Hello - Can anyone please point me to a tutorial or written manual or similar on the use of the SX AO device in Ekos? I've looked but can't find anything specific to the device.

Thanks very much!
Mike

I'm not sure if Ekos internal autoguider supports adaptive optics. But it does support PHD2 as an external autoguider. And PHD2 does support adaptive optics.

Thank you. Ekos does, in fact, internally support this device.

Can anyone please point me to some documentation? I recall that there is one person in particular who developed this support - if only I remembered who!

Thanks
Mike

Checking the source file (sxao.cpp) and its changelog lists Peter Polakovic <peter.polakovic AT cloudmakers DOT eu> as original author....

There is no proper support yet for AO in Ekos Guide module, maybe someone can help add it properly. I worked on some preliminary support before at a basic level and stopped there since I don't have AO and appears to be very few who has one anyway. You can use the driver with PHD2, but not with Ekos now.

I see... This is confusing since:
1) You can select the SX AO as an adaptive optics device within the Ekos internal INDI control panel
2) You can select the SX AO as a 'via' device when using the internal guider in Ekos
3) It says this on the Ekos front page: Built-in native Auto Guiding with support for automatic dithering between exposures and support for Adaptive Optics devices in addition to traditional guiders.

But, I understand and do appreciate all that Kstars/Ekos has to offer. I will start to experiment with PDH2.

Mike

Yes, it would try to send pulses but the internal guider now does not try to utilize the AO for smaller corrections while sending the larger corrections to the mount as a fallback. There is probably quite a bit of work to get this working in a reasonable fashion. If you have programming experience, now would be a good time to contribute this bit to KStars!