From great to inop

[Paul Wilson]

Last night with my recently calibrated ZWO mini guide scope, I had started NINA and began to connect my equipment for a sequence.  Strangely, after the main camera connected normally, the other accessories showed no connection banners in NINA.  After a couple of these strange connects, I shut down NINA, closed the remote, mini PC, and cycled the power to the digital logger.  Then I started again.  This time, connections seemed closer to normal, but when I first tried a basic AF, after having got very acceptable V curves just a couple of nights ago, the dots were all over the place.   I found that the step size and backlash numbers I had put in NINA were gone, replaced by incorrect ones.  How did that happen?

I tried to start the guiding and, after recalibrating just a couple of weeks ago (with help from you guys) and a new set of "darks", my looping images were static filled dark screens with no stars.  It looked like a lens can was on there, but there wasn't one.

Could my calibration have been totally lost? Was the data cable loose?  I just rechecked the guide camera and it shows the same grainy screen but white with daylight.  So I guess it's working?

I have attached a image from the guider from last night, and the logs from both last night vs the one from just a few nights ago when things went perfectly.

  https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_K7K6.zip

[Paul Wilson]

 didn't mention, the weather at the remote observatory last night was clear.  My CEM70 new mount did slew to and track the target and I could see it centered in the main camera screen.  The guide scope is attached to the top of the scope, pointing where it points.  If there isn't a star field in either image I know the rig must be pointing at the ground or a wall.

[Brian Valente]

Paul

this sounds to me like both PHD and NINA connected to your imaging camera and mayhem ensued. Bruce is more savvy on the debug log but it looks the camera switched between them. 

Make sure to download and use the latest Dev release https://openphdguiding.org/development-snapshots/

When setting up the zwo camera in PHD, try the native ZWO driver rather than the ascom driver. 

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Brian 

Brian Valente

astronomy portfolio https://www.astrobin.com/users/bvalente/ 

[Paul Wilson]

Thank you, that did occur to me and I checked to be sure it selected the ASI290 mini because that has happened to me recently.  But it shows the correct one

Paul S. Wilson

Continental Airlines

Capt.  IAH

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[Brian Valente]

Paul i'm not sure when you did that check, but the symptoms you describe point me to wrong camera connected. 

I suppose it's also possible a larger issue was at play, as you describe all kinds of issues when connecting via NINA (most of which have nothing to do with PHD). 

Calibrations aren't lost, and a bad camera connection cable would result in a camera connection error

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[Paul Wilson]

Yes, I should have seen an error, but it seemed that NINA wasn't displaying them.  I kept hearing what seemed to be messages popping up but they were not displayed.  But those should appear on the log so if there was nothing there, I guess it was not a connection issue.

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[Paul Wilson]

OK, duh, I am looking again at my setup in PHD2.  I see in my PHD connection tab that there are 2 choices, my main camera ASI2600MM and my ZWO ASI290MM.  But the 290 is NOT my guide cam!  Heck, that's my pier cam, installed just this last year. Why wouldn't PHD2 be seeing my actual ASI120mm guide camera?  I am guessing that it is no wonder that I am having issues, but I haven't changed anything recently so I am perplexed.  How can I fix this?  If it is something physical then I have to contact the remote staff.

[Brian Valente]

PHD reports what's available to it, so yes it's probably worth having the obs staff make sure your 120 camera is connected

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