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Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

iOptron CEM120EC2 Guiding in EKOS

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I have recently purchased an iOptron CEM120EC2 and have been fiddling with the auto guide settings. I've read a number of forum posts here and on CN and understand that these EC mounts don't like to be pushed around too much by auto guiding (and yes, for now, I'm still planning to guide with an EC mount). Suggestions vary from 5 to 10 seconds between guide pulses for the EC mounts and I've been experimenting. From what I've read, PhD (which I don't use at the moment) allows for short guide exposures and then a user defined delay before the next guide exposure. If using EDOS guiding, I've read advice indicating one should just increase the exposure time to match the guide pulse interval you're looking for. This seems like a suboptimal fix. Is there a way in the EKOS guide module to separate guide camera exposure time from the frequency of guide exposures?

Thanks!
1 year 8 months ago #84701

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Hi Frederick, I have a CEM120EC and just use 10 sec exposures for guiding. I bring this down to 3 secs to speed things up during calibration, My guiding seems to woirk ok, but like you I'd be interested in being able to seoarate exposure and pulse frequency.
Regards
Tim
1 year 8 months ago #84703

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I have the CEM120 EC2 and with EKOS I have been getting consistent around under 0.5", and occasionally on good night down to 0.25".
I did upgrade the firmware last year after the latest update, which helped.
If you are having trouble, the #1 culprit is probably gear mesh. That needs adjusting usually.



1 year 8 months ago #84706
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Thanks Peter and Tim,

My guiding is typically running between .75" and 1.5" depending on how low in the sky I'm shooting. It has gone as low as .5" but that's the exception. I've made some adjustments to the gear mesh but I'll have another look to see if that helps. I'll let you know.

That said, I think it would be a great feature for the EKOS guide module to include the ability to separately determine exposure length and guide pulse frequency.
1 year 8 months ago #84708

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I agree that a delay setting would be great, and suggested that before but never any responses.
1 year 8 months ago #84710

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Is there a reason why short exposures (e.g. 2 secs) with 10 second pulse frequency would be better than an exposure of 10 seconds?

We can add delay after the pulse is sent. i.e. Capture 2 seconds --> Send Pulse --> Delay 8 seconds --> Capture 2 seconds ...etc.
1 year 8 months ago #84731

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It's a fair question. I think if you are talking about 6 to 10 second guide exposures, then the difference is probably not noticeable.
Shorter guide exposures would benefit from a delay. Longer guide exposures would oversaturate the stars.
99% of users would not have any reason to use it, as only certain mounts fight with auto guide pulses like the EC2.

Right now I am doing OK, and am probably seeing limited. Back when I first desired this setting, the EC2 was fighting with EKOS's auto guider a lot. But after a firmware update this seems to be less of an issue when using >6 second guide exposures.

I will admit that longer guide exposures (>3 seconds) makes using an OAG much easier. I have never had to adjust the OAG to find guide stars.

On a side note: If I was imaging under 1000mm focal length then I wouldn't guide at all. Unguided, the mount tracks well with a guide error of around 1 arc second. But I image at 2,000mm focal length, so that is too much of an error with my camera which has a resolution of 0.4 arc seconds.
1 year 8 months ago #84743

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At any rate, I added support for delays, but this won't make it to KStars 3.6.0, it will be available in v3.6.1
1 year 8 months ago #84744

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Thanks Jasem - your question is a fair one as Peter mentions. Also, thanks for the feature update. If I have the chance in the coming days, I'll try to do some experimenting with my guide camera saturation and save the files. It looks like I'm seeing it but as we know, that can be subjective. I would like to experiment with even longer frequency of guide pulses to this EC mount, just to see how it goes.

Also, Peter, I did adjust the gear mesh again yesterday and saw some better guiding results (at a 10 second guide exposure). Trying to listen to the mount at different slewing rates to see if I can hear evidence of binding is bit of an art, particularly with neighbor's leaf blower going!

Thanks all,
1 year 8 months ago #84745

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