Did you untick the box in the guide module calibration window 'Reset Guide Calibration After Each Mount Slew'? Frequent resetting of the calibration is required for some low-end mounts (like my iOptron SmartEQ). Simply unticking that box should solve your problem.

As for looking through finder scopes: I have not looked through a finder scope in over a year. Just use plate solving in Ekos to find your target. Far more precise and faster than visual. Plus, you can do it all from indoors. Stop the bugs from eating you alive outside in the summer in Texas. Or freezing your fingers off in winter.



PS: Disregard the selections in the main panel. Of course, I am not guiding through the PoleMaster. That camera just populated that drop-down window when I brought it up for illustration purposes to make that screenshot. Just focus on the small window in front where it shows the box you need to untick.

Hoi Peter!

The PoleMaster is just a QHY camera and you use the QHY CCD driver to mount it. It comes up as QHY CCD PoleMaster in the Control Panel and in the camera selection tab in the PA Module in Ekos. Nothing else required. Very convenient. Plug and Play, really. No need to use the PoleMaster software, just use the camera in Ekos.

The PoleMaster is all about convenience. Yes, it is definitely overpriced for such a simple chip and such a simple lens, but it comes with all those adapters that fit perfectly into the PA scope tunnel on various mounts and hold it there rock solid and out of the way. Basically, with the PoleMaster you pay for the convenience of not having to rig a self-built camera to your mount. But if you like tinkering, as I do, it should be possible to build one from webcam components combined with a cheap lens for very little.

In fact, I am getting inspired by the other threads here that discuss adapting the Raspberry Pi camera for Ekos. There are lenses for that camera you can buy for a few $ that have a suitable FOV, so I could envisage a scenario where I mount the Pi4 running Ekos directly to the mount and use that camera for my polar alignment.

Herzliche Gruesse,

Jo

You can create a pseudo-polemaster with a guide camera and CCTV lense. I used a 50mm lense on my ASI 120 with great results. You may need a 5mm C-CS adapter depending on the lense. Also it does not have to be located on center with the RA axis, so you may mount it anywhere convenient.
That being said, I only use it for my Star Adventurer star tracker. With my main mount, I get close enough with the polescope to use the PAA tool through my guidescope.

Guide scope works, of course, but there is always some degree of flexure that throws it off. You can test that by doing PA first in the East, then West direction or vice versa. That will tell you the degree of flexure in your guide scope. In my case that is almost 5 arcmin (with the mount moving between 60 degrees East to 60 degrees West). That is pretty bad. And I have that Orion 50 mm guide scope bolted down as hard as I could.

Flexure during exposures really only becomes a problem with longer exposures where the mount moves sufficiently to perceptibly alter the forces pulling on the guide scope. Stacking will later eliminate the image shift resulting from the flexure induced shift of the optical axes of guide scope relative to imaging scope. I still get round stars with 120s exposures and more is not practical from my lightpolluted area anyway.

By mounting the small PoleMaster directly on the RA axis, flexure is completely eliminated, though. You can do the same with every self-built camera, but the real issue is to eliminate flexure. If the setup is rickety, PA will suffer.

El Corazon -
What version of Kstars/Ekos are you running? I am running version 3.4.0 Build 2020 -0106T10:36-16Z and it does not have that option in the Guiding Module setup. I have been reluctant to do an update because I have everything working in this version. I will make a backup SD and try updating it.

I assume in the previous version turning off calibration was NOT an option and it just always calibrated after every slew. How did anyone take any deep sky pictures in this version? By the time the calibration is done the mount has moved off target??

thanks,
Ron

That box was previously in the EKOS > Options > Scheduler tab. Could have been > Capture tab, I am no longer certain. That's where it should be in Kstars 3.4.0.




Check out this thread:

indilib.org/forum/ekos/6486-ekos-kstars-...requently.html#49734

Others had the same problem. That also shows where the box is in Ekos 3.4.0

Thanks, I found it there. If there is one criticism I have of Kstars/Ekos (and I say this with great reluctance because I do not want to hurt anyone's feelings about their effort, because the program and the developer's efforts on it are a great contribution to amateur (and maybe more) astrophotography), is that there are a number of these "hidden" items that need to be checked before you can really start to use the program with confidence that you have told it to do what you want it to do. And while the videos and the documentation is there and this forum is a great help, it still takes some time to find all this out. Some sort of progressive workflow process explanation. that covered all of them (a fair task), in writing (because while the videos are great most of us don't take notes and don't remember half of what we saw) would be helpful.

I have tried for myself to start a spreadsheet of these type of items and I have over 40 items and 280 lines of text!

I realize this is a work in progress and that's ok and this forum helps fill in those explanations; you just need to be able to find them.

thanks and keep up the good work.
Ron

As I added this re-calibration after slew item to my spreadsheet list I realized that what might be a help is to just have a printout (or a file) associated with each profile that lists all the items by module and options and what their settings are for this profile. At least then you could review that list and have some idea of what is set and what is not. Having to go thru all the screens is a little more cumbersome (at least for some of us).

thanks,
Ron

I would suggest upgrading to 3.4.3. There are a few new great features in there, Linear focuser and a new panel where you can visually check the quality of your guide calibration.

Just back up an image of your current SD card (always a good idea) and upgrade to 3.4.3 from the Nightly repository.

Will do eventually. Right now I have 2 working copies of this version. I have a manual focuser and right now I am using PHD2 to guide, so those new options are not a must have for me. I have had a number of relatively good star nights and have mostly used them to get the system working as I intend (and expect). I seem to be getting there and now I would like to do some imaging!

thanks,
Ron

I think it has been mentioned before, but has anyone found a solution for the 'terrible' color combination of the "warning" messages that show up at the top of the PHD2 window? What I see is white text on a yellow background and it is almost impossible to read. I have tried changing the setting in "desktop Preferences" so that all text is black, but that has not helped.


thanks,
Ron

BTW you can exploit the wider FOV of your guide scope/camera to ease the polar alignment process -- just select the guidescope instead of the main imaging camera when you run the Assistant. It doesn't matter if the guider isn't perfectly collimated with the main scope, it can still do the math just fine. If you want, you can then rerun it at higher mag with the main scope, and the vector should be well within its FOV.