added and precision bearings added.

Cj

[bw_msgboard]

Hi CJ, sorry you’re still having trouble.  I can explain most of this but I don’t know what to say about why the mount is having problems pulse-guiding.  I’ll start with the things I understand.  The problems with completing the Guiding Assistant runs are caused by the very large amount of Dec backlash in your mount:

 

 

This shows one of the two backlash tests you ran - they get essentially the same result.  The red dots show the steady movement of the mount in the north direction.  The green dots show what happens when the guide direction is reversed and the mount is commanded to move south.  You can see it continues to run north for a time (at least 4 sec) and even after it reverses, it moves only about ½ the distance back to the south.  This is pretty bad and is going to require some kind of mechanical adjustment to fix.  The magnitude of the problem could be cut roughly in ½ if you increase the mount guide speed to as close to 1x sidereal as it will allow.  Although there is clearly a large amount of backlash here, I suspect you also have stiction in the Dec axis, something that seems to be fairly common for the Losmandy mounts.

 

The reason the GA test ended is because of a shortcoming in the 2.6.5 baseline release.  That was fixed in the dev releases back in July, starting at 2.6.5dev3 I believe.  When you’re trying to measure your mount performance and trouble-shoot problems, it’s really best to use the latest dev releases.

 

https://openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/

 

The problems with ASCOM pulse-guiding are easily seen but I don’t know enough about the mount firmware or the driver release levels to suggest a fix.  In several cases, the guide command never completes so PHD2 eventually times out and aborts the operation.  This may be related to the situation where the mount reports that it’s slewing even while pulse-guiding is active.  IMO, this is clearly a problem with either the ASCOM mount driver or the mount firmware (or both).  You could ask about this on one of the Losmandy forums or perhaps another Losmandy user here can comment.  I don’t recall seeing this sort of thing lately – for example, I’ve looked at all-night logs from Brian Valente that show none of these alerts.  This part should really be a software problem/version mismatch of some kind, nothing to do with spring-loaded worms or other hardware changes.

 

All of that said, your limiting condition on guiding is in RA and the 11 min session at the end is really not bad.  You had one big (4 arc-sec) RA excursion at 22:01, but other than that the total guiding RMS was 0.8 arc-sec and you should have gotten reasonably round stars.  I saw in your follow-on post that you tried to create a PEC curve manually, with an eyepiece!  This is hopeless, it simply will not work.  You can’t possibly do this job by hand with the level of accuracy that’s required.  You need to use third-party periodic error correction software, something that can capture data for multiple worm cycles, reject the seeing-induced noise, compute the frequency spectrum for your RA system, and apply a smoothed correction curve.  Doing it manually is worse than nothing at all.  If you want to try a free app for this, take a look at PecPrep.  Until you do this, you should definitely leave PEC off.

 

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

 

 

---

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of roswella...@gmail.com
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2018 7:08 PM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: Re: [open-phd-guiding] best practices...is my thinking clear for better guiding

Hi Bruce,

so yes and no. Files uploaded through Help and also a time line snap shot so you know what I was doing. Also I was right around Altair when I started the tests.

 

Created new profile with mount and camera connected.

Connected everything with G11 PEC on

-8:56 was the slew error with PEC on. Checked on cloudy nights and suggested to un-tick "stop guiding when mount slews". Pulse guide failed. 

-8:58 I reset everything, ticked the box back and turned off PEC on mount. Success!!!

-9:35 said what the heck as I couldnt get the GA to work and slewed to M31 to try again. Turned on PEC on a whim and of course, errors.

Finally just decided to record guiding as is to see how it would perform. there is a little action around 10pm due to some high clouds rolling around.

 

https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_i9D0.zip 

 

Suggestions? FYI - Gemini 2 software seems up to date release and running 2.6.5 PHD2

 

Appreciate any help!!

 

Thanks. CJ

On Saturday, October 6, 2018 at 12:24:13 PM UTC-4, Roswell Astronomy wrote:

Thanks Bruce. I'll set up again tonight if it is clear and follow your lead.

 

Cj

 

On Sat, Oct 6, 2018, 11:46 bw_msgboard <bw_m...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Hi CJ.  To start from the end, here’s what you can do tonight:

 

1.      Turn on PEC in the mount if you think you have a good correction curve.  If you have doubts about it, turn off PEC.  Set the mount guide rate to at least 0.5x sidereal, higher if possible, and run it in sidereal rate.

