Hi all,

first of all I wish all of you a Happy New Year.

I am a new user of INDI, KStars and Ekos and I want to configure my astro photography setup with short focal length without guiding (another guide scop or OAG).

I already checked the forum and I found, that there is an option "Non-Guide Dither Pulse", but how can I configure this and how it is working ?

In Ekos -> Options ... there is no possibility to configure guid options.
The only way how to activate the "Non-Guide Dither Pulse" option is, to configure and connect a Guider and than go to Ekos -> Guide Tab -> Options... Than it is possible to configure this option. But I don't want a guider.

So my question is: What is the correct way to configure and use dither without guiding.

1. Should I configure a guider simulator and connect this to have a chance to activate "Non-Guide Dither Pulse" ?
If yes, how should I handle this during a real photo sequence ? Should I remove the configured guide simulator ? Is the "Non-Guide Dither Pulse" still active ?

Or exists another way to configure that correctly ?

I am using KStars 3.3.9.

I hope I was able to describe the issue clearly.

Thank you for your support.

CS,
Kay

Hi Kay, welcome to INDI!

What's your mount? does it support guiding?

Hi Jasem,
yes the mount, which I want to run without guiding, supports guiding.
It is a 10micron GM2000HPS and I want to connect it via Ethernet.

CS,
Kay

Hi all,
sorry for the stupid question above, but the problem was in front of the computer.
I will shorty describe, what I have done wrong and how it is configured now, probably it helps someone.

1. I created a profile containing only the mount and CCD (see picture 01_profile.png)
2. I started Ekos Driver and mount and CCD getting connected. And the Ekos windows is opened with all tabs for Setup, Scheduler, Mount, CCD, Focus, Align and Guide. (see picture 02_Ekos.png)
3. Then I go to CCD tab and configure the sequences. (03_CCD.png)
4. Then I changed to Guide Tab and I found, that my primary CCD is configured as guiding camera (and this confuses me) (04_Guide.png)
5. But this time I ignored this and opened the Options (lower right corner) for Guide. (05_configureGuide.png) Here I configured a very long "Non guide dither pulse" to see what happens.
6. Then I changed to Scheduler tab and configured my capture process. And here I did the next misconfiguration. I forgot to deactivate the guiding for every sequence (06_Schedule.png)

After setting this I was able to start the scheduler and the mount dithered between every picture.
CS,
Kay

I have this setting set, and have it configured the same way, however my unguided dither pulses are set to 500ms. What confirmation does the interface give? I've captured about 10 frames now, and have no idea if it is working properly. I will only know if I try to integrate my images to see if I have fixed pattern noise or not.

Hi,
as you can see in my screenshots I set the "non guide dither pulse" to 9999ms, which is to long for real imaging. Bu using that I was able to check, if dithering is used. I found out, that it is really moving the mount between the captures and you can also find a log entry in scheduler log like "dither completed" (I do not remember the correct log entry).
But I found also out, that the dithering is not randomly to all directions, one direction was preferred. For that reason the object was moved outside the chip area after some captures. But (as I said) for real captures nearly 10s is to much!
CS,
Kay

Kay,

I integrated my images today, and they appear to be well dithered with 500ms. Guiding turned off in the scheduler with non-guiding dither pulses turned on. I did not have any issues with drift. But glad to know it works!

-Andrew

Im sorry for reopening this thread, but I got a question about the non-guided dithering.

I was able to set the non-guided dither pulse on ekos (unfortunately I cant connect to the mount but thats another story), but now every time I connect an indi server on ekos, I get error messages saying I cannot combine normal dithering and non-guided dithering (seems right to me).
However, when I want to go back to the settings (guide->options), the options window does not show up anymore, so I cannot turn off the dithering, and when I press 'guide' nonetheless, ekos crashes and closes.

Does that sound familiar to any of you?

Oftentimes, the preference windows open behind EKOS or KStars, and you need to move them out of the way to see it.

Unfortunately, thats not the case.
I had another look, and the options button (on the bottom right of each tab) doesn't respond on any of the tabs. When the server is running, I also cant access Ekos options in the overview tab. Am I missing something? Should I reinstall ekos? (I haven't set up a lot yet)

This is a known bug in that sometimes the options tab specifically get stuck, but can be still operated using the Tab key. Hopefully we can figure out the issue soon, it doesn't repeat itself reliably.