best settings for zwo ASI174mm for autoguiding in Maxim DL?

meisters

I have tried numerous times to get autoguiding with my ASI174mm in Maxim DL. The program either cannot calibrate or if it does I get a red line that looks like it has a small triangle sitting on one end, and no right-angle L shape. Then if I start guiding it just says 'guide star faded."

I can usually guide with PHd, but then I can't dither automatically or rely on maxpoint, so I really want to get it working with Maxim DL, so I would appreciate any advice on the right connections and settings to try.

Here are the details of my setup:

Maxim DL Pro 6,12 running on Win 8.1

Guide camera - ZWO ASI174MM on USB 3.0

Imaging camera - STF8300MM

mount - CGEM DX with side-by-side guidescope 4" F5 refractor and imaging scope 5" F7 APO refractor

ASI camera attached to ST4 port on mount (I have 3 cables that all work with PHd but give the same problematic result in Maxim DL)

I have downloaded the latest drivers for the camera, plus I have installed both the WDM driver + ASICamera ST4 telescope ASCOM Driver and the ASICamera ASCOM Driver

Guide camera settings: ASI camera (advanced) ASCOM drivers (Properties) to ASI174MM; raw16 & lowest read noise.

Guider Settings - control via guider relays; Cal time 50 on both X and Y. Aggressiveness=9

Track box 128X128

I appreciate any advice!

Thanks,

Steve

meisters

Here is an update, although nobody had answered my first post yet. I have changed to a new mount - a Titan with Gemini 2. It seems to work great and points quite accurately. Also, it is much easier to connect to Maxim's guiding. However, I am not sure about the video camera settings to use. I keep getting 'star faded' alerts, even though the guider calibrates well and seems to guide!

Any thoughts or advice?

More details - here is a question I just posted on the Maxim UG.

I am guiding using a ZWO-ASI 174MM camera via Video DS. When I calibrate, even with a nice bright star showing, it will say 'could not find guide star a few times. Then it might calibrate successfully, but as soon as I start guiding I get multiple guide star faded alerts.

After 3-4 tries, I let it guide, and while the alarm never stopped, it did seem to guide. I still get good round stars from my STF-8300M main camera.

I saw a recent post about guiding that worked better with more noise. Is it possible that I have the video camera settings too clean?

I have tried multi-star guiding, differential guiding, and a range of 'track box sizes' - that seems to make no difference.

Here is an excerpt from the log.

04$5 Guider Calibration Completed

04$5 Guider Tracking Started

04$5 Guide star not detected for 5 guider cycles

04>5 Guide star fade alarm acknowledged

04$5 Guide star not detected for 5 guider cycles

04$5 Guider Tracking Stopped

04>5 Guide star fade alarm acknowledged

04>6 View, Camera Control Window