Hi,
I am trying to setup dithering through phd2 for my astrophotography setup (k1-II) and am wondering if anyone has got it going? I read a few threads about live view with kstars - would kstars be able to time the shutter trigger and coordinate the dithering start and settling time?

Regards
Shibaji

I believe so. I used to use Kstars with Pentax and I used PHD2. However, I was using Stellarmate for Wifi connected control and so using PHD2 was a little awkward - at the time. So I ended up using Kstars' built-in guider, which is quite good!

However, I believe they have improved the interface to PHD2. Its worth a try, especially if you are controlling directly from your PC, in which case you will have direct control of PHD2 for setup.

I'm also running KStars, and I've been running PHD2 again since they added multi-star guiding. Works quite smoothly, and I do indeed dither. And KStars (well, Ekos) definitely runs the show perfectly well for dithering. (These days I'm using a mono astrocam instead of my K5 but the same principle applies.)

The other night I did have repeated instances where PHD2 complained that it lost its connection to my guide camera -- no idea what that was about. Seemed to only happen when clouds passed over, though, once the clouds went away it pretty much Just Worked again.

Thank you so much for the pointers. Is there a guide manual that you can recommend to connect the dslr to kstars, I seem to be missing somethings and getting stuck.

- Shibaji

Jasem made some general tutorials on stellarmate.com and there is one on setup. There is some information that is particular to the StellarMate gadget but KStars and Ekos are the same. By "stuck" do you mean that what to do is not obvious, or that you've done it and the camera isn't responding?

sorry for the delay in getting back to this thread. thank you for the pointers. I have some updates since I got the dithering to work:

1. PHD2 with guide scope for autoguiding
2. ACOM for DLSR (https://github.com/FearL0rd/ASCOM.DSLR/blob/master/DSLR.Camera%20Setup.exe; GitHub - FearL0rd/ASCOM.DSLR: ASCOM Driver for DSLR Cameras)
3. i have the Pentax K1-mII connected to "control laptop" by USB in "MSC" mode
4. APT as overall imaging controller
a. controlling PHD2 over IP socket
b. controlling mount over ASCOM driver
c. controlling Pentax K1 over ASCOM driver

with this setup i am able to dither and shoot but I see 2 image files being captured for each sub-exposure which is wasting time:
a. ASCOM DSLR is capturing a DNG file
b. APT is capturing a FITS file after the DNG is captured