Guide settings

lin-thaler

Hi, still having problems with guiding. It was good from beginning, but since a few weeks im struggling on that. What settings would you suggest for me in the Guide section:
"Calibration Step"
"Max DEC Duration"
"Max RA Duration"
Dither Settings
..for the following Equipment: ASI 224MC & 290MM min Camera, EQ-6R Pro, William Optics 50/200 or TS72/432 Guiding Scope. (Main ist Williams GT81 or TS Apo 130 wit an ASI 294 MC Pro)
The last season all went good, but now its turning so bad. See picture. I crosschecked cameras and changed cables.
Please provide me with (your suggested) Guide Settings in the App (iPad Pro IOS 14.3. AsiAir Firmware 1.51).
Thanks - Tom!

suttonrog

To me it looks as though your mount is not tracking.
Rog

Tech@ZWO

try to enhance the guide camera gain in the setting
and check whether the tracking is on

you can manually choose a relatively bright star to guide

Markus

What Suttonrog said is worth checking. Had same issue at may last session and it cost me nearly 1h of trials and a lot of nerves until I recognised that the tracking of the mount in the mount menu was set off. I don’t know why, latest firmware update or automatic shut off and home position at last session. Simple, but don’t trust ASIAIR after the last update.

lin-thaler

enhancing camera gain and so on has no effect. I tried two guide cameras as I said and two different HQ guide scopes. Tracking is "on". EQ6 R Pro works without guiding. I also changed cables and powered the AsiAir with old 5 Amp and all new 10 Amp power supply.
Always the same since 2 month: Start guiding and in between a few seconds all went out of control and the star cannot be hold.
All I want to know is a suggestion about the "guide settings" in the App:

"Calibration Step"
"Max DEC Duration"
"Max RA Duration"
"Dither Settings"

Thank you - Tom

chichiflys

I think my ASI Air tracks my EQ-6 fairly well. Your Aggr settings seem low though (they are shown at the top of the guiding graph, you can hit the + or - to adjust), mine are like 50 and 75 for Dec and RA respectively. I've kept the Max DEC and RA Duration at 2000 since t's the default. I saw a video where someone recommended to change it to 300 or so, but that seemed to make things worse. Dither Settings shouldn't affect your tracking, it's just something to use to help image quality in processing. Id' leave it off until you figure out what's causing the tracking problems. It wasn't until my 4th USB cable that my Nikon D5300 started working correctly with the ASI Air Pro. Frustrating for sure.

lin-thaler

Thank you for your detailed answer! I've already tried and worked before with way more agressiveness from 60 to 80, with no change. I saw the video too with 300/500 that is why I asked.
You know, before that problems came, the setup worked good for 9 month...

Monsak

w7ay explain guiding in this post and I think it’s very useful.

https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/11318-guiding-asistant