Potential guiding issue

[Rocket Pooch]

Well I have so much stuff lying aroud, like 4 laptops....  I only need 2.

[The Thing]

Well prob I have is that I still use my old lx exposure webcam with no st4 port. It uses parallel port to control the lx exposure so I have cable from parallel port to webcam anyway. Having an extra from parallel to mount st4 is not a prob. I need to check if the guide prof I use supports ascom. Thks, John.

You don't want to be using ST4 anyway John. It interrupts the motor boards, the original spec in the 1980's was something like using relays(!) to interrupt the drive. Very brute force and ignorance approach in these days of laptops and smart software. Also it's yet another cable.

Pulse Guiding works with the mounts motor boards by sending speed changes and durations as standard commands through an EQDIR module or FTDI USB-TTL cable (£10 on Ebay) or PC direct mode on the handset (last resort). This means that all software using the mounts ASCOM driver knows what is going on. I even used to use pulse guiding with my old Meade fork mount. Just choose ASCOM as the mount in PHD (I hope you are all using PHD 2 now - loads of good features).

[JohnP]

Not using PHD2 - I can check it out though as long as it does LX webcams no prob. I am using Guidmaster by Matthias Garzarolli http://www.guidemaster.de/guidemaster_en.asp which does in fact have ASCOM interface support so hopefully I can just use this with EQMod Pulse... I really like the guiding prog. It is simple to use & does a very good job. I tried PHD in past but didn't work as well as Guidemaster - at lest for me. Maybe PHD2 is better.

Will try next time it is clear..


Thks,  John

[The Thing]

PHD2 supports LX webcams properly, PHD1 never did satisfactorily which is probably why you use Guidemaster.

[JohnP]

cheers dunc - maybe I'll give phd2 a go...