Never mind moved to new thread ...

The changes for the option "Differential Slewing" are incorporated into current master of 3.6.9beta. If I understood Jasem correctly, this master goes stable in less than two weeks.
Thanks to all (and especially to Bryan) who helped track down the issue. I hope imploringly the issues are overcome now. But don't you be hesitant to report further problems. Without a real device like Paramount or 10Micron it is not easy to debug. Thus every feedback is welcome!

@Bryan: It should be possible to change the subject of the topic without any side effects.

Thanks Toni and Bryan, I’ll see if I can figure out the nightly build and have it ready for my 10u.

I think I made this thread. If you tell me what you’d like the thread name to be I’ll change it.

Toni, I had issues with my NVME SSD at the observatory installation. Ive had a friend image stellarmateX to my X86_64 mini pc. Do you know if your changes are in stable yet? Having not used Stellarmate before Im assuming i can back up kstars binary and install your test one in the mean time if not? There is a Stellarmate Beta channel, but Im not itching to introduce other problems with a platform Im not entirely familiar with.

Thanks for any info on this.

Bryan.

Do you know if your changes are in stable yet?
Yes, the changes are in 3.6.9 stable. EDIT: The changes are not part of 3.6.9 stable anymore!
Unfortunately they are not in the current master anymore. The chief developers didn't like the fact, that you have to perform a "Goto" prior to a [Capture & Solve] with "Solver action" option "Nothing". I made some minor adjustments, so that with said option a "Goto" is not necessary anymore. I hope they will put the adjusted MR into master again.

I don't recall having to do that in the test version. So you are saying it's only an issue if the solver is set to nothing? Or that before i do anything in a session I have to do a goto, then solve with it set to nothing before it works properly?

1. So you are saying it's only an issue if the solver is set to nothing?
I'd say it not an issue, it's more a habit. There are users who want to unpark and activate directly a [Capture & Solve] with option "Nothing". (Frankly speaking I never understood the purpose of this. Perhaps to calibrate the encoders? I don't know.)

2. Or that before i do anything in a session I have to do a goto,...
No not for anything, but yes if you want to do a [Capture &Solve] with option "Sync" or "Slew to Target". With these options you have to set an object in order to fill in valid coordinates. (In place of a "Goto" it could be an equivalent command which sets the target coordinates.)

3. ... then solve with it set to nothing before it works properly?
No, not at all!

Another controversial point is polar alignment adjustment (PAA): Lots of users are used to do an PAA after unparking the mount without selecting a target. (Which of course is possible, since there is no target.) Because of point 1. and since PAA is using an internal [Capture & Solve] with option "Nothing" I adjusted the new MR to work without selecting a target.

This may explain some anomalous results I had with 3.6.9 beta this evening.

For the first time (I'm a new user) I started using the scheduler with all 4 options ticked (track, focus, align, guide). Previously i had slewed and aligned before engaging the scheduler so I only had focus and guide ticked, and I worked well.

But now it was going nuts. I started the evening with M52 because it's a rich star field and i wanted to test some aspects of focusing (there are other threads on why). I selected it on the Kstar chart and slewed there, and aligned. Then I decided to get more subs of the Bubble Nebula, aka NGC 7635 using the Scheduler. NGC 7635 is so close to M52 that it's almost in the same frame. So the scope would slew to NGC 7635, and focus. But the align step would systematically move it back to M52. And then continue the subs of that target instead.

I could solve that problem by removing the Track and Align checkboxes from the Schedule.

Then I decided to try another object as the Bubble Nebula was getting a bit low. So I entered NGC 2023 into the scheduler. This would enable a frame with both the Horsehead and Flame Nebula. Well, the scope slewed there, and focused. But the Align step saw it go back to the Bubble Nebula (presumably because to overcome the constant aligning on M52 I had actually slewed to the Bubble. Again the only way out was to remove the Track and Align steps from the Schedule.

So I think these are real-world consequences of the behaviour you mentioned in the current beta version, so I, for one, am glad it's been changed!

Thanks for fixing it,
Richard

Hi Richard
Thanks for the report. I cannot reproduce this special behaviour and I'm not sure if this could be another issue introduced with the changes for differential slewing. Did you save the scheduler list and the sequences? If so can you provide them for testing? Or can you give detailed information how you entered the target (fitsfile, coordinate, ..)?

@Bryan I'm sorry! The "differential slewing" adaptions I made are not part of the newest 3.6.9 stable anymore. The MR has been reverted.

Hi Toni,

I didn't keep the schedules as I'm still learning how to operate Ekos as a whole and the scheduler in particular. I was having trouble stopping the schedules when the object got too low (it didn't seem to respect the minimum altitude I had set, according to the entry in the schedule, though maybe not in reality). I could stop the sequence but when I tried entering another one, it would just carry on with the one which was too low, so I deleted it. Here is a screenshot of the last version from last night. The sequence called up is a set of 3 captures with SII, Ha and OIII filters, of 300sec each.


Since I don't have the sequences I will describe what I did while it's still (relatively) fresh, and helped by the record of messages in the Schedule window.
The first thing I did in the evening was to use the focus module quite a lot, since I had been chasing some anomalous behaviour there. This is reported in another thread. To exercise that I used the star chart to select M52 and then, from the drop-down menu, told the Paramount to slew there. I then used the Align module to Capture and Slew, with action "slew to target". This was successful.

