Hello, I am sharing with you a problem that has already been described in this forum but which has been left unsolved. Here's my setup: Planewave L350 mount + CDK14 + Starchaser SC4 + OA-X + Player One Zeus Mono camera and Player One Phoenix filter wheel. I have perfect balance. The installation was supervised by Franck Valbousquet. I have a Primalucelab Lab Eagle 5S computer that controls the telescope and is connected to the telescope. My SC4 is powered directly from the mains supply. My SC4 is connected via USB directly to my computer without any intermediary. I updated MaximDL pro V7.1.4. I updated the SC4: DLAPIWrapper.dll 4.0.2.0 and flapi.dll 4.0.2.0. I set the software binning mode onto sum and clip I performed the AO calibration on a fairly bright star (magnitude 3) without any failure messages. I set the aggressiveness between 6 and 8. I set the max pixel move to 10. I still have the same problem: when I activate tracking, the star oscillates strongly throughout the window in an anarchic and random manner, on the order of 10-20 inches. When I activate tracking with the AO: the mount's encoder curves show an oscillation in DEC and RA of around +/- 1 inch. When I stop tracking, the encoder curves return to normal. It's an on/off effect. I think the mount's encoders detect the oscillation of the AO's glass slide, but it's not the mount that creates this oscillation. The encoders even manage to detect the shutter movement when creating darks. When I'm not using the AO and I'm doing continuous acquisitions with the starchaser, I don't experience these oscillations. These oscillations come from the AO's glass slide. When I track in Bin 2, it's a little better, but in Bin 1, the star completely leaves the window and the AO has a 100% tilt (see photo). I calibrated the mount: no calibration failures. I tried activating and deactivating the mount motors: same result. When I activate the mount (enable X and Y motor), I set the activation level to 80% and the Bump Time to 10/100: same result. If I modify these settings, no change. When I manually adjust the tracking speed of the AO: the oscillation is improved by setting the speeds to the maximum (1000); the reverse is worse. By default, the automatic calibration indicates a value of X: 97 and Y: 104 approximately. I set the SNR to 50 (if I modify it, it doesn't change anything). The track box is set to 32X32 (if I modify it, it doesn't change the oscillation). I track between 10 and 20 Hz, but the oscillations are still present. I can't figure out which parameter could be causing this. I'm thinking of a hardware problem with the AO or a problem with the SC4 and its software: perhaps an erroneous detection of hot pixels resulting in a false correction I'm attaching photos and a link to download the video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l3f1...ey=l20rehwytz1fbdy40r5qjg1fh&st=6b2fpcnq&dl=0 Rick McAlister encountered the same problem but I don't know if he found the solution Can you help me please? Sincerely, Michael Bouyer
Thank you for posting this. You reinforce what others have been saying for many months. The problem remains on my system too. Initially I thought the sum and clip option was helping as it appeared the random jumping had reduced significantly. That is not the case unfortunately. I have also tried many, many parameters and different approaches to no avail. Just yesterday, I took a dozen 5 minute exposures only to examine and see that every single one had 'tails' on every star indicative that the star jumping was very active during those exposures. I still think that the inability to calibrate the mount and the AO in the bin mode you intend to use has something to do with it. I cannot understand why DL are taking so long to address this problem. You would have noticed also that with the L mount, it is still moving when the mount calibration routine is underway. God only knows how Maxim is interpreting that calibration data. Again, I have repeated asked DL to implement a user defined delay between calibration exposures. Nope. Good luck, I have about given up.
Michael, please zip up your Documents\MaxIm DL 7\Settings folder, and upload so I can review. Martin, I am working with colleagues on a couple of things. a) An updated ASCOM 64-bit driver. An exception that can occur with the SC-2/3/4 is addressed. I have to do a sanity check. b) We found what looks like the binning mode problem when external software sets it in MaxIm. Gillian is working on the fix right now. I've lent her my AO hardware so you can do some development tests. c) Since you could not get the calibration delay to work, I will try to set up some hardware here and test it to see what happens.
Hello, I'm sending you my settings zip file via the forum and also to your personal email. Sorry for the redundancy of my messages, but I didn't know how to contact you to find a solution. Thank you for considering my problem. Sincerely, Michael BOUYER
Hello Colin, Did you work on my problem? Did you find an anomaly in my settings zip file? I remain without a solution at the moment. Kind regards. Michael
