First run whit voyager

Hi. Got my first run whit voyager. It was quite a voyage! ;)…

Started whit configuring focus whit first light wizard. After I upped my MIN flux to 200 and MAX flux to 1000 it went trough; Here is screen shot of my setting and what numbers I got:

Here is the v-curve

I had little trouble whit the plate solve, but after I installed the 2.0.13 it went trough smoothly.

I did some test shots after that whit L filter. I did local field focus It looked like this:

Then I thought I was ready to start capturing. I try’ed to set focus for HA filter but I did not succeed on that. I figured I need to use the first light wizard to HA filter, but that was mistake. After I try’ed to do the first light wizard to HA filter, I lost focus. Without preview in voyager I had to use ASICAP software to find focus, but I end up whit split frame of the image in ASICAP. I had to close voyager and ASICAP. Then I looked for fairly close focus in ASICAP to get the first light wizard to work whit VOYAGER, but I was not able to get the first light wizard to work whit L filter. It found the star but could not get v-curve for some reason. I changed the setting but it did not help.

Can you help me =).

There was few problem’s I saw:

  1. Voyager shuts down PHD guiding when focusing. I think whit narrowband filters would be good to guide when you take focus image.

  2. Too many parameters for me not working whit automated software before.

  3. I had 2 crash and always after crash I need to start the EQMOD, PHD and CDC again so VOYAGER can connect to them.

  4. The lack of preview is major loss for me. Like when you are trouble solving it really helps to see the images inside the program.

  5. The first light wizard should be able to configure on all filters, not only one filter.

  6. I am blind solving the program as there is no English manual, I understand its soon ready but its something we really need.

My gear; eq6, SW esprit 80 and ASI 183.
Computer: I5 laptop whit 6gt ram-memory, freshly installed windows 7 64-bit.

Here is the only log file voyager saved tonight:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qyFi8dvih22H2ZfRiyYs5HOhfqP05xKi

Hi, I’m sorry it was a problem for you to use Voyager. Unfortunately I did not advertise abroad but enthusiastic foreign users spread the word. I’m not ready yet with documentation, there are many tutorials in Italian that you can translate with applications that apply subtitles if you really want to deepen my program.
That said, the camera you use has pixels of such dimensions that everything becomes very difficult, perhaps to do astrophotography you should evaluate something else. In any case I see that the focuser has some backlash maybe you have to quantify it and set it. The focus, however, was done correctly, the HFD is high because of the small pixels that smear the star on many pixels.

In general, however, I seem to have understood that you do not know the mechanism of the VCurve. You do not have to do a first light wizard for each filter. It is done only once with the most favorable filter, usually the luminance. Once 2/3 curves have been acquired, the automatic focus already works with any filter. You just have to indicate in the filters section the most appropriate magnitudes for your system to look for the star of focus if you use the focuson a single star. If you use the localfield instead you have to select a time for each filter and the binning to have the minimum number of stars useful to AI to process the fire.

Voyager can not crash because the technology with which it is written prevents this, if you send me a picture of the crash I’m sure that maybe it’s the ASCOM driver you use.

If you close and open Voyager the external programs are independent and Voyager does not close them for sure. There are facilities to open them if they are not open and if you have activated them.

With the license of Voyager there is the remote support for the setup and the first light of your setup and in general the support for every problem. The support service is in any case in private and not in the forum

In reply to your question:

  1. For me isn’t a good idea to continue guiding during focus, and Voyager doesn’t do this now and in the future
  2. Automation is not normal Astrophotography, automation is waste time to setting up all the first time and drink a beer from the second time looking at the sky
    3)Voyager cannot crash for technology used see above
    4)Preview usually you can do with other external utility, normally when you use Voyager you just need to push one button for start and do something else
    5)I think you don’t know exactly how work VCurve i explained to you above
    6)So sorry Voyager doesn’t have an english manual … i planning to write as soon as possibile.

All the best and thanks for your time,
LO

Greetings

PS Your camera is tilted from left to right side.

Thank you for your ansver. I have been little busy.

Not sure about the tilt as the star field looks good. There was also more uniformly display of the field. This was shared just for friends as quick view of the program.

We need to find right settings for ASI 183 as challenging it might be. Small pixel cmos sensors are really selling right now, so it will be something must be done anyway.