Having finished with that I decided to carry on a sequence of images of the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635, also called Sh2-162). This was already loaded in the sequencer as NGC 7635, so I added ticks to the boxes Track and Align, in addition to the Focus and Guide which were already ticked from my previous run.

The mount slewed to the object and focused. I saw the focus images of it. Then Align started and after plate solving it was "corrected" to the last position I had GoTo-ed (ie M52). Guiding was then started.

I said last night that it captured frames of M52 instead, but I could not find any and looking at the messages, it seems I spotted the error before any frame was completed and stopped the schedule:
2024-02-02T21:32:56 Job 'NGC 7635' has not been processed upon scheduler stop, marking aborted.
2024-02-02T21:32:11 Starting guiding procedure for NGC 7635 ...
2024-02-02T21:32:10 Job 'NGC 7635' repositioning is complete.
2024-02-02T21:32:10 Job 'NGC 7635' alignment is complete.
2024-02-02T21:31:25 Job 'NGC 7635' is capturing and plate solving.
2024-02-02T21:31:25 Job 'NGC 7635' focusing is complete.
2024-02-02T21:28:17 Job 'NGC 7635' is focusing.
2024-02-02T21:28:16 Job 'NGC 7635' slew is complete.
2024-02-02T21:28:14 Job 'NGC 7635' is slewing to target.

Not being sure what the problem was I made a new schedule for Sh2-162, another name for the same object, and the same thing happened:
2024-02-02T21:39:10 Job 'Sh2 162' has not been processed upon scheduler stop, marking aborted.
2024-02-02T21:38:23 Starting guiding procedure for Sh2 162 ...
2024-02-02T21:38:22 Job 'Sh2 162' repositioning is complete.
2024-02-02T21:38:22 Job 'Sh2 162' alignment is complete.
2024-02-02T21:37:37 Job 'Sh2 162' is capturing and plate solving.
2024-02-02T21:37:37 Job 'Sh2 162' focusing is complete.
2024-02-02T21:34:52 Job 'Sh2 162' is focusing.
2024-02-02T21:34:51 Job 'Sh2 162' slew is complete.
2024-02-02T21:34:48 Job 'Sh2 162' is slewing to target.

Then, I manually slewed to Sh2 162 using the drop-down menu on the star chart, and aligned successfully. So then I re-ran the scheduler with the Track and Align boxes unticked:
2024-02-02T22:03:29 Job 'Sh2 162' capture is in progress (batch #15)...
2024-02-02T21:47:59 Job 'Sh2 162' capture is in progress (batch #15)...
2024-02-02T21:47:59 Job 'Sh2 162' guiding is in progress.
2024-02-02T21:47:06 Starting guiding procedure for Sh2 162 ...
2024-02-02T21:47:06 Job 'Sh2 162' focusing is complete.
2024-02-02T21:44:16 Job 'Sh2 162' is focusing.

I then added NGC 2023 to the schedule, with a different sequence, this time with LRGB filter, again 300 sec each.

Sh 162 was still above the minimum altitude I had set (20deg) so it would not move to the new object until I deleted the schedule for Sh2 162.
I had track, focus, align and guide all selected. This is what happened:
2024-02-03T00:00:05 Warning: job 'NGC 2023' failed to capture target.
2024-02-02T23:59:02 Job 'NGC 2023' capture is in progress (batch #22)...
2024-02-02T23:59:02 Job 'NGC 2023' guiding is in progress.
2024-02-02T23:58:09 Starting guiding procedure for NGC 2023 ...
2024-02-02T23:58:08 Job 'NGC 2023' repositioning is complete.
2024-02-02T23:58:07 Job 'NGC 2023' alignment is complete.
2024-02-02T23:55:32 Job 'NGC 2023' is capturing and plate solving.
2024-02-02T23:55:32 Job 'NGC 2023' focusing is complete.
2024-02-02T23:52:45 Job 'NGC 2023' is focusing.
2024-02-02T23:52:44 Job 'NGC 2023' slew is complete.
2024-02-02T23:51:41 Job 'NGC 2023' is slewing to target.

Note that it took about 1 minute to slew from Sh2 162 to the new target, and after the Align step, it took another minute to slew back to Sh2 162 (while claiming it was NGC 2023).

Unfortunately the messages in the Align window got deleted before 01:20. I don't know why. I was searching for the dialog box "guide and focus limits" and may have pressed "Clear" instead of "Options" in the Align panel. So none of these problem cases are reported there. what I have is attached as well.

I've just found that I did make a screenshot of the Align module at 21:38:57, which captures some of this anomalous behaviour. It's also attached.

Hope this helps!

Toni, this is the exact behavior in scheduler that I was referring to earlier in the thread. It makes no sense. Richard described what I hadn't taken the time to figure out.

All this really want me to revert to before the change for the rotator. Everything in this regard worked great. Is there really no way to scrap all those changes and figure out a different way to solve the rotator issue? Sorry. Just the system is nonworkable. :/

I really appreciate all your efforts!

@Richard, since you mention a Paramount, did you have broken differential slews on 3.6.8?

Bryan.