Thanks Ray. Gotcha. 😀 Now if you could just solve the clouds problem. I was relocating the mount outside to my deck after a partly-cloudy dry day and no rain forecast for several hours. With the

Guiding with MaxIm using ASCOM Direct (Pulse Guide). My MaxIm has backlash set to 0 on both axes. I might play with the Dec setting there to see if that reduces star trails at high elevations. Let's

Mike are you guiding or not guiding? Thanks Brian portfolio https://www.brianvalentephotography.com/

Backlash by itself does not produce trails. Are you guiding or shooting unguided? If you are guiding, then the guider software automatically handles any Dec backlash. If Unguided then backlash has no

10-4. It's been zero all along, but after tweaking polar alignment in PEMPro, I'm getting faint star trails on the Dec axis. Just trying to figure out what's going on. Thanks, Roland. --- Mike

For guiding purposes the best thing is to leave Dec backlash compensation at zero otherwise you risk overshoot and constant oscillation back and forth on the Dec axis. Rolando

Hi Mike (sorry i said Ray earlier) We all want to eliminate star trails! lol If you are guiding, that's the best place to address this. I know it's tempting to try to do it in the mount electronics,

Thanks, Brian. I'm trying to track down what I believe is a small backlash in Dec. At some elevations, stars show tiny trails (not full brightness) on the Dec axis, and I attribute those to

Hi Mike, It depends on your mount. I just said they get set in the driver at mount initialization if you have a GTOCP3 or earlier. Please take a look at the driver's help file. That said Roland has

Hi Ray If you are guiding, you don't want any sort of mount-based compensation for dec backlash. The guiding software will handle it in its algorithms (PHD has some wonderful stuff for that), and

My 1200 has GTOCP3 with the V-chip. Does this mean the ASCOM driver will set Dec backlash in the mount when it connects, if I have non-zero values in the Dec Backlash field on the Advanced

Mark, The missing custom rate option should be fixed in the latest driver version (5.30.08) which you can download directly from

Hi Mike, Neither PEMPro nor MaximDL can set the mount's backlash settings. MaximDL deals with backlash in its guiding algorithms. Generally you don't have to worry about that. That said, the

For me, that's MaxIm. Does PEMPro use MaxIm to issue Dec movements while checking backlash? I assumed (probably incorrectly) that it issues the commands directly through the ASCOM driver. If that's

Mike, Roland recommends that you let your guiding software handle backlash. -Ray Gralak Author of APCC (Astro-Physics Command Center):

After successfully loading a PE curve into my AP1200 using PEMPro, and tweaking the polar alignment, I'm ready to test the Dec backlash. The PEMPro docs say to adjust the Dec backlash setting until

There's no problem with the mount or software. If the mount is already initialized when APCC connects it will not initialize the mount (because it is already initialized). -Ray Gralak Author of APCC

Hi Wayne, Glad that solved the network problem. The mount is only RA=0, Dec=90 after a power cycle. That's the only time the mount can be initialized. After the mount has already been initialized

Ray that worked using the IP address. It even worked where CP4 didn't, which was booting the computer when the controller is already on. Now here's another one for you. I have the software set to

Thanks Ray I have been using the Netbios name, I’ll try the IP address