Hi guys.

I have been using my Astroberry setup for a year, and I haven't had any big troubles. After the latest update of Kstars/Ekos, I have some problems during the PA process.
When I have the PA error window showing my error, I cannot see it refreshing...the fields below doesn't shows any number. I always saw them updating while moving my knobs, so I don't know what I should do to have them back.

 

Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks

Yes, I have the same issue. I'm not sure the "update error" is working... but maybe it is just me.

Ron

The update error boxes only update if the system was able to detect the selected polar-alignment star. The algorithm used is like the one for guiding, where it needs to find and track a guide star, but a little trickier since in guiding the guide star more-or-less stays in about the same part of the image, but in polar alignment it can move drastically as you adjust the altitude and azimuth.

It can be problematic to find the star if that selected star is near an edge. Also, it can be slow on a Raspberry Pi (since guiding typically uses a small sensor size, e.g. 1000x1000 sometimes binned, but polar alignment uses the imaging sensor).

I'd recommend binning to 2x2 or more and updating every 2 or 3 seconds if you're doing this on a Raspberry Pi. If you see the main polar-aligment star circled, then you should see an updated error. If you don't see that star circled, then you won't see the error (as it hasn't found the star).

This is the kind of thing that unfortunately requires a little patience on an RPi. That said, it is a nice-to-have, but not totally necessary for polar alignment--you can just move that star to the target location using "your eyes".

Hy

Thanks for reply. The problem is that moving the knobs doesn't produce a movement on the image above...so I can't see if I'm moving it correctly and how much.

It is like the image doesn't refresh. As I write before, I haven't changed settings...so I don't know why now it stopped working

OK, so it sounds like the real problem is that the image is not updating (of course, if the image doesn't update, the updated error boxes won't update either).

Just to double check, make sure the "refresh" button is pressed, it won't start updating until that is pressed, but it does look like you did that.

You might try reducing the update rate, eg. from 1s to 2 or 3 seconds.

You might also tell the system to bin the images 2x2 or 3x3, and do that before you start the whole polar alignment procedure.

Both those things will reduce the workload on the system.

If things are still not working, please post a pointer to a full log file. Make sure that verbose logging to a file is enabled, and that all the boxes in the Ekos section of the logging menu are checked.

 

Thanks,
Hy

Thanks for help, I will give it a try

Hy,

Thanks for the tip!  I changed the exposure to 2 second refresh... and the circle appeared and the PA error was updated!

Awesome!

Ron