Welcome to the channel and I’m very happy to hear this helped! NINA, for some reason, doesn’t play nice with the native driver for ASI. I’m happy to hear though this all worked out and please do not hesitate to ask for any help :) As a side note, the ASI2600MC is a great camera! How long have you been using it? Also, how do you like the QHY?

@@Hidden.Light.Photography I have both a SW Esprit ED120 and a WO Z61 and swap them out on a SW EQ6R Pro depending on the FOV I want to capture. I have a profile set up in NINA for each and just pick the appropriate one when I'm ready to image. It's so cool seeing the framing box change in the Framing Tab between scopes. Along with the Pegasus focuser and Falcon rotator it couldnt be easier...and more enjoyable. Both scopes get the ASI2600MC and both get a QHY Mini Guide Scope @130mm with the QHY 5L II M camera. According to Astronomy Tools.com the calculator says it works with both scope/camera set ups and it does. Like I said the QHY connects in PHD flawlessly. I feel my guiding is good and in taking Trevor Jones' advise the proof is in the star images, not necessarily the guide numbers. I rarely adjust anything in PHD2 as I'm getting round stars with the default settings. I PA with a Pole Master, but waiting for a clear night to try NINA's TPPA. (another great video by you) I'm a loooong time DSLR user, new to astro for just a few years. I quickly learned that to improve my images I needed to go to a dedicated astro camera, mainly because of the difficulty of shooting darks with a DSLR. I've had the 2600 for several years and went thru two bouts of the grease leak with it. ZWO of course said to "just take it apart and clean it" this was during Covid and they couldn't say when I would get it back. It could be months they said. I wasn't crazy about tearing apart a (then) $2k camera, but I did...twice. Finally at NEAF last year I complained to the right person at the ZWO booth and he said to send it in (using his name which I did as it was out of warranty) and have not had any grease since. But you are right, the 2600 is a fantastic camera. I have the MC model so shoot OSC. It has it's drawbacks I understand but also has it's plusses mainly in acquisition time as well as processing time. It works for me at this point in my hobby. I'm enjoying your videos and learn something from everyone of them.

I absolutely love how easy NINA makes this for us! I started with ASI Studio and PHD2 separately. I would sit out with the scope and once I reached my max travel before hitting the tripod I would call it good and pack everything up. I then learned about meridian flip and researched how to make it automated and that’s how I found NINA. I was 100% hooked from there haha. Awesome job on multiple profiles! That’s the exact way I do it so you don’t have to plug in numbers each time and risk a mistake by forgetting something. Astronomy tools is a very good place to check for compatibility with equipment. Dedicated astronomy camera is the way to do it. Calibration frames, reducing dark current etc. I’m happy they finally resolved that infamous grease issue for you :) OSC has its drawbacks, yes, but as you mentioned, you can quickly and easily get a beautiful image! I’m also very happy you are enjoying the videos and if you ever have a request for something, let me know :)

I agree that it randomly chooses the cameras which is why I made this video to show an easy way of assigning. In your case, since everything is working, I wouldn’t touch it. Am I understanding correctly that you’re using native driver within NINA as well? If so, are you experiencing any issues? If I remember correctly, you’re on NINA v3 correct?

I absolutely agree with you and am all for native drivers with whatever you can get away with, however, I’ve personally experienced and have read multiple accounts of NINA not playing well with ASI specific native drivers. In my case it was random disconnections of the camera during looping. With that said, PHD2 has not had any issues with ASI native drivers.

@@Hidden.Light.Photography Looking at your video it appears that you don't have the ASI native drivers installed which is why I mentioned it. At @4:33 there's normally an option for ZWO Optical drivers to be chosen you have no ZWO drivers options only the ASCOM drivers

That makes sense. That is actually exactly why I mentioned NINA is known to have issues with native ASI drivers. I do have the native driver installed which can be seen at 6:08 within PHD2. In NINA, hitting refresh on the equipment/camera tab will sometimes show the actual camera name (ASI native driver) and sometimes it won’t. I was going to demonstrate this in the video, but of course during a dry run, it wouldn’t cooperate at all so I opted to just go over the subject how I did haha. More times than not when I used the native driver within NINA, the camera would disconnect when starting to loop exposures. That was my experience and I have read many other similar. Sometimes different symptoms, but always an issue with camera stability when using the native driver in NINA. No issues in PHD2 though.

That definitely sounds like it was fun getting set up. How do you like the duo? Thats awesome though you got it to work and funny how ZWO is confused how it worked haha!

​@@Hidden.Light.Photography I like the duo. Works great on my 540mm with and without filters and great without filters on my 1600RC tho it seemed to have issues at long focal with 3nm filter (in ZWOs defense, I had no idea how to use that much focal on may when I got it and even after getting oag-l I had weeks of frustration b4 I got it sorted, maybe not the duo's built in guiders fault?? Some day I will get 2nd setup and put duo on my lower focal rig and just use a regular 2600 or bigger on the longer focal. . As for setup...I think 2 use ascom and one zwo driver? The key as I recall tho was setting up each profile while other was unplugged. Sad tho that after only a few weeks. ive forgotten how I did it😅

How does it do with shorter focal length and 3nm? Longer focal length is most definitely a pain to guide haha. Not sad at all not recalling just a few weeks later. Sometimes things we do all the time or work with all the time are the hardest to remember.

​@@Hidden.Light.Photography​ Also...when one is trying to "brute force crack" a problem by pushing alot of buttons, once it works, you just wanna start doing stuff, not logging memories in a mental file cabinet. The duo guide sensor works fantastic through my 3nm L-Lutimate on my 540mm apetura 90. Ive had no guide issues at all, including 10 minute exposures on using my Ioptron hae29. Tho I cannot quote my guide error as I did not start paying attention to it until I got the 1600mm and guiding became more critical.

Haha very well put! I understand. The guide number is not something you think to pay attention to until it becomes an issue. I’m very happy this all came together for you though, that’s awesome!