Getting the best performance from my AM5: Page 28

Getting the best performance from my AM5

MarcK

Kevin_A
Yes of course I always play around with the gain. It always depends on where I am. Here in Switzerland in the mountains, we have some places with very dark skies. Sometimes I need gain 80.

I deliberately opt for a strong dithering of 30px. I only see advantages here. I have to cut the picture a little anyway, although the RedCat 51 and 71 deliver very well.

You have already gained a lot of experience in this thread what do you think about the diagram of my AM5. Mine was produced at the beginning of this year and if you compare it with last year's models, it doesn't look so smooth to me.

Kevin_A

MarcK your partial graph only represents a small portion of the complete period length at the highest PE area and not the full period. So it is bascally useless in reality to a point. However, based on that partial portion you would probably benefit from 0.5s guiding due to the many smaller fluctuations. Looking at the complete period I would bet that the whole period length is similar and rapid small corrections will do well to correct it. The roughness is typical of all 288s period mounts from zwo these days.
Looks ok to me, scary shape as usual but typical.

MarcK

Kevin_A
Thank you so much Kevin
Then I'll have lots of settings to test in the near future. I will definitely compare the difference between 0.5 and 1 sec exposure time. I hope we get good weather again soon - at the moment it's always cloudy.

I find it very unfortunate that ZWO is not speaking up in this thread and leaving the work to the people like you who have experience with this optimization. ZWO should really use the information from this thread to inform new users with a tutorial as an example.

Kevin_A

MarcK you welcome. I have not had very much clear skies either recently. Maybe 2 nights in the last 60 days here in Canada. I am not sure why zwo has issues with tailoring the software to help strain wave mounts run better, nor why they do not offer guidance towards better settings for their own mounts. Maybe they do not understand their own mounts and the engineering fundamentals is farmed out and the resources and knowledge is not relayed back to tech support. Then again, other manufacturers seem to be thin on guidance too. I have learned a lot from people much more knowledgeable than myself and combine that with my own research and then pass it forward to others so the knowledge bank grows. Cheers.,

ASIMount@ZWO

MarcK Sorry for your dissatisfied. If you have any trouble with ZWO's products, you can contact our support to get help.

MarcK

Kevin_A
The same here the summer was already bad and from fall until now it was hardly more than a handful of nights. Since I started with a few large panoramas, it will take some time until I have collected enough data.

I also had problems with Plate Solve - the system was constantly getting lost and no longer knew where it was. Sometimes nothing helped and then, as if by magic, everything worked again the next time. Currently I only have the problem that the correct object is not named in the autorun, every object is named Polaris.

The problem is obvious: with AsiAir, ZWO wants to appeal to a wide audience. But with more compatibility comes more and more problems. Instead of solving the problems, new products are constantly being brought onto the market. It will be fun when an AM7 comes along, which will appeal to a different audience.

There can be problems with any product. It just depends on how the manufacturer reacts.

ZWO can now benefit free of charge from our experience in optimizing guiding. And the only right thing to do is to inform the users. A blog post with a tutorial would be the first step. Simply inform that this type of mount behaves differently, explain the correlations and name new standard settings as a starting point.

In a second step, this must be transferred to AsiAir. If an AM5 / 3 is connected, other basic settings must be displayed and, over time, further options for optimizing the system.

MarcK

ASIMount@ZWO

Really wrong answer!!!
Please read my last post.
Then please take this whole thread and send it to the developers and marketing.
There are now over 500 posts in this thread with a lot of information you can never get by testing on your own. Just benefit from our help and make something good out of it we all play in the same team.

At the beginning of this thread, it would be appropriate for ZWO to speak up in the next few days and make a clear statement.

Lain402

MarcK
Why do you think they don’t react here ? They didn’t read the 532 post on this thread. They are too busy doing who knows what. And even if they wanted to use the knowledge that you guys accumulated here … they just don’t understand what you’re talking about! Honestly I doubt they designed their mounts. It’s like their refractors. Someone else designed it for them and that guy is not here on the forum reading our posts.

