I just received a new sti camera. Last nite I was guiding with maxim 6.09 and lodestar x2 with no problems. At the end of the imaging session, I connected the sti. New settings were added to the camera window to accommodate the new camera. Images downloaded successfully with various exposures including darks, but I noticed the mount was not moving when I went to calibrate. I am using guiding relays, but also tried ascom direct with the guide cable disconnected. My mount is an ap 1600. The same guiding cable and usb cable were used with the lodestar, so I have ruled those out as the problem. I also used the move commands in the guide tab. Same no move results. Images will download, but there is no star movement indicated in the image, no matter how long I set the move time. Time I started to try guiding with the sti was about 0530 in the log. Any ideas out there. Thanks for the help...............................Gunny Attached Files: a"> 20150731.zip File size: 3.7 KB Views: 0
Well it took awhile, but I think I discovered the problem with the sti. There was NO problem! I have already shipped the camera back to opt and of course now I discover the problem. Due to star fade problems with the lodestar x2, I decided to use my stt 8300 and the main imaging chip for my guider. Tried it out for the first time to see if it would move the mount. Guess what? It didn't move the mount. SOB tears! I can't have two camera that are defective?.........Turns out the guider cable that came with my stt 8300 is a NON REVERSING guide cable. A.K.A. a straight cable. This won't work of course. I found this out by looking at the port pin outs on the ap mount and the stt 8300. To confirm, I called Tim Puckett. Tim spent a lot of time working on the problem with me. We both thought that this was impossible, especially since the cable came with the camera. To further confirm,,, I called George at ap. Sure enough, he confirmed that sbig cameras use a reverse guiding cable and was gracious enough to provide a testing diagram for trouble shooting the mount along with cable determination docs. I opted to get rid of the cable, instead. My lodestar uses a straight cable and would move the mount, so of course it worked with the mount......didn't know the lodestar used a different configuration from the sbig cameras. I've since removed the cable and gone with guiding via telescope......... The cable will be shot at dawn. Last nite, guiding was done via telescope and using the stt 8300 as the guider for my fli camera/ ago scope. No problems finding guide stars, and no star fade problems. Obviously, the lodestar still has a problem with hot pixels, even though I was using full calibration. My guess is that my calibration images and bpm need to be redone. Hopefully this will bring an end to the guiding issues that I've been having for several months. Thanks to Tim, George, Adam, Doug, and Owen for their assistance. I will also post this on the maxim forum..............................I hate guide cables! ...............................Gunny
