>>On the other hand, whether with Astroberry, my own version ArchLinux or AstroArch, I do not use the wired connection, but exclusively Wi-Fi with three telescopes and 2 PCs plus an Android tablet. So after many hours spent outdoors at 1800 m, in humidity and sometimes extreme cold, I never had Wi-Fi problems.

I must have gotten you confused with someone else. Several other users prefer Ethernet.

In my opinion, these recent posts of yours deserve to be enshrined in a document or two under the AstroArch label. Call it "HOWTO use AstroArch with WiFi". "RPi 4 or RPi5 - which is better for AstroArch". I wish I had known this stuff a few months ago. Too often, it is simply assumed that one is or isn't using WiFi. Really, there are separate diagnostic trees to be traversed in the two cases. You seem to have a lot of really interesting knowledge about the minutiae of this setup. Like for example - WHICH USB3 port to plug which piece of equipment. This is something that might never occur to a new user. It certainly never occurred to me.

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Thanks, Stephane, for your detailed consideration to my issues.

Sadly, though, I have given up on the Pi5 and ordered a Stellarmate Pro. The issues with their app don't concern me, I can use the device as I have been using the Pi, a NoVNC connection via Wifi, with a real WiFi antenna, better physical connection to my rig, offers me better hope of getting a working system going.

Two years ago, I was seduced by this article into thinking this would be easier than it has turned out to be. So many things could go wrong and so many did. We can rename Murphy's Law (if something can go wrong, it will) Cohen's law. Not just power issues in general, but so many of them! Every cable is a potential flaw. And no good way to measure it, though you provide some good clues here.

The other thing that got me thinking about Stellarmate was your mention that all you guys who are working on AstroArch are using an Ethernet, not a WiFi connnection. That is not an option for me, due to my location up the hill from a horse stable, which brings a lot of flies, so screens must be kept closed so ugly cables through the door are not a real possibility. Nor am I willing to rewire my house. So WiFi hasn't been tested as much as I would have hoped. I was the guinea pig. And the results were poor.

I like your suggestion of plugging the USB for the EAF into the camera. That never occurred to me. That I can try if the Stellarmate doesn't work out.

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Just got my brand-new Stellarmate. I'd heard the UI was bad but that doesn't even begin to describe the user interface on an IPhone. I've heard it's better on a tablet, but on an IPhone it's absolutely unusable. This just in the first five minutes:

1) app doesn't rotate when you rotate the phone.
2) input screens on the app don't allow cut and paste, or at least not any way I can see.

But I'm told I must use the app to register. I generated me a nice long secure password in my pw manager but I can't paste the thing into the screen? Must I really write the password on paper and then type it into the (tiny) entry field?

Or is there a way I can register the thing on my Linux computer?

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I assume most drivers will query the focus position regularly, e.g. every second. Mine does.

If you enable driver logging for your focuser, you'll probably see these values, though I suppose that depends on the driver.

Sigh, I don't think you're correct in the case of ZWO-EAF. I have debug driver logging enabled on my ZWO EAF, and I see no queries whatsoever being made. The driver seems to simply assume that its initial position is the last one saved.

I tell the focuser to go the position 38000. It moves somewhere. I disconnect devices, shut down KStars and Ekos. I bought an accessory that Starizona sells, along with the EAF. It has a screw that loosens the clutch and allows hand-turning of the focus knob. I do so. I then tighten the clutch screw back. I turn everything on and still see the current position is 38000. Clearly, the driver has no idea where the focuser knob actually isl The "current position" is just some relative number. Any moves in and out simply add and subtract from that. I don't think the ZWO-EAF allows such queries to be made, but if it does, the driver doesn't support this. So if you touch the knob, you've lost any relationship the device may have had to its actual physical position.

Tracy, I don't have the ZWO hand paddle. I looked it up online. It's called the "Hand Controller for EAF". The thing Starizona sells is mechanical. The paddle looks like a good idea, much better than Starizona's device because it stays with whatever numbering scheme you set up. The ZWO manual mentions the need to set the 0 position. The INDI driver configuration seems to offer similar functionality. ZWO recommends the 0 position be set to the "fully retracted" position. Would that be all the way counter-clockwise or all the way clockwise? I assume it's the former.

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Wifi stayed on all night. with the above command. So that's good.

As for persisting it, I find

this, on the Arch Wiki . But the environment described does not seem to match that of AstroArch. None of the files mentioned is in the /etc/rules.d directory.

and

grep -R -I power /etc

I posted this on the Raspberry Pi forum .

Someone answered:
disable wifi power saving.
can't remember how it's done in arch

Does anyone know the answer?

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I seem to have solved most of my port instability issues. They seem to have been power-related. Turned out my idea of powering the Pi using a 100W USB-C port on my power supply was a bad one. Instead, I should have been using the 45W max power supply that came with the Pi 5. I tried it out this morning and it worked well, logs clean, gotos worked, image taking worked - for about ten minutes.

And then the WiFi connection died. I could not get it back without shutting down the Pi and restarting it. It came right back on, and has stayed on for a couple of hours now. This makes me believe that the problem is probably not with my network.

But I would like to know if there is a way in ArchLinux to monitor (log) what is going on with the WiFi setup? Would any service of the ArchLinux system emit loggable messages?

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Thanks, Hy.

>>Many (perhaps most?) focusers report their position to the INDI driver, which in turn sends it to Ekos.
>>So, Ekos gets told the focuser position.

I assume this happens when INDI starts and connects to the focuser. Is there any logging of what it reports?


>>Internally, the focuser firmware will very likely do as you said: "record where it last was and imagine that it's still there".

Some focusers have the ability to be twiddled manually. How would this be accounted for?

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adding usb_max_current_enable=1 to /boot/config.txt MAYBE improved things with the mount. I just did a number of daylight GOTOs and found them generally accurate. Still no reliable joy from Camera or Focuser. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

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Does it do some kind of query to the focuser device to learn the present position? Is there some action that can force this to happen?
Or does it just record where it last was and imagine that it's still there?

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This is what I currently have . I can't tell if it's "EQMOD" or not.

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