I wound up flipping over to the Nightly releases due to a specific camera problem and an issue with the astrometry alignment module a while back and just never have flipped back from it. I'm back on stable release now. pretty sure that the bugs I had issues with are now fixed and have filtered into the stable release.

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yeah.. you have a very good and valid point here. keep a backup of the last known stable system.

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About at my wits end with Kstars and Ekos. 

Every other time I do an update, I seem to discover something new that doesn't work and has no easy to find solution to it.
Tonight, after 6 hours of fucking with it, the scheduler flat does nothing.  it starts and .. nadda.. just sits there. 
Manually running an imaging session works - polar align, focuser focus, target align, tracking routine,. then the exposure list, etc..  no problem. 

But put it all in the scheduler and nothing happens at all.  it sits and the only activity to be seen is the "no jobs running" spinning icon.
can't find any error messages anywhere, can't find any reference to it in the log files.  it just does nothing and offers no explanation why it is doing nothing.

I ran 'sudo apt update..  then  'upgrade' .. and it kicked out a long list of "this package relies on <something> and it is not going to be installed"

screen shot attached,.

I'm hoping someone can explain this and tell me how to get it to work again.

I seem to have about a 25% success rate for using Kstars and Ekos.  3 out of every 4 nights of trying to use it are totally wasted trying to figure out the latest completely random reason it isn't working right.

It ran for a month just recently without any hiccups at all.  I was pretty happy.. for a month..  Then tonight it decides to just completely trash itself somehow.
Getting highly annoyed at the repeat pattern of completely wasted nights cussing at it not working correctly.

I've had rain for a week.  last night and tonight it was clear.   last night I was unable to set it up and use it.. tonight I had the whole night free and nice clear skies with low humidity and good seeing.   Tonight I've spent 6 hours so far with zero success at it doing anything.

"highly fucking pissed" is putting it mildly.

help?

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after over a week of rain, I finally had a chance to try it again.
It seems fixed, whatever it was.

problem solved.
 

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I've had rainy days since posting this, and haven't had a chance to see if anything has changed.

Has anyone else had this problem?  Has anyone figured out how to fix this problem?

Short of re-installing Kstars completely from scratch and having to go through all the personal settings I had again and hoping that resolves the problem, I have yet to figure out how to get it to stop doing this.

The only thing that changed from one night to the next was the bleeding-edge update.  The scope sat in the same place, powered up the entire time, and one night it worked, the next night it didn't. 

If it doesn't work the next time I try it, it is effectively a useless scope system.  

 

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screen shots of it acting up and the mount log file.  was the only log I could figure out how to create.

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been experimenting with gain and offset settings.  and filling the files, it would be nice if an option to include 'gain' and 'offset' automatically in the filename of the saved image.

and on those lines, I guess "ISO" would be helpful for folks using non-astro cameras as well (which is me also, at times)
would save a bit of mousework and typing and editing sequence entries over and over.  CCD-Temp setting too, maybe... ?

just an idea to make things easier, IMO.

Thanks!
James.
 

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I'm not sure what needs to be attached to this. 

I've been slowly working my way up the experience level with Ekos,.. have begun using the scheduler and getting familiar with it. 

Two nights ago, it ran just fine.
Tonight, it starts up, gets to the 'focus' routine, which runs just fine, completes successfully and then ends, then the next step is 'Align', where it just hangs.
The Solution Results window never has a target entry show up in it (blank) and the status icon (next to the 'STOP' button) just spins.   it will eventually time out and get restarted by the scheduler in 600 seconds...  If I manually cancel it, the Scheduler starts over and runs the Focus routine again, and then back to the hung Alignment module.

If I run 'Focus' by myself, and then run 'Align', no problems, it only seems to happen when the Scheduler is in control.
What changed in the last two nights in the bleeding edge updates?
I haven't changed anything except to run 'apt update' and 'apt upgrade' and also rebooted the system and also power-cycled all the cameras and mount and focuser and such.

Very annoying... It works one night, then two nights later it has completely bizarre issues all of a sudden and nothing has been changed except for running the update.

help?

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James Barbot JR replied to the topic 'asi120mc-s issues.' in the forum. 3 years ago

yeah, it's the new usb 3.0 version of the camera.

and I originally installed the nightly package version, so, I'll update it tomorrow (it's another few days of rain here, yet again, dangit)...

Thanks for a quick fix!!!

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James Barbot JR created a new topic ' asi120mc-s issues.' in the forum. 3 years ago

Two issues with an ASI120MC-S camera.

Issue #1:
The camera works reliably in the imaging module, most of the time in the asymmetry module, in pretty much never on the first 10 to 20 tries in the guiding module.  9 times out of 10 it doesn't communicate with the guiding module (while, at the same time, working just fine in the other modules).

I have found a bastard repeatable work-around for this.  If I go to the imaging module and take any photo with the ASI120, it will then work and be recognized in the guiding module... Otherwise, the guiding modules time out with 'unable to communicate with camera' type errors in the log, no matter what I try do to get it to talk to the guide module.

Issue#2:
Once I finally get the guide module to actually talk to the camera, it defaults to 8-bit mode, which gives some very grainy images to try guiding from. (sometimes resorting to some 2-bit image mode which I have no clue how it winds up like this, which is unusable and the only way I've figured out to fix that is to reboot the whole system and start over)(and I have tried just about everything I can think of otherwise, none of which works short of rebooting the whole thing).  also in 8-bit mode it is fairly useless for the asymmetry solver also.

I have good quality USB cables, I have switched around cables to debug that possibility, a very good external powered (and high current) hub, I do not have issues with anything else in the system acting like this.   no dew issues or frost or anything.  I don't have issues with any other parts of the software package, just the guide module.  
The system is up to date on updates, drivers, etc. 
I'm running it under Kubuntu, hand installed, including all the asymmetry files.  All the libraries are updated daily, all the nuances of the Ubuntu setup have been resolved.  All the hardware drivers are correct and up to date, etc.  it is a 4ghz quad core system with 18g ram and a very fast SSD drive, so, I'm pretty certain it isn't hardware issues.. 
Kstars actually doesn't crash very often at all, like it first did on my first 20 installation attempts at it, but Ekos still does and for some very odd and random issues.
It has done this with both this system as well as a raspberry-Pi 4b system running the 'astroberry' installed version and fully updated, as well as an HP laptop running Ubuntu.

Why does the guide module not see the camera most of the time, unless I access it first in the imaging module?  Why is it just the guide module giving me grief?

Is there any way to force it to stay in 16-bit mode and quit dropping down to 8-bit mode.   And what controls that?  it's very annoying.

I like the kstars/ekos/indi package, but every night that I go out to use it, I lose at least 2 hours or more of my time getting all these little kinks figured out and everything working all at the same time (I have a lot of other gripes than these two.  I'll address them as I get the details properly worded to describe.)  It is really unreliable and aggravating most of the time.



help?

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