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EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?

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I know you said that you checked the time... but the error amount seems about right for a one-hour time error. Are you certain that your GMT offset is correct?

Good luck!

Ron
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1 year 4 months ago #88085

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Join the club... I upgraded to the most recent stuff tonight (11/12/2022 - using Stellarmate OS) and I have had NOTHING but issues with my EQ6-R Pro.
In fact, it's so bad I'm moving my captures onto my external storage and am going to go back to the original version that I had, as I KNOW that works with my setup... It's rather frustrating as it appears that regular licensed StellarMate OS users are actually the "BETA" testers for it, even when not using the "cutting edge" BETA stuff.
I am SO tempted to dump these RPi4's off on someone else and simply invest in two ZWO ASI Airs. At least THEY seem to work reliably and don't keep taking a crap all over themselves with every update. I lost over 5 hours of capture time tonight dorking around with this stuff. And for what I've spent on these RPi's I could have easily purchased the ASI Airs. The only reason I didn't was I liked the idea of being able to use other cameras down the line.
Hell, I've even thought about going to a Intel NUC, but I figure I'd have the same issues with it as I do with StellarMate since they both would use the same core software.
And yes, my time is set correctly... and it recognizes that we are in DST here in my EQMOD config screens for the mount.
1 year 4 months ago #88087

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Tracy,

Sorry for your issues. I also use an EQ6R Pro and am using the latest build, but not experiencing this issue.

One thing you mentioned (and may have misspoke) is that you are "in DST here". I don't know where you are located, but we are not in Daylight Savings Time here in North Carolina.

Good luck!

Ron
Last edit: 1 year 4 months ago by Ron Clanton.
1 year 4 months ago #88088

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TZ offset is -6 now, whereas before the time change it was -5... so the TZ is set correctly, even though I may have typed DST we are in CST - the offset is correct though.
I mistyped as I was also working in PI trying to figure out how to do color on narrow band before Stellarmate OS took a mighty dump on itself after a meridian flip.
Last edit: 1 year 4 months ago by Tracy Perry.
1 year 4 months ago #88091

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Replied by James on topic EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?


So I'm one of those boring system administrator types who insists that all their servers and other headless devices run in UTC; both Pis are set to Etc/UTC as a timezone and were showing good NTP health, and manual checks showed them synchronised to what I expected. There is a GPS/gpsd on the telescope Pi for location data, which is a little redundant given it's a stationary setup, but it isn't used as a source for system time (e.g. by chrony, as PPS/GPS ref, etc). I'm also in the UK, so in GMT anyway. I also had this issue with local time as BST, a month or so ago.

I will double-check, but I am very confident it isn't this. Good thought though!
1 year 4 months ago #88096

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An update is pushed to StellarMate & INDI PPA Stable channels. Please check.
1 year 4 months ago #88103

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Replied by nou on topic EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?

I had once similar problems like these with my EQ6-R. I solved them like this.
1. slew to some point away from pole
2. plate solve with action set to do nothing just to get align error.
3. manually adjusted scope position without moving mount to remove align error
4. repeat from step two to get until I got error to half a deg.

After this I get much better initial align and got rid instances when mount refused to move to correct position.
Last edit: 1 year 4 months ago by nou.
1 year 4 months ago #88119

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Replied by James on topic EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?

OK, so I rebuilt everything from scratch on the INDI side. Fresh Raspberry Pi OS install (Lite 64-bit) and Astroberry repositories set up.
I set up chrony for NTP sync with the UK pool and local servers, and set the gpsd plugin to use the system time so there was no confusion from the GPS. All the clocks in KStars, local system time on both machines, etc all synchronised to UTC and using the same timezones (Etc/UTC).

I used default configurations for everything otherwise in INDI etc.

I left the scope in the home position, pointed at Polaris, and powered up. I then solved a few times and got wildly differing answers. I then moved the scope (slewed from software) and tried again, and again had wildly differing answers while the image remained perfectly still (160 degrees error).

File Attachment:

File Name: alignfail_...1-15.txt
File Size:1 KB


Interestingly the KStars EQMod Mount position indicator is perfectly correct throughout all this.

I then repeated the Polar Alignment routine and got to below an arcminute, just to be sure of that, and tried using the internal solver and got similar answers.

So, no luck so far.
1 year 4 months ago #88171
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That's really weird. I've never had this problem with my similar setup. However, I use StellarMate... so things may not be exactly the same.

One thought... Have you tried taking the GPS and NTP Sync out of the equation? Those are two components that I don't use. I just setup the location manually and get the time from my home network. I'm thinking that there may be some issue with their interaction???

Ron
1 year 4 months ago #88173

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Replied by James on topic EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?

I took GPS out of the equation, both by setting it to use system time in the gpsd INDI driver settings, and by turning the gpsd driver off entirely.

NTP sync is essential to keeping everything to UTC since nothing has real-time clocks, and is working correctly. Time really isn't an issue here! Location from GPS was correct and the site management tab of the EQMOD driver had correct information.
1 year 4 months ago #88175

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Okay... and KStars shows the correct location and coordinates in the lower left corner of the display?

If that checks out... I give up! Someone from the support team will need to weigh in.

Good luck!

Ron
1 year 4 months ago #88176

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Replied by James on topic EQMOD/EQ6-R regression/fault?

OK, I thought about taking the hardware and second PC entirely out of the equation and I can reproduce this in KStars using nothing but the telescope and mount simulator.



So this looks like either a bug in the astrometry.net side of things (unlikely, I'd have thought) or KStars... but it's definitely not the mount/telescope/etc!
1 year 4 months ago #88199
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