binning resets to 1x1 while looping

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Chris Johnson

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Jan 12, 2022, 2:53:41 PM1/12/22
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I have a ZWO aso1294mm camera and am using phd2 2.6.10dev3.  The version I initially installed is from the Patrick Chevalley PPA.  I am using INDI and the camera is running remotely on a pi4 based embedded indiserver. I am using the ASI driver distributed with the standard INDI distribution. This setup will soon be installed as an off axis guider for the prime focus camera on the 90" Bok Telescope at Kitt Peak.

The issue I am having is that, while using PHD2 in the configuration described above, binning always resets to 1x1 at the beginning of an exposure.  With my setup, I need higher binning geometry to be able to get the image downloaded in a timely manner.  I need 1s or better transfers.  4x4 binning gets me there.

I tried pulling the latest source and building from scratch.  I had the same issue.

I tried using XEphem as the indi client and I was able to change binning to 4x4 and make many repeated exposures without binning being changed to 1x1.  This would tell me that the indi driver and server are operating correctly, and the issue appears to be in PHD2.

I have a laptop that I did my initial setup with.  This laptop uses PHD2 version 2.6.9 dev4 and the same version of INDI.  This laptop does not have this issue.  I can set binning to whatever value I want and it stays.  This would tell me that the issue is something new to version 2.6.10, or possibly just new to dev3?

Thanx in advance for any input or advice.

CJ






Patrick Chevalley

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Jan 12, 2022, 3:14:25 PM1/12/22
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Hi Chris,

With PHD2 the binning setting is in the "Advanced settings" ( the brain button), at the bottom right in the Camera tab.
I just try to set the binnng to 4x4 with the INDI CCD simulator and it work fine.

Be sure all the other setting are adjusted for the new binning. It is best to create a new profile for each binning you can use because for guiding this is as using another camera.

Patrick


Ken Self

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Jan 12, 2022, 3:18:59 PM1/12/22
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Firstly, please attach your PHD2 logs as desribed at https://openphdguiding.org/getting-help/
In the absence of a log I an only offer some guesses and ideas
1) Where are you setting the binning? Is it in PHD2 or in INDI or even in your client? Could be that one is overriding the other.
2) This could be a problem with the INDI driver, not necessarily PHD2. It can depend on which camera mode is used for guiding vs imaging. Without a log its hard to say.
3) Check your INDI config on laptop vs RPi4 - they could well be different
4) What imaging client are you using and what imaging cam? Could be that your imaging client is connecting to the guide cam instead of the imaging cam and changing its settings. You were not clear when you say binning resets on every exposure. Is that the guiding exposures or the imaging exposures?
5) I have a setup running INDI server on a single board computer (not a Pi but equivalent). I also run PHD2 on that computer so there is no issue with transfer speed and that also lets me use the native ZWO driver on PHD2. Everything else is controlled remotely using EKOS. You may want to use this kind of setup

But we really need to see your PHD2 logs. You may also want to enable detailed logging in INDI for the camera driver.

-- Ken

bw_msgboard

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Jan 12, 2022, 3:44:28 PM1/12/22
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You also need to be sure the native ZWO drivers are the latest.  There was an SDK update as part of PHD2 2.6.10dev2 and that often requires a corresponding update to the ZWO drivers. Once you get it running, I'd like to hear more about the Kitt Peak installation - I'm having a little trouble picturing that. :-)
 
Regards,
Bruce

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 11:54 AM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: [open-phd-guiding] binning resets to 1x1 while looping

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Patrick Chevalley

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Jan 12, 2022, 4:04:06 PM1/12/22
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The difference you observe with 2.6.9 is because of this change:

Now PHD2 ignore the initial binning set in the INDI driver to always use it's configured value. This is much more consistent this way.

Patrick

bw_msgboard

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Jan 12, 2022, 4:52:13 PM1/12/22
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Nice one, Patrick, thanks for the help.
 
Bruce

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Patrick Chevalley
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 1:04 PM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: Re: [open-phd-guiding] binning resets to 1x1 while looping

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Chris Johnson

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Jan 12, 2022, 5:04:42 PM1/12/22
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Patrick,
    thats exactly what happened...  being a good lil engineer, I ignore the release notes...  the new binning setting was still at 1.  version 2.6.9 didnt have that.  You rock...  thanx for all the help.

Bruce,
   The kitt peak installation is pretty straight forward.  Its a 2.3m telescope with a prime focus instrument.  There is a pickoff mirror and some transfer optics near the main imager to get some photons over to the guide camera.  The guide camera is the ZWO asi.  installed, the guide camera is about 6m off the ground.  We're trying to limit the amount of cable going up there, and there is already gigabit network up there, so I got a pi4 board, industrial case, and industrial memory card,  mounted it right near the camera and hooked the camera to it.  The pi runs indiserver and the asi driver, and basically its only job is to put the camera on the network.  PHD2 runs on a computer in the control room.  Its currently just a mess of cables and parts spread all over a lab table..  but its working...  so I'll be ready to move it to the telescope at the end of the month, to pump real starlight through it.

CJ

bw_msgboard

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Jan 12, 2022, 5:42:00 PM1/12/22
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This sounds pretty cool.  Let us know if you run into any problems that require some accommodation in PHD2.
 
Bruce

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Chris Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 2:05 PM
To: Open PHD Guiding
Subject: Re: [open-phd-guiding] binning resets to 1x1 while looping

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Brian Valente

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Jan 12, 2022, 6:57:31 PM1/12/22
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>>>  In the past, I used an 1800mm focal length CDK to guide a 300mm refractor that was doing wide-field imaging.  Works fine, guiding was pretty undemanding. :-)

Bruce i you may have your setup backwards there :)

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/8FCD87066DF84D5693158F10E89CB13F%40HomeDesktop.


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Brian 



Brian Valente

Chris Johnson

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Jan 14, 2022, 2:03:47 PM1/14/22
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Bruce,
    Absolutely I will let you know.  I got this working a few years back on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope on Mt Graham with great success and its been mostly painless.  its a little bit cumbersome getting setup each night, but its really perfect for scientific telescopes.  There are a few things I routinely get asked for.  I should probably make feature requests from these, but i'd have to have time to follow up and possibly submit some software,  and i do not have that time.  maybe in the fall I can officially submit these:

1. a way to move a guide star around on the chip with ease. Sometimes there's dirt or something on the chip, near the star, or the star is just too close to the edge, and on a 4k x 4k chip it takes too long to use the virtual paddle...  our older software just let you shift-click on a new spot on the frame and the software  moved the star there.  I submitted a change a while back for this with a shift-click combination in PHD2 but it wasn't accepted.  There was a suggestion that I make it a menu option, which was a much cleaner idea.  I've just never had a chance to get back to it and I think the feature request was closed.

2. slit guiding.  We have a few spectrographs.  The Vatican telescope spectrograph uses PHD2 and they have found a combination of settings that sort of makes it work, but its not perfect.  I think there was a guy in Russia a while back working on a real slit guiding algorithm and it looked like he really knew what he was doing.  I tried to contact him at one point but did not hear back.

3.  non sidereal guiding.  this is a big project.  The asteroid folks claim that some telescopes have guiding software that looks at the position of stars as they drift through the field, uses ra and dec rates to predict where they should be in each frame, and correct on that predicted position vs the observed position.  They want that functionality on the 90" bok telescope, which will soon be PHD2.  Thats not an easy task..  but it is a common request and the asteroid work is really popular on a lot of our scopes...  so I'll likely make a project of it, eventually.

take care
CJ
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