Gagan

mountainair

mountainair
Hey 👋🏻
I do hope so, because I am selling a AZ-EQ6 and bought the AM5.
I was happy with the AZ-EQ6 Performance but not with the weight.
Having to drive 1 hour one way to a dark sky location and setup a big mount it’s starting to take a toll.

I hope I can get the same guiding performance with the AM5, with the biggest scope I currently have which is the Esprit 120 refractor.

Lain402

Gagan

I also have an Esprit 120 and an EQ-6R. I got the AM5 few months ago but I’m keeping the EQ-6.
I know the AM5 can theoretically handle this weight but I think the mount is too lightweight to safely carry a so big ( and expensive) scope.

I’m lucky to have a good AM5, it’s tracking nicely from the first day but I don’t trust it on the long run.

MarcK

Lain402
Don't dash my hopes that this company will act a little more intelligently 😅
It would really be so easy to learn from the users and work together towards a common goal ✨✨✨

Lain402

MarcK
You mean … easy as 1,2,3 ? 😂
If you have some time to browse through this forum you’ll see that the whole place is a testament of what ZWO is capable in terms of customer service. It’s not brilliant, to say the least.

Here you’ll find some users with VERY high level of knowledge in astrophotography, electronic engineering, coding and computer engineering in general ( don't count me in, I’m just an ignorant person).

When you have a so strong base of users who are so dedicated (passionate ! ) about the products you are making money from and you can’t listen to what they say … that’s a waste you can’t afford for ever.

As I said before, it’s not that they can’t hear, but more a lack of basic understanding of how their own products works. Just see how many times they reply complete nonsense in the comments, before disappearing for weeks…

Galaxium

w7ay

I took my ZWO provided PE graph and digitized it via WebPlotDigitizer. I took that data and put it in a spreadsheet and calculated the local slope between each row of data. That didn't work out so well but I was able to visually identify the max slop area and choose the points to give me my maximum slope.

I chose these points to calculate my max slope:

(250.92, 6.588)
(251.03, 2.5158)

=> 4.0722 / ( 0.11 * (24 hr * 3600 sec / 360 degrees )
=> 4.0722 / (0.11 * 240)

I am unsure about the 240 as it relates to my AM5. Graph below of a November 2023 mount.

Max Slope (arc-sec / sec) = 0.154

Am I doing this correctly? My guiding results were not great with the ASIAIR+ defaults. I have been testing RA and DEC Aggression percentages. I have found this thread and everything is making more sense. It appears ZWO has made some improvements to the AM5 mounts over time? My graph below for inquiring minds.

I have not read how to properly calculate the "Calibration Step" size. Can someone clear this up for me? Kevin_A

ASIAIR+
William Optics 32mm f/3.75 Guidescope Focal Length 120mm
ASI120MC Mini (I just tossed my ASI 174MM in the garbage which I knew was a mistake but now I know it is confirmed as a mistake)
AM5
Redcat 71
I assume 0.5x sidereal since I haven't changed anything in my ASIAAIR+.

Many thanks to everyone in this thread with special appreciate to Chen. Thank you!

Kevin_A

Galaxium first of all do not use a color camera to guide with as it will not work very well. Just get yourself a 120mm mini. Calibration steps for that setup is anywhere between 1800ms to 2000ms it is not that critical with a 120mm guide scope. It is solely based on the guide scope focal length and pixel size. Phd2 has an advanced tab under guiding you can use to verify for yourself.
My mount has a slope of 0.155arcsec/sec and your setting could be similar…. But not definitely the same as the slope may be worse in an area that is not in the partial graph.

Galaxium

Kevin_A Thank you for responding, Kevin.

I had a typo in that post. My guide camera is a ASI120MM Mini. It is sitting on my desk now waiting for tonight.

