Native ZWO driver and PHD 2.3.1 - can't guide well

cmassa

I have tried the native ZWO camera driver many times trying to guide my Celestron AVX mount. No matter what settings I try, I cannot get guiding to calm down. If I switch back to the Windows WDM driver at 640x480, guiding improves significantly. I would like to use the native driver because with the WDM, the PHD interface is very sluggish where it is not with the ZWO driver.

I have tried many different settings, adjusting aggressiveness, hysteresis, min motion, etc... and no help. The problem is especially in RA where it will continually move up and down across the baseline.

Maybe I just don't have a good starting point but it is quite frustrating to have to use the WDM driver all the time.

Thanks for any advice. Let me know if you need more info.

Chris

marcos

Hi Chris,

I use the native driver with PHD2 2.3.1c with good results, in earlier PHD2 version the native driver did not works very well.

Maybe you can post a screenshot of the PHD graph showing the settings used.

Clear skies

Marco

cmassa

Here is last night's guiding but this is with the WDM driver. I have used similar settings with the native driver with poor results. I have lowered and raised the various parameters and cannot get stable results. I'll set up with the native driver tonight.

Chris

marcos

Hi Chris,

those settings should work with the Native ZWO ASI driver I see you use 2.3.1h, and it should work ok.

With the zwo asi driver, I set in the brains camera gain at 94 and the exposure time (near the guide button) to 3 seconds.

The remaining setting are as those ones:

SCREENSHOT-900-SEC-TEST.JPG

This works ok for my setup, EOS 1100D Meade LS6" (AltAz mount) guided with the 120MC attached to a 70/210mm OM Lens.

No guaranty that they will work with your setup....

May be you can check if your ASICAMERA ASCOM SETUP is the latest version ? V1.0.0.8 earlier version could cause problems.

I presume that your PA is ok and the scope is leveled ok? (other-way you should have the same problem with the WDM driver).

Other ideas and suggestion I do not have at the present time, my knowledge of guiding and the ASI setup is quite recent and a bit limited.....

Clear skies

Marco

cmassa

I tried again tonight with settings similar to yours. Same problems. It just won't calm down, especially in RA. I have varied all of the parameters multiple times and it just doesn't seem to work for me. Went back to WDM driver for tonight. Polar alignment has been good (1-2 min)

Chris

marcos

Hi Chris,

I have come across this link to an article of Craig Stark, looks interesting, may be there is a solution for you in there.

http://www.cloudynights.com/page/articles/cat/fishing-for-photons/what-to-do-when-phd-guiding-isnt-push-here-dummy-r2677

Clear Skies

Marco