Small note that my write was not criticism, only expected problems. I would have the same problems using any other software also. I still like voyager far more then SGP.

Could we try to find right settings for robofocuser, Here are my setting I was planing to try tomorrow. If you can take a look:



Here is one First light wizard whit L filter:

Here is modified focusing times: (I think my problem was 15sec focus image on narrowband)

Thank you in advance =)

Best,
Jukka

Hi Jukka,

after see … my opinion:

  • Probably Max flux must increase to 2500
  • central region down to 30%
  • percentuage go to 11%
  • backlash ? are you sure to not have it
  • filter L mag i think you may go to 5.5 - 7 interval
  • filter narrow go to 2-4 , 6 is to lower

If you need help try to send message and we can arrange a remote session
All the best,
Leo

HI. Thank you for answer. I did the changes and hoping to get clear sky this week.

Are you referring the central part of the v-curve when you are talking about backlash? I have 30-35 step backlash but not sure how I would use it in the curve? Should I use the backlash compensation? Some comes from belt drive and some from the ESPRIT focuser. It is impossible to eliminate all of it.

When I did manual focus whit the motorfocus and bahtinov mask I used 10 step movements. Should I use the same 10 step movements now?

Hi, if your focuser experiment backlash set it in Voyager RoboFire setting (in step) like in attached picture or your vcurve and/or focus can have compromised precision.

All the best

LO

Anyone online for remote help. Cant get the first light wizard to work. =)

send me a mail , we can arrange a team viewer session

Dear Jukka … i hope you enjoy voyager after our remote session. Your setup work really fine small star and flat field. Congrats.

All the best
LO

1 Like

Thank you Leo!

We got everything running smoothly, cant thank you enough Leo. Few settings needed to change to get perfect focus. After that it was just plug and play. ASI 183 run some memory issues when trying to robofocus the whole field, but we binned 2 and after that it was working.

Must say I’am not familiar whit the focusing values enough to tell you more about the ASI 183 focusing in Voyager. Maybe Leo will fill in what values need to be changed and why for the small pixels of asi 183.

I got some nice HA data last night. Only human errors if any.

Some findings:

  1. when platesolving after ha filter was used voyager did not focus the L filter, I think it would be good to check focus before. I had two occasions where plate solve failed because the focus was off, Leo was looking the first time it did happen. I think it was due canceled sequence.

  2. would be cool to change some sequence settings when the sequence is running. Not major problem but something maybe in future.

  3. We unchecked the force saturated star, but voyager wanted to select saturated guide star using roboguiding. I think there is some setting I need to change. But it was late and I just let PHD control the guiding.

Best Jukka

I just changed the max flux in VCurve setting because when a small pixel camera were used the stars become more bigger and conseguently the flux. For ASI183 memory is a thread memory exception from ASCOM Driver … probably just timing shift on commands.

About your questions:

  1. We have choose different filter in slot than the one for focus and i stopped the sequence this leave the focus off. During sequence there’s no problem of plate solving in L and shot in other filters. Can be problem if narrow and broadband filter is from different brands. A different tichkness can get off the focus when filter is changed but is rare event. in sequence under plate solve tab you have option to dont change filter and use the actual filter for plate solving to avoid this.

  2. After some use of Voyager you have all under control and usually you dont change nothing but if you want … like i show yesterday you can stop and restart using the override starting features. I think in future to add what you ask but usually Voyager is a work alone application.

  3. If peak of star change during acquisition and there’s star near saturation can happen but AI need time to understand how to minimize this. You can anyway choose to select guide star with native app

All the best
LO

Thanks Emilio, i’ll do the same the feature its simple and you can try if it work for you. No Problem
Voyage had have and advance array of telescope management … focus and shot is sync from a master. Made for professional porpouse they not guiding but i can add guiding and dithering feature for sure. Also i open multiistance from the next release in this case a multiistance can work in LAN also if its on the same PC, the only problem is the resource of PC.

Im not a fan of multi istance … the best solution is minipc dedicated to each setup. Voyager can manage up to 4 telescope setup in one mount. Dont worry … continue with your solution. I see you opened a thread in CN, and i cannot answer. i tell you here.