What's the exact mount model? You might want to add your equipment to your signature so it is easy to identify.

Thanks for reminding me - Signature is filled out now. The Skywatcher EQM-35 Pro uses the “v5” Synscan-branded hand controller. I connect to the mount through the HC’s USB type B port.

Ok so I think I might have found the issue with #1 on your list. It was not an issue with my build script. It looks like someone updated the qhy Linux binary libraries for libqhy, but that they didn’t update the Mac one.

github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty/tree/master/libqhy

No guarantees that this is it, but it could be. I can see who can update that and if they do, I can build another DMG with a newer version of the library.

I will look into some of the others soon.

For the mount though, I do suspect that it’s an issue with mount communication. I know our club has an Orion HDX Mount and when I tried it with the synscan hand controller attached, I had some communication issues. It would literally be working fine one minute, and then the next, it would just stop talking to the external computer completely. But when I replaced the hand controller with an eq direct cable and used the eqmod driver, it worked extremely well.

Thanks for the clarification. I'd say ditch the Synscan controller and just use EQDirect cable to connect directly between Mac/RPI and the mount. Then you'd be able to use the EQMod driver which is a day/night difference when compared with Synscan driver. Synscan driver is very minimal with limited capabilities.

Thank you very much for looking at this stuff. On the topic of the Synscan controller, I initially had trouble connecting to this mount earlier in the year (January). My solution was to abandon the Synscan driver and run with the Celestron Nexstar. This works pretty well, but now I’m starting to wonder if the reason I can’t sync has something to do with that Nexstar driver.

The EQDirect cable could be a good workaround. Does the Mac version of KStars have a driver capable of using it? I was under the impression that EQMod was Windows only.

I use an FTDI EQMod cable with my HEQ5 and EQ6-R mounts on Mac and Linux without the need for additional drivers.


HTH, Wouter

www.indilib.org/telescopes/eqmod.html

In your Mac version of kstars, you will find eqmod as a choice.

Don’t use the next star driver with a synscan, they may have similarities, and may even be compatible for some commands, but I believe they have a different command set, so you will be essentially speaking to the mount it a language it doesn’t understand.

For the eqmod cable, I got mine from these folks.

www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/products_eq.htm

Yes, don't use the Celestron driver with a Synscan HC. While the command sets are similar and some commands will work not all commands will. The Celestron driver uses a number of low level commands that are passed by the HC directly to the motor controller. The Synscan HC was designed to emulate some of these but I very much doubt that it supports all of them.
There is I believe a separate Synscan driver.
Logs that show the communication between the driver and the HC would help. These are available but need enabling.
I'm the current maintainer of the Celestron driver.

BTW the Ra Offset messages you mentioned are there to help to remove a systematic error in the Celestron HC slew implementation.

Finally, as a general principle I would avoid doing a sync on an equatorial mount close to the pole. Tiny differences in position in Ra can have a huge effect on the pointing.
Chris

Hi there,

Just revisiting this to check on the status of each thing you listed.

Item 1: I thought this might be due to the QHY binary being out of date and that might or might not be the case. We will need to investigate further. Do you have any more logs for this issue, or did you run it from the Device Manager to see what error messages print out? Do you have any links to the 5 separate posts you mentioned, because I still haven't seen any but this one.

Item 2: I think I have identified and fixed this issue. I believe this was my mistake. When I first got KStars working on Mac, I had made a bunch of changes to the startup wizard to support it. When we were just about to release 3.5.0, I found suddenly that something had changed in craft that would mess up the way I made the wizard work on Mac, so I had to make some last minute changes. I thought I had it all correct, but apparently I missed several things. This weekend I identified the cause of the crash and fixed it. This will be fixed when I next release a DMG. Sorry we didn't find out about the Wizard issues until the last minute because all of the beta testers already had KStars installed on their systems and nobody was testing the wizard because it had worked for years with no issues.

Items 3 and 4: We think this is because you were using the wrong driver and trying to sync near the pole. I think you are planning to get the EQ Direct cable and use the EQMod INDI driver, right? That and not syncing near the pole should fix these 2 issues.

Item 5: Index Files should be downloaded at home prior to going out into the field.

If I am not mistaken, I think we have figured out all the issues except #1. I think we should look into that one further.

Thanks,

Rob

I just updated the DMG on the website, it includes the fix for the Wizard as well as the updated library for QHY

Rob,

Everything is now working as it’s supposed to!

My alignment/plate solve issues came from multiple causes. Due to driver issues, I couldn’t manually enter in RA and DEC position to sync a more accurate position that would allow for a successful plate solve. With my new EQDirect cable and using EQMOD, the mount now accepts the synced coordinates. With a better understanding of how alignment works, I made sure my Park position was set to Polaris, I always start each session pointing towards the pole, and I always end each session by re-Parking the mount. Alignment is super accurate now - repeatedly down to 7 arc seconds error.

The reason my mount would randomly stop slewing was because I had inadvertently set my battery pack to “pass through” power from the battery charger. Because the mount requires at least 3 amps, and the battery charger can only deliver 2 amps at most, this was causing the mount to undervolt and abruptly stop during high speed slewing.

I have not yet tested the newly compiled DMG for improved QHY driver performance. My recipe for success to get back to business here is to take a big step back, then take some baby steps forward, and solve one thing at a time. Trying to immediately use all of my equipment at once was spelling disaster for me. Best thing to do is to get one Ekos tab working at a time. Now that I can successfully work the alignment tab well, maybe next time I’m doing this I’ll take another look at autoguiding and play around with the QHY again.

Here’s a test image of M42 I took a could couple days ago, after a successful alignment. Thanks everyone for all of your help!! Sorry I was so frustrated. Glad to be back at it again!

Glad to hear it! That's a good plan for how to proceed.

Note that I am still waiting on an updated libqhy dylib for the qhy driver. As a result, right now QHY is still limited to systems that have 10.15 and above. Once it gets rebuilt, I can get a version up there that supports 10.13.