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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Guiding with a 50mm finder guider setup

  • Posts: 26
  • Thank you received: 1
I've been having a play with the guiding module and the telescope / ccd simulators to get a feel for how it all works. I've set up the telescope simulator to mirror my real kit values, which includes a 50mm finder/guider (approx 175mm focal length) coupled with an SPC900 webcam. After a series of failures getting the calibration stage to work settings I started to tweak the guide modules parameters... I found that setting a pulse of 1000 and the value of Auto mode(?) to the max of 10 it would calibrate, but the intial guiding was pretty erratic. The graph lurched up and down for a while before settling down, and this happened again when I used the telescope control panel to introduce and "error" for the guiding module to correct. I also had a couple of instances where the simulated guide star was lost, which I think might be due to the guide scope F number, the simulated star field was literally just single pixels, there was no "size" to the stars.

I think that the 50mm finder scope and webcam combination will give the setup a fairly wide feild of view, and presumably that has an effect on the guiding accuracy. Does anybody else use this kind of guiding setup who could perhaps comment on the settings they have found to work well? Or am I blazing a trail here? :)

Jasem, could you perhaps comment on which guiding parameters you conider to be the most important when setting up the guiding module?

Thanks.
9 years 11 months ago #914

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I just tried these settings (50 mm aperture, 175 mm focal length), and calibration worked fine for pulse of 1500ms. Just make sure to select "CCD Simulator" from the Via menu as the telescope simulator interface is not as fine tuned for pulse commands as the CCD simulator is.
Last edit: 9 years 11 months ago by Jasem Mutlaq.
9 years 11 months ago #955

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Ahhh, ok that's good to know :) Thanks.
9 years 11 months ago #962

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