I am not sure if I am first experiencing this: I connected the eq mount to the USB hub provided by the ASI 071 camera. The ASI 071 USB out is connected to the laptop.

Last night, I was struggling to connect to Ekos, after many times of restarting the gear and laptop I finally succeeded, just the diy moonlite focuser did not respond. All this worked before.

My question: is there any specific sequence I should follow when connecting or switching on, to make sure each part gets recognized?

I checked also the ZWO user group forum, and it was stated that the USB hub is actually powered.

Any ideas?

I had some issues with my mount and an Arduino myself. The EQ Mount and the Focuser try to connect via /dev/ttyUSB* and employ some auto probing if that fails.
I don't know if that collides somehow.

I changed the Indi devices to not auto connect at startup. I also disabled the serial probing. (restarted Indi to make sure everything was idle)
After that I could connect the devices one by one. (I checked to get the device names/numbers correct)

A better way would be to make and use stable device entries with udev. hintshop.ludvig.co.nz/show/persistent-names-usb-serial-devices/

There is already INDI tutorial for it: indilib.org/support/tutorials/157-persis...al-port-mapping.html

and StellarMate includes a guided mapper where you just plug in the device and it would permanently map it for you.

Hi Elfe,

looks like this is similar to what I have encountered (my diy moonlite is also arduino-based). When I started up indi without the focuser, problem disappeared. So I may have to work through the procedure you and Jasem provided.

Best, Helge

Hi, just to report: the procedure provided by Jasem fixes the problem _ I am grateful for the solution made available (would have never found out myself)!

Follow up - caveats for Arduino Nano / some stability issues:

Looks like for the Arduino Nano the process needs slight modification, since for the Nano the serial number cannot be identified. So when creating the symlink, I skipped the part related to the serial port (see screenshot) - otherwise the symlink is not created (under /dev). See also: forum.pimatic.org/topic/1248/solved-arduino-nano-with-homeduino for more background on Arduino Nano.

Checking the symlinks under /dev, the symlinks can be found, with the EqMod assigned to ttyUSB1, and the Focuser to ttyUSB0.

I am not sure why that is, but starting up INDI at the beginning was not stable, i.e. when first starting EqMod, it was looking up EqMod under USB0, and vice versa (see also screenshot). I can recover by manually selecting the correct system port under the "Connection" tab. Still, for the Focuser, Ekos drops a warning:

2017-10-22T09:48:13: [WARNING] Communication with /dev/ttyUSB1 @ 9600 failed. Starting Auto Search...

Now it seems to be working, maybe because I have been "saving" the configuration (Options tab) - but need to observe if stable.

Is there any way to force Ekos to always chose for EqMount the USB1 port. for example?

Any comments or thoughts would be appreciated.

Best, Helge

You need to assign permanent designations for your serial to USB adapters, either via the tutorial I posted above or by using StellarMate Serial Port Assistant:

Dear Jasem,

Many thanks - I realized (thanks to the video) that I was missing out to update the "ports"-settings to reflect that the focuser will be reached via the symlink, i.e. "/dev/focuser" (same approach for the mount), instead of an assignment to (e.g.) "ttyUSB0". See screenshot for settings now applied.

The StellarMate web manager / serial port assistant cannot be downloaded somehow by people using laptop, correct?

Dear Jasem,

if you could have a look at my log file: Situation is as follows, and pattern seems stable. I start up each device driver one by one. First EqMod, which works fine. Then the focuser, after a while, I receive an error message. Then I "stop indi", and start again, first the EqMod, then the focuser, this time both connect well.

Initially I thought this is due to some bug related to the focuser, but reviewing the log, it seems it looks like the EqMod is having a problem, causing time out of the focuser? Or am I misreading the log file?

Many thanks in advance,

Helge

Check and make sure /dev/mount and /dev/focuser point to two different things (ls -l /dev/mount) I'd start there and see where it leads.

...I checked as suggested, looks fine to me, see screen-shot.

Tried again: starting up moonlight once, receive time out message. Disconnect, second attempt, all find, I attached log file.

Could you have a look, would be great to get it right!

Thanks a lot in advance,

Helge