Has anyone tried CPWI?

[Baskevo]

Hi everyone,

I installed CPWI tonight, and it seems pretty cool... I believe it's Celestron's version of ASCOM? alignment took me like 5 minutes... and I have all the same controls on my computer as I do on my hand controller. I am curious as to what others' experiences have been!

Thanks

[Ed217]

Seems to work well for me so far. Works well for alignment tasks and manual scope movement. Their focus tool, for the motorized focus attachment also works well.

[Graeme1858]

I use it to set up my Celestron SCT on a CGX mount and it does a great job. The interface is a bit low tech looking but the functionality is good. Alignment is easy if you have a wide enough FOV to find the alignment star! The All Star Polar Align is brilliant. The search function is easy to use. I haven't used it with an eye piece, I use APT once I'm set up for plate solving and image capture but I still slew to my target using CPWI. I imagine slewing with the laptop touch pad whilst looking through an eye piece would be well tricky!

Regards

Graeme

[fatboy1271]

Hey James,

I use it every night I image!!! From the first night I tried it I loved it.

I use Stellarium for two main reason and one has to do with CPWI:

1. As much as I love CPWI the one aspect that isn't great is the ability to "see and navigate" like you can in Stellarium. Together though, they're a winning combo! With Stellarium I can go forward in time and see what targets I want to set in the Sequence and I also can zoom in to see what the target looks like. CPWI is very basic when it comes to that kind of thing, but I'm very much OK with that.

2. Stellarium is my Planetarium software in NINA. When setting up a Sequence I select the target in Stellarium and then in NINA I push the 'Get coordinates...' button so that NINA knows what target to Plate Solve

Have you heard of PEC Training yet? That's something you'll want to do on your AVX. Well, Celestron has a PEC Train "app;" however, within CPWI is a built-in Train PEC (Order of words is different but it's the same thing). The only thing I wish it had regarding Train PeC was an 'Always enable' button. I often forget that even though it has been trained, I need to enable it every session.

Hope this helps,
fat

[Baskevo]

Cool I'm glad other people like it too!

Fatboy, I was thinking about doing the PECE training, but I have heard it can cause issues with guiding... I'm scared to try it because I'm getting decent guiding right now I think (my stars look nice and round), and I can't go any further with my exposures anyway... I'm already at the edge of my histogram. I did not know you can disable it though after setting it up! I might as well give it a try

[JayTee]

PPEC in PHD2 is just a better hysteresis algorithm. It works really well when you couple it with PEC playback from your mount! Don't confuse PPEC with backlash compensation. They are two very different things. PHD2 loves PPEC and hates backlash comp.

Cheers,
JT

[Baskevo]

PPEC in PHD2 is just a better hysteresis algorithm. It works really well when you couple it with PEC playback from your mount! Don't confuse PPEC with backlash compensation. They are two very different things. PHD2 loves PPEC and hates backlash comp.

Cheers,
JT

cool I will give it a try! I'm assuming you just switch the hysteresis algorithm to PPEC in the brain settings in PHD2, and then set up periodic error correction in CPWI... Is there anything else I should do after I try that?

EDIT: Just looked at the settings for it, looks like a lot there and I will probably have to do some research on it lol

[Baskevo]

So, I recorded my period error correction in CPWI, switched to the PPEC algorithm in PHD2, and it seems like it is working pretty well! I know it takes a little bit of guiding to be able to predict the errors in PHD2, but after running it for probably an hour I think it looks good so far! I am not totally sure what all the numbers mean in PHD2 yet, but this looks like good guiding, doesn't it?

I also set up plate solving in APT works great! I tried to cable manage tonight with some cable ties, went horribly... So I gotta figure that out. Then, I want to get some stepping stones so I can set up in the same spot every night!

Thanks for the help, everyone!

[Graeme1858]

I also set up plate solving in APT works great!

I've just ticked that box! Each step along the learning curve is such a buzz!

Right, ! best go and research CPWI PEC Training now then!

Regards

Graeme