2.      Set your PHD2 guide algorithms to Hysteresis in RA and Resist-switch in Dec, leave all the guiding parameters at their default values

3.      Slew to a point near the intersection of the celestial meridian and celestial equator.

4.      Set your exposure time to 2 seconds and start looping images in PHD2

5.      Make sure you are well-focused – most beginners are poorly focused and don’t know it, especially if they are using a small finder-scope for guiding.  You can use the PHD2 Star Profile tool to help judge best-focus – there’s a section in the Help docs for how to do that

6.      When you’re ready to try a calibration, move the mount north a bit, either by slewing or by using the hand-controller.  Then start the calibration there.

7.      Try to get a calibration without any alert messages.  If you see alerts, take the time to read them and follow the help link so you can start to understand what’s going on.

8.      Once you have a calibration done, start the Guiding Assistant.  Let it run for about 10 minutes so you can see at least one full cycle of the residual periodic error in RA.  Then let the GA measure the Declination backlash. 

9.      Apply whatever recommendations the GA makes, but stay with bi-directional guiding in Dec for now.

10.  Keep guiding for another 10-15 minutes so we can see how the mount performs while guiding.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open-phd-guidi...@googlegroups.com.

[Roswell Astronomy]

Bruce, 

Thank you for your help! This gives me some new direction to take at least! I'll update to the next dev and download the pec program. Clouds should clear in about an hour or so and I'll see what happens.

Cj

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[Brian Valente]

>>> I saw in your follow-on post that you tried to create a PEC curve manually, with an eyepiece!  This is hopeless, it simply will not work.

i agree with Bruce! PEMPro is a great tool and I think they have a trial period as well

Brian

[Roswell Astronomy]

Hi Brian. Downloaded Pecpro and just loaded my PHD files in to it. Now watching more videos on how to understand this new found wonder!

[Roswell Astronomy]

excuse me...PECprep

[Brian Valente]

that's awesome! except PECPrep won't allow you to program the G11

you'll need PEMPro

http://www.ccdware.com/products/pempro/

B

[Roswell Astronomy]

Ok. Downloading that now.

Cj

[Andy Galasso]

CJ,

Could you tell us what version of the Gemini-2 firmware you have, and also the version of the ASCOM driver?  We'd like to understand whether what you are seeing is a new issue or something related to older firmware versions.  https://gemini-2.com/tellfirmwareversion.php

Thanks,

Andy

[Roswell Astronomy]

Hi Andy. Gemini is 12 March 2017 and the ASCOM is 6.4SP1

I couldn't tell if you PEC from Gemini 2 ever played correctly with PHD2 under the different versions of PHD2 I've had as I just attempted to run PEC this past week. 

Cj

[Andy Galasso]

Cj,

Ok, thanks for the info.  One more question: had you done much guiding without any issues before turning on PEC. IOW, did the problems start when you tuned on PEC?

Andy

[Roswell Astronomy]

Andy. Been guiding for about a year with the G11 with mixed results. What spurned this was adding belleville washers and precision bearings and was recommended that I run with PEC active afterwards. Ive always gotten around .7 to 1.2 as an average on error in the past with this mount prior to the upgrades.

Cj

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Cj,

Ok, this seems to be leading us to the theory that enabling PEC has introduced the error reported by PHD2 (or made it more likely to occur). Here is the specific series of events from the PHD2 log

- initial normal calibration step:

- PHD2 checks if a guide pulse is active, ASCOM driver says no (Guiding = false)

- PHD2 issues a guide pulse for 1050 milliseconds

- after about 1050 ms the driver reports the guide pulse is complete (Guiding = false)

- a couple seconds later PHD2 prepares to send the next calibration step and sees from the driver that a pulse is in progress (Guiding = true) .. where did that come from?

 - PHD2 waits for a while for the driver to report that the pulse is not active, but it stays active

 - PHD2 requests an abort [AbortSlew()] and displays the error message ("PulseGuide command to mount has failed - guiding is likely to be ineffective")

 - the ASCOM driver continues to report Guiding = true for the next 5 seconds. PHD2 tries again to abort movement.

 - eventually (about 5 seconds) the driver reports no pulse is active (Guiding = false)

 - guide pulses work normally for about 30 minutes before the problem happens again

I think the best course of action would be to enable logging in the ASCOM driver and get the problem to happen again. When it does, you can post the ASCOM driver log in the Gemini-2 forum and see if Paul and/or Rene can see what is causing the problem.

It might be informative to do some experimenting to see if the problem goes away when you disable PEC, and if it comes back after you re-enable it. That would be good information to provide to Paul and Rene.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Andy

[Brian Valente]

FYI I have PEC enabled with the same software versions - works fine here

Brian