I’m observing for the first time since last fall, running the very latest indi and kstars (compiled from git today).
I’ve got two scopes working in parallel: A 107/525 refractor with an ASI 294MC-Pro and a 102/1000 refractor with the ASI 294MC as guider. I’ve set up two trains accordingly.
Usually I select my guide cam as guider since pulse guiding doesn’t work correctly with my G11. However, this is the first time that my guide cam doesn’t show up in the list of guiders. “Losmandy Gemini” is the only option there. The resulting catastrophic guiding is a show-stopper for me.
IMO the 294MC should show up in the list of guiders just like the Losmandy Gemini. Is this a bug or did I miss anything that I should have configured differently?
Are you talking about setting up the optical train?
If so, the ‘guider’ field you set up there is the mount name – it means the device that receives the guiding pulses.
So, e.g., for me, my primary optical train has my main camera as the camera with its usual accessories and no ‘guider’ filled in.
My secondary optical train has the guiding camera set as the camera, and the mount set up as the ‘guider’.
Jasem has a video on setting up optical trains.
I then set the guiding tab to use my secondary optical train, and all the other tabs to us the primary one.
Here’s are screenshots of my optical trains, in case that’s helpful.
Hy
Hy wrote: “Are you talking about setting up the optical train?
If so, the ‘guider’ field you set up there is the mount name – it means the device that receives the guiding pulses.”
Thanks a lot, Hy, this is exactly what I am talking about. The device that receives the guiding pulses should be my guiding cam as it forwards these pulses via ST-4 port to my mount. Unfortunately my guide cam no longer shows up in the list. It did for years.
What confuses me is that you say that the guiding camera has “been on the list for years”, but optical trans hasn’t been around for very many releases, certainly not years. What list are you talking about? Please share a screenshot.
Today’s “guider” (in optical train setup) is the equivalent of previous versions’ “guiding via” setting. One could choose between mount and guidecam (in case it had an ST-4 port). The “guider” field in optical trains setup should have the exact same functionality.
Unfortunately I can’t produce a screenshot since I do not have a “pre-optical-trains” version of kstars anymore. But should the current situation continue, I’d have no other option than roll back to a much older version.
Last fall, when I used kstars “in production” for the last time, I think optical trains had been established already. I THINK (but cannot prove it and of course I could be wrong) back then the option to guide via ST-4 still existed since I had not run into yesterday’s problem where the ST-4 guider cam was no longer available and I had to resort to pulse guiding which is essentially unusable with my G-11.
Well that might explain why my guide calibration didn’t work last night. I’ve returned to AP after a 2 yr break and tried imaging last night. My calibration would either fail or if it did ‘succeed’ my guiding would fly off in both RA and Dec. After reading this post I noticed that I had my guiding optical train ion correctly setup. I was confused by what should go into the Guider field so I tried leaving it blank or putting the guide camera in their so that I had the guide camera in both the Camera and Guider field.
I’m assuming this is why my calibration failed?
So reading this I should put in my mount (EQ Mod)? That should make it work?
Very strange things happen here. I tried the driver indi_asi_st4 to no avail. I then selected “ASI Camera 1” as Camera 1 and “ASI Camera 2” as Camera 2 in “Profiles Editor - Select Devices” (instead of “ZWO CCD” in both fields) and for whatever reason now the “guider” list does show Losmandy Gemini and ASI 294MC as well! I then reverted to “ASI CCD” in Profiles Editor and the ASI still is available as “guider”.
Too bad I didn’t take a screenshot yesterday night when the ASI 294MC did not show up there.
So for now it appears the issue just disappeared. I’m truly sorry for any trouble my postings might have caused. Should the issue re-occur, I’ll post it here.
Just as an aside: The term “guider” in optical train setup is unclear/confusing (as evidenced by Rene’s and several other postings). Something like “guiding via” (as it was labeled before) or “guiding pulses go to” would cause less confusion. Available options should be labeled “mount” and “ST-4 camera port” or similarly.
Same here. The guide cam was recognized and I was able to shoot images using it. But it was not listed under “guider” in train setup. Weird. I almost hope the issue reoccurs so we can find out what was going wrong. For the time being, I’m glad to have my ST-4 port back.
It happened again. Twice tonight. Have to quit now. Both cameras did show “Interface 2” in “General Info” field.
And there are more problems with the ASIs. The 294MC-Pro’s gain setting was reset to 0 several times during the session without any reason as far as I can tell. I had to reset it to 120 by hand multiple times, save settings, but shortly thereafter it was reset to 0 again.
Regarding gain being reset to zero I suspect what happens is this:
In my case the gain field in the CCD tab is being left blank (“-”), so the Indi-saved value of 120 is being used and displayed.
During a focus run gain is set to 0 as (it appears to me) the focus tab behaves differently (compared to the CCD tab) and doesn’t care about Indi-saved settings. It overwrites the gain value and sets it to 0.
After the focus run when the CCD tab retakes control, the gain value remains what it is, which now is 0.
That could be the reason why I started out taking subs at gain=120 and later figured subs were taken at gain=0 (although I never actively configured it to be 0).
The fact that (as I believe) the focus TAB behaves differently compared to the CCD tab needs to be changed. As long as no specific gain value has been set by the user, it should be left untouched. The default value in focus TAB should be “-” rather than 0. Same as in the CCD tab.
Re- your comments on Gain and Focus… this is what should happen:
If you leave Gain on Focus unset (“–”) then Focus will not change Gain during Autofocus and the camera will use whatever Gain was set when Autofocus was started.
If you have Gain set to any number in Focus, then Autofocus will set camera gain to that number at the start of Autofocus. So if you set 0, then this would set Gain to 0 at the start of Autofocus.
Whether Capture sets Gain after Focus depends on whether Gain is set in Capture or left unset (‘–’).
So if you have Gain set to 0 in Focus and unset in Capture, then what you describe is what I would expect to see.
Let me know if this isn’t the behaviour you’re seeing.
