In doing some testing and sending manual guide pulses to my Orion SSAG (QHY5), I noticed that 1000 ms pulses in DEC seem to move the mount. However, it seems that 4000 ms pulses are needed to change RA by ~1 sec. I know that others have tested using 1000 ms pulses and reported not much east/west movement. I also seem to recall having issues like this when I updated to PHD2 and was using the cameras ST4 guide port. I had to use the ASCOM driver instead of ST4 to make it work properly. The best I can recall, the older version of PHD didn't have this issue.
Is there some way to bypass the ST4 port and have the guide pulses sent to the scope like ASCOM?
Thanks knro. I am using the ZEQ25. In the INDI control panel under the guiders 'guide' tab, if I send 1000 ms pulses there, nothing happens without ST4. Is it possible to test there or would it only work in Ekos under the guide tab and selecting the QHY via ZEQ25?
Yes you can send pulses from there. Maybe you need to send multiple ones or one long one before you can see any differences in the reported RA/DE coordinates.
Thanks.....it does work under Windows with PHD2 using ASCOM. However, in the interest of time, and because I need a better guider, I think I will abandon this and purchase a Lodestar X2. Thanks for your help....
How are you determining 'no movement'. Is it possible the mount doesn't acknowledge guide pulses in the returned ra/dec co-ordinates, but, it is actually making the moves ? In that case, I would expect to see movement in a star image display, but nothing in the returns from the mount.
An easy way to check this, without being set up under stars, put your guide rate to 1 x sidereal, then when you hit the buttons for one direction, motor should stop, and when you hit the other direction, motor will double speed.
I determined no movement with the scope under actual stars. It doesn't guide at all without ST4. Using ST4, I can't get a calibration with anything less than 4000ms pulses and that's ok so long as it's guiding. The guider works fine under PHD2 with ST4 and using ASCOM (not ST4) though so i'm not sure what to think here. I can't recall what the pulse settings were in PHD2 though.
Thanks for the suggestion. I may still give that a try when I get some time. I do have a lodestar x2 on order.