I have read your past posts that reference focal length of the guide scope and pixel size of the guide camera being the two factors that dictate the Calibration Step. When you make ballpark calls for people like you just did for me, is this using lots of experience with Phd2 or is there some formula I should be using to get a good sense of where I need to be?

Kevin_A

Galaxium it is a calculation to move the guide star at least 25 pixels in about 10-14 steps.
Like I said this formula can be found on the web and it is also in the phd2 software…. So not my doing… it is a calculation based on your inputs. Bigger guide scopes and OAG are usually between 300-600ms and the typical 120mm guide scope with 120 guide cam is around 1800-2000ms. My 240mm scope with a 120mm mini is around 900ms. Bigger the guide scope FL the smaller the calibration ms size.

Galaxium

Just making a few small changes from this thread and my Total Error is down to under 0.7". I would have never thought this possible. I am going to keep working on this. Thank you Chen, Kevin, and everyone for contributing. I also asked ZWO for a CSV file of all data points from 0 - 360. I am sure they will ignore this request, but I wanted to give it a try.

Galaxium

w7ay

This is just about the math Chen. I would appreciate some guidance on this from anyone here.

Regarding #3.

My slope was 0.15 or 15 arc-sec/sec. I assume to get the Max RA duration I would do the following:

Max RA = (2 * 15 ) / 0.5
Max RA = 60

Is this correct?

Gagan

Last night, after two months between cloudy weather and work commitments, I managed to finally setup the mount and give it a go.

I set it up on a Pier with PE200, and used a 2600MC coupled with 135mm Samyang @ F/2.8, guided with the 462MC on a ZWO F4 guidescope. The control is performed by a Mele Mini Pc with PHD2 for guiding and APT for main camera control.

Everything was polar aligned using the sharpcap routine.

For some reason it started the night really well, at around 0.32” total RMS, and even reaching 0.28”. This was with the main lens pointing almost vertically to the zenith because my target (Spaghetti Nebula) was close to the meridian already.

Then the mount stopped tracking because it reached the limits.

I performed a manual meridian flip, recalibrated PHD2 guiding and couldn’t seem to make it work anymore, it wasn’t able to go lower than 0.9” with peaks and moments reaching 1.6”.

I tried changing a bunch of setting but nothing helped.

I attach an image of the guiding, hoping someone is able to help me out here, because I have no idea, about what is wrong..

Thanks

The Setup

The PHD2 Guiding

Kevin_A

Gagan yeah, mine did not like to guide on the other side of the meridian last night too. The main guide star looks a bit too wide so that might not help. I sometimes look at the main guide star and if it is not good I restart guiding again so it picks a new star. You could be running into a bit of bad atmosphere too as the skies are a bit turbulent. I also find that the counterweight might be an issue when you run a light scope like a Rokinon 135, so I don’t use it for my 135 f2 setup. I found guiding at 0.5s better last night than my usual 1s.

Gagan

Kevin_A
Hey Kevin, thanks a lot for taking the time to share your info.

I will definitely have to give it another try and maybe without the counterweight.

I initial thought that adding just a 1kg counterweight would help with the guiding, as it should make the mount more stable.

I understand, from all your help and answers on this forum, that you know your way around the AM5 and the harmonic mounts in general as Chen also does.

If you allow me, I would like unfortunately to bother a little more 🙂 and ask a tiny bit more for help..

I have calculated the slope based on my chart, by using the steepest slope that Chen suggests according to my graph (even if is possible that is not the steepest, as it might not be represented in the chart by ZWO).

I mainly have 2 questions:

Is there a way to measure the full PE curve of my mount, maybe with PHD2 guiding, and how long would it take to complete a full turn (for a 288 seconds period mount) ?
And once I have the slope, where do I go from there? Meaning how do I select the settings from the guiding (Aggression, MnMo, MaxRA/MaxDEC) ?

Thanks again.

And of course if anybody else has any suggestions and advice you are more than welcome to add them !

I will be happy to try anything to make sure that I get some repeatable setting and guiding.

Clear Skies !

Gagan

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