STX Guide Sensor Blank

Discussion in 'STX and STXL Series Cameras' started by Dale Mais, Jul 25, 2018.

  1. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Owen, I followed your instructions to the letter(I put patch in also).
    After following steps 1-2, I proceeded to step 3, at this point a basically dead Image of the autoguider chip comes up, all pixels with zero value. Since I did this at twilight there should have been plenty of light.
    I went to step 4, exposed (this is camera 1) and get an image just fine with real values etc.
    If I designate in guide tab camera 1, I get an image just fine on guide chip, if I now go to expose (which is now camera 2, nothing, dead image of auto guide chip, no values at all.

    So I remain back where I started

    Dale
     
  2. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Owen, at your website I am not able to find this thread at all, I wanted to attach screen shots of what I got tonight so you see for yourself, could you send me your email address so I can send it to you for your thoughts?

    Dale
     
  3. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Owen, at your website I am not able to find this thread at all, I wanted to attach screen shots of what I got tonight so you see for yourself, could you send me your email address so I can send it to you for your thoughts?

    Dale
     
  4. Owen Lawrence

    Owen Lawrence Retired Staff

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    Dale, are you sure the pixels are actually zero? With too much light it can be saturated, and will display as black. You can use View menu | Information to check, and View menu | Screen Stretch to change how the values are rendered.

    With Camera 1 selected, you are looking at an image from the main chip, regardless of whether it was taken from the Expose tab or Guide tab. Please set the Guide tab to Camera 2 and leave it alone. We'll try to figure out what's wrong from there.

    With MaxIm DL closed, please make a zip archive of your Documents/MaxIm DL 6 folder and upload it here so we can check your settings.

    - Owen -
     
  5. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Figured it out here is that file. The first image is what I get with guiding chip under "Guide". You ca see tghe settings. Next image is from "Expose" tab.

    Dale
     

    Attached Files:

  6. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Here is the zip file from my documents, also the actual autoguide image obtained with camera 2. As I mentioned in above email, if I repeat this but set camera to 1, I get an image of the guide chip with actual values in attached to each pixel.
     

    Attached Files:

  7. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Let me know if there are other things you want me to try and save.

    Dale
     
  8. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Thanks. As far as step 1 above I know I have internal set for guide and the dual chip setting is checked. I went through most of this with Owen last night, I sent him a zipped folder of MaxIm 6 from my documents folder so he could look at settings, also sent him the black guide chip image I get in guide tab, camera 2, dual chip set, internal chip set. The image was taken at dusk with plenty of light, completely black and no values for pixels. An image taken in expose mode, camera 1 etc, gives me a nice well lit image of main chip. I am hoping he can come up with something, I have struggled with this for several weeks. I am sure it must be something stupid I am doing since I was a novice to MaxIm, having always used other software.

    Dale
     
  9. Owen Lawrence

    Owen Lawrence Retired Staff

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    Hi Dale,

    Thanks for the files. I took a look at your settings and I see that you have selected "Ethernet" to connect to the camera. I don't have enough experience with this option except when I use a simulator. Would it be possible to connect using a USB cable and try again? You will have to change the setting in "Setup SBIG Universal", but it's easy to change back if it makes no difference.

    Let's also simplify the Guider exposure, just for a test. From the Guide tab, click the Options button (>) and uncheck Simple Autodark from the popup menu. Does it make any difference? Please leave it unchecked until we figure out how to get non-trivial images from your guide chip.

    It might also help to get your whole optical assembly focused on stars so we can tell what we should be seeing. From the Expose tab, select the "Continuous" option, and start it running while you focus on a star. When it's looking good, click [Stop] and return to the Guide tab for another guide chip image test.

    (Note: Unrelated to all of this, you will run into problems later on if you don't provide values for the Site and Optics tab in File menu | Settings. It will clear up some of the errors being reported in your log files.)

    - Owen -
     
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  10. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    I connect in my observatory via USB but I can control my system via Ethernet in my house, the results I get are exactly the same.
    I will try what you suggest.

    What did you see on the auto guide image I sent you? Did you see any values?

    Thanks for your help on this, I am new to MaxIm, having used other software for many years. With my upgrade to 16803 camera, ccdsoft did not work, have not tried ccdops.

    Dale
     
  11. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    I think we really have two completely separate issues here. So let's put the MaxIm DL dual chip settings aside as a "solved problem".

    First I'm going to rename this thread and move it over to the STX section. Then we're going to work on the guide chip issue.
     
  12. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Okay so now this thread is about the guide sensor being blank. First things to look into:
    1. Double-check that the camera is set up in MaxIm DL for Internal guide sensor.
    2. Please take an image with the guide sensor, and save it in FITS format and upload it here. The camera can be capped for this (i.e. no light is fine).
    3. Also please try using CCDOPS to do the above.
     
  13. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Doug, I have been communicating with Owen under a thread inMaxIm6, you may want to tie into that. Last night I sent some images and a PDF to him on that thread. The image is as you described to do above.

    D
     
  14. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    There has been some redundancy/intermingling of issues, so I have reorganized these threads.
     
  15. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Just so we are all on same page you may want let Owen know, him and I have been discussing this somewhere else.
     
  16. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    He will automatically get a notification because his messages were moved.
     
  17. Owen Lawrence

    Owen Lawrence Retired Staff

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    Dale, I see everything Doug did, and it's fine. Doug, Dale already provide a FITS image from his guide chip, and it was blank. I suggested turning off autodark and focusing the main image. Once we see stars in recognizable form we have a hope of catching some on the guide chip. (If the exit pupil is too small to reach the guide chip it might be hard to pick off photons in a 1s exposure, especially while autodark is enabled.)

    - Owen -
     
  18. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    Here are some images, the pdf shows the screen shots, file names should be self explainatory.

    I repeated these with CCDops, same outcome as with MaxIm
     
  19. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    What is the serial number of your STX camera?
     
  20. Dale Mais

    Dale Mais Cyanogen Customer

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    X18030001
     

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