Which Version of PHD2 should Use With SGP V 2.5.0.23?

Yes,

Either from here

or here

You need to be a member of one of those groups to get at the file.

I need to persuade the SkyWatcher people to put it on their site but that’s where it is for now,

Chris

PS Part of the reason there’s a new HC version is that we added extra functionality to the HC so I was able to provide better control of it through the serial port. There’s also a new version of the serial protocol on the SkyWatcher downloads site.
This is why you need both the new HC firmware and the new skyWatcher driver. They have been designed to work together. I check the HC version and only enable the more advanced features if the HC supports them.
C

Hi Chris,

I am having a very difficult time trying to register on the Yahoo sites.

Is there any way you can e-mail me the file?

Many thanks in advance,

Randy

Hi Chris,

With great difficulty I finally got logged in on your thread in the Yahoo
ASCOM-Talk Group.

I’ve downloaded the driver and now I am awaiting my new Version 4 Hand
Controller and I will

(if it doesn’t already have it) upload Firmware Version 4.38.09.

Thanks for all the help Chris.

Randy

Yahoo seems to have become almost impossibly slow for everyone. I’m beginning to think that we need to have a different way to handle ASCOM discussion and support. Every time we have tried before we have ended up coming back to Yahoo, in spite of its defects.

Chris

Good Morning Chris,

Well it is just on midnight here in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada.

I have my new Synscan Version 4 Handcontroller with teh Version 4.38.09
loaded on.

I have your SkyWatcher ASCOM driver installed for my HEQ5-Pro mount.

I downloaded the newest version of PHD2 Guiding 2.61 dev 10.

When I initially start PHD everything seems to work and shortly afterwards I
see my Dec Alt graph goes of scale and

then I get an error: ASCOM driver does not support Pulse Guide. Check your
ASCOM driver settings.

I then try to close down PHD but I have to do a CNTRL ALT DEL to kill iit.

Then when I go to try PHD2 again it tells me:

-PHD2 instance1 is already running. Use the -i Instance_NUM command-line
option to start a different instance.

In other words PHD doesn’t clear out so I go in to CNTRL ALT DEL to Services
and stop it there.

So I am at a loss now that I have downloaded your new ASCOM SkyWatcher
Driver along with the current V4 SynScan

Handset firmware…any ideas Chris.

Thanks in advance…Randy

A couple of suggestions:

Read the driver help. It tells you what information I need, in this case a driver log. This will show why the driver thinks that it doesn’t support pulse guiding.

You need to talk to the PHD people about why their application fails to close properly.

I’ve just tried it with my AZEQ6 and PHD 2.6.1 and had no problems. It connects and can do pulse guiding. This is an indoor test but I can see the position change when pulseguide commands are sent.

Chris

Edit:
I’ve got the logs you sent to me privately, thanks, just what I needed.

From a quick look there didn’t seem to be any problem from the driver point of view.

The log starting at 2359 shows CanPulseGuide returnng true and guide commands being done with no obvious problem.
But then, at 00:17:08 there’s a CanPulseGuide that’s returning false, even though there was a successful guide done a few seconds earlier.
Do you know if something changed at this time? I guess that PHD was connected before that and was guiding. Did another application connect to the driver?

I’ve had a total of 6 emails from you today so it looks as if this connection works - but you do need to give me time to respond.

Chris

I sent a zipped set of 4 log files…

Randy

I’ve got them - and found out what is happening.

Guiding is only allowed for equatorial mounts and the correct HC version. I check both of these by reading the HC.

What I’m seeing is that when I read the track mode from the mount the correct response is being returned correctly most of the time but occasionally it’s returning the wrong mode - AltAz instead of equatorial - and this is causing CanPulseGuide to return false.

I have to read trackMode because it’s also used to check if tracking is on or not and make sure that the correct tracking mode is set.

There seems to be a series of get track mode - “send t” - at 10 second intervals which return the correct value [02]# then a single one at 00:17:05 which returns [01]#
This also seems to trigger a set track mode command which sets Tracking to AltAz and this could explain the bad guiding after this.

I’ve reported this to the HC driver author but obviously a work round would be nice. I’ll think about that and see what I can come up with.

Chris

Thanks Chris…

Maybe I might for now have to find the right combination (ie version) of
PHD2 and your earlier Celestron Unified Driver in order to guide.

What to think of that?

Randy

Hi Randy,

It would be great if you could post your PHD2 debug log in the PHD2 forum. That way we can investigate and hopefully fix it. (Unless somebody reports the problem – preferably on the phd2 forum – we don’t know about it and can’t fix it.)

Andy

OK Andy,

I’ll do that a little later, in the meantime I’m having an issue with the
new

SkyWatcher Mount driver. I’m losing guiding after a short time and PHD2

returns a message “unable to Pulse Guide” I am in the process of discussing

this with Chris Rowland.

Randy

Hi Chris,

Would the best resolve right now (as I am unable to guide), be to use EQMOD
via the PC Direct Mode

on the Hand Controller. I have EQMOD installed and it will run with PHD2 and
SGP.

Randy

This isn’t Apollo 13, no one will die if you don’t image tonight. How about taking the night off, the stars will still be there tomorrow and I get the impression that it would help if you had a bit more sleep.

I’ve got a potential solution but I’d like to get some feedback from SkyWatcher first because it’s not bullet proof.

Chris

Thanks for the kind words my friend…

68 yeasr old and trying to act like 30!

Thanks! Also 68 and trying to do too much!

Chris