SBIG problems

[Brian Peterson]

I have an SBIG STXL-11002 camera and an SBIG “self-guiding” filter wheel (that is,

there is a pick-off guide chip built into the filter wheel).  I’ve been running these through The Sky X, and am trying to transition to Nina. I’ve updated the SBIG drivers (though these are “legacy” pieces of equipment, and I’m not sure how recent those drivers are). I’m using NINA 2.2.

I can connect to the PHD guider (it recognizes that there is a guide chip, and asks if that’s what I want to use).  I can connect NINA to the imaging camera. But I can’t do both at the same time. If Nina is already connected to the imaging camera, PHD can’t connect to the guide chip. And if PHD is connected to the guide chip, then NINA can’t connect to the imaging camera.

When I only connected PHD to the guide chip to try that out, the shutter fails to open. And when I only connect NINA to the camera and try to take an image, I get a shutter error message.

Any answer about why this is happening and how to fix it? Or is this camera simply not going to work with NINA?

Thanks.

[Brian Peterson]

Update:

I’ve found the NINA Ascom Camera SBIG Tracker (https://github.com/ghilios/nina.ascom.sbig.tracker/releases)..) I installed that; connected Nina to camera; enabled “ASCOM tracking server” on the camera equipment page; connected PHD2 to “NINA Legacy SBIG Tracker (ASCOM)”. It looks like both NINA and PHD2 are connected to the right part of the camera. The problem I’m having is that as I loop images in PHD2, after a few to several images I get the error message in PHD2: “cannot start exposure with given parameters.” I’ve tried to switch to a new USB cable; that didn’t help. I’ve tried binning the guide camera; that didn’t help either.

[Stefan B]

Hi Brian,

can you set the log level to TRACE, reproduce the issue and then upload the logs of NINA and PHD2 here? Then we can check.
Don’t forget to revert the log level to INFO afterwards.

Thanks.

[Brian Peterson]

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[Brian Peterson]

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[Brian Peterson]

I hope that the files I’ve uploaded here are what you need.

I’m doing this testing with the camera at home, away from the observatory and mount. So, I’ve had the imaging camera running through NINA on a loop of 20 second exposures. I’ve had PHD2 looping the guide camera on 2 second exposures. For the first run on this NINA log, I forgot to actually attach the guider to NINA. So I ran a second time, this time with the Guider attached to NINA. I hope you can spot something that is causing the communication with the camera to fail.

Thank you!