A neat little **FREE** program to run Maxim DL, the SkyX, PHD guiding and FocusMax!!

[Steve Coates]

I found this on the CN forum. It is a program similar to CCDAP in that will automate MaximDL, CCDSoft, FocusMax, theSky(X) AND PHD! I have not guided with Maxim yet but I am very familiar with PHD guiding so this looks interesting for me to try. There is a lengthy thread on CN that can explain more than I can. It looks like he takes suggestions from posters and will implement them into the program as there are several updates. Oh, and this is a F*R*E*E* program. Download link can be found here. I plan to try this next time I am able to get out.

Here is a screen shot and link to Users Manual:

MaxPilote.pdf

[Charles Dunlop]

unreal!

[Jeff McFarlin]

Yep - he's been advertising and supporting this program on one or more of the Yahoo groups. Cool stuff.

[Charles Dunlop]

how is this working for people?

[Steve Coates]

I've used this progam only in my living room and I can drive the mount using thrSkyX, run the QSI via Maxim, focusMax and guiding with PHD and MaximDL. Hopefully soon I'll do some real world application...

[Steve Coates]

Kind of bizarre...I was able to do my "living room" slews without problems BUT when I connected over the weekend I could not get it to work. MaxPilote would freeze when I connected to FocusMax. I posted this to the YahooGroup and got a timely reply from the programmer and he was not sure why. He did offer for me to use TeamViewer so he could look in on this but I've yet to take him up on this and went on to use CCDAP (which I bought earlier this year). I've read people have had success with MaxPilote, but I ahve not been one of them. I admit, Im to greedy with my skies that I don't like to waste clear nights messing with imaging programs. Maybe next Full Moon I'll play with it again.