I've also posted this on cloudynights.

I have a new NexDome with the Beaver controller. The software is served off a Stellarmate and controlled remotely via MacOS using kstars and ekos.

Last night I had trouble getting the dome to slave to the mount. Eventually (and quite accidentally) I managed to get it to work. I got almost 8 hours of images.

But tonight I cannot repeat my success. I have tried disable/enable slaving, pressing abort, park, unpark. Nothing is working.

Any ideas out there?

Fixed! (Also posted on cloudy nights)

It seems that the dome will not start following the mount unless the mount is in its programmed park position. What I mean is that the mount needs to be in the position programmed as "park" in the hand controller. I have an ioptron CEM120EC2, so no doubt this is related to that driver plus the NexDome beaver.

The root cause was that I set that "park" position to west side vertical to prevent mechanical interference with the dome. Its a tight fit. However, I ordinarily start my observing session from the "zero" position since that makes it easier for me to fit into the dome and access my computer. In kstars, when I select my alignment target near the pole, it thinks that the mount is parked. But the dome apparently does not. So when I use kstars to move the mount to a target, the dome ignores it.

Here's what works:

- Assume the mount is pointing somewhere other than its programmed "park" position
- In the ekos dome tab, park the dome
- In the ekos mount tab, park the mount (and get out of the way!)
- In the ekes dome tab, unpark the dome. Now, the dome moves to align with the mount park position
- In the ekos mount tab, unpark the mount (this might work too from kstars, but I haven't tried that one)

Now the dome is slaved to the mount and one can proceed as normal.

If the developers see this, maybe a new feature might be a button under the ekos/dome tab to have the dome re-sync and follow the mount from any state or position. Just a suggestion.