ASI183MM as Guider

my-spot

I selected and have been trying to use an ASI183MM (non-cooled) as a guide camera for a while now. It makes a fantastic guide camera - when it works... It has low noise, it reads out fast enough with ASCOM, and it has a large FOV. The problem is it "fails" or has some kind of error nearly every night. I'm "old school" and use MAXIM DL (MDL) to guide via the ASCOM driver.

Example: Last night the MDL/183 combo got stuck on "reading ccd", however other nights the 183 seems to lock up and the driver just sends the the exact same image buffer over and over. Because the image does not change, MDL thinks that the guiding is "perfect". Some nights the system just reports a "guider error". I have jury rigged my automation software (CCDC) to restart the guider after each filter change which can often save a night's imaging depending on the failure.

I have replaced and tried different (all high quality) USB cables, Hubs, and USB controller cards. Due to how my system is configured I must use an "on OTA" USB Hub (now a Pegasus Astro). One important note is my observatory is (over 2700km (1700mi) away - so lots of hardware swaps are a pain.

I found USB 2.0 to be much more reliable than USB 3.0 and I do not require the 3.0 speeds. USB 3.0 seems to only work for a few minutes before failure. The most reliable thing for me is everything is USB 3.0 but is plugged into a USB 2.0 port on the computer. All of the USB connections are "strapped down" to reduce/eliminate connection issues from cable movement. I feel I have done all I can with hardware and connections. The other cameras on my rig do not have these issues.

I know it is a long-shot to ask, but any suggestions?

Tech@ZWO

Hello,
183 sensor is too big for guiding, it is not suitable as a guide camera in the first place, and second, you don't need USB3.0 for guiding. You should use it as a main camera first on USB3.0 to check if there is any issue which can provides this camera is fine or not.

rudibarani

Dear Tech@ZWO team,

I am using the ASI183MM Pro as guidecam for the same reasons as @my-spot via an ASIAir. It works really nice. I agree, that the FOV is "too big" and would be interested to know, if an options for a "selected field of view" would be possible from your side? If I got it right, guiding already uses the video mode which has the option to select a smaller FOV to increase the frame rate. So implementing this for the guiding part as well should be very little effort. Many of us have OSC and mono cameras and if I put on the OSC, using the mono camera as a guide cam is a neat option. Why choose a "worse" smaller guider, if I have a better camera around?
Would be nice to hear your opinion on that.
Best,
Phillip