A couple of questions someone may be able to help me with please.

[Ewan]

Evening all,

Just have a couple of random questions someone may have some insight on if I may ?

I have a Baader D-ERF I use for solar imaging on the 152mm, it's not particularly dirty but some light dust or what not from being outside, what is the best way to clean these without causing damage ie scratches ?

One other thing, I am thinking of resuming my DSO imaging, I normally use my DMK""618 as a guider but would my PG IMX174 be better / any good ?
If I could utilise it would it be best to use it in it's native res of 1920 x 1200 or use a ROI like 800 x 600 ?

Would the small sensor in the DMK""618 of 640 x 480 have been or could have been making guiding harder than it should have been & would using the PG 174 make guiding with my C8 SCT any easier ?

A few questions there I keep meaning to ask but always forget to.

After Mark's run in with his auto windows update causing driver probs with his cams I decided to double check my setup.
The PG G3 IMX174 in the laptop USB3 port works great for Solar, I then plugged my Atik 460EX in the same port after a clean install of Artemis capture software & that seemed t work ok as well, I then unplugged that & put the PG cam back in & that worked again with no hiccups so it all seems good to go so far. I did have an issue of EQMod not starting up as it couldn't detect the HQDir adapter connected to the mount but I then sorted that issue & I can now once again slew the scope to targets using Stellarium.

So as a last question when you have all these 'astro' cams, mounts etc & you plug all sorts into your USB ports I assume the drivers just get called when that particular device is attached or can the ports get confused & refuse to say start the camera up or not see your mount ?

Fingers crossed mine stays as it is as it appears to be fine for now, I know not all of the above is Solar orientated but it's all AP I guess.
Thank you for any advice, findings or tips you can give on the above.

Atb
Ewan

[_Zakalwe]

The Baader filters are pretty tough. Just blow the dust off with a decent bulb-blower. if there is stuck-on stuff then Baaders Wonder fluid and cloth will sort it.
Regarding guiding, the small sensor of the DMK might be a bit restrictive. However, people do use them and if you pair it with a widefield guidedscope like a ST-80 it should work fine. The 174 is total overkill as a guidecamera, but there's no reason why it shouldn't work.
Swapping ports around shouldn't cause any problems. USB is plug and play, so it should (in theory) work itself out.

[Ewan]

Cheers Zak, pretty much what I was thinking, I use the Wonder Fluid on my C8 with no ill effects. Just noticed that PHD2 does not support the IMX anyway :-)

[PDB]

hi Ewan,

USB ports are not always plug and play. For camera devices you should have no problems, but the way USB2SERIAL devices attach to specific COM ports is erratic in Windows 10 (and probably also in older versions). Some adapters, like the built in prolific adaptor in the Skywatchter AZ-EQ5, are worse than others. (FDTI seems to do a better job). Depending on the order you connect devices, the cable extension or hub used, they might end up with a completely different COM poort. I have to change ASCOM settings regularly to connect to my mount, focusser or filter wheel again. Never have these problems on Linux where you can define a specific device name for every adapter (even based on serial number if you have more than one similar devices).

Rgrds,

Paul

[Ewan]

Thanks Paul,

I did have a problem when I set mine up on the new laptop took a few hours to get everything talking again but all good now.

[_Zakalwe]

The Prolific chipsets need careful handling in Win 10. Prolific refused to release a Win10 driver for their earlier chips as the market was getting flooded with fake Prolific chipsets.
The FTDI ones work much better, but there doesn't seem to be as many EQDIR leads with those chipsets.
Moving COM ports isn't that big of a deal.....a quick look in Device Manager will show what COM is assigned to each device.