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Help / Advice: Star Adventurer GTI mount fully remote

  • Posts: 456
  • Thank you received: 76

Help / Advice: Star Adventurer GTI mount fully remote was created by Derek

Hi,
I'm looking for some advice on using a Skywatcher Star Adventurer GTI Mount in a fully remote observatory with no human interaction.
Some background info: I have a ROR observatory running for a few years with a CEM120 mount and a C11 and everything works fantastic with INDI & EKOS.
Its used fully remotely, the only time a human goes there is to fix something that goes badly wrong which is very rarely.

Recently I added a second mount to the observatory. A star adventurer GTI with a DSLR + 135mm lens. I'm having trouble using this with INDI and EKOS. Its not behaving like the CEM120 mount at all!! I must be doing something wrong.
I'm using the indi driver for the star adventurer mount. I can power it on remotely with all the other equipment. Connect and unpark it everything seems fine but then I see these strange things happening:

1) Sometimes when the mount is slewing. I can see the red telescope cursor tracking the sky in Kstars and it will jump randomly around the sky and finish somewhere not near my slew target. If I use the align feature in EKOS it will sync the mount back to where its pointing but its still not where I wanted to go. I can work around by slewing bit by bit multiple times.

2) The driver seems to be confused regarding the pier side. It may report "East pointing west" but I have an IP security camera in the observatory and I can clearly see the mount is "West pointing east"

Once I can get on target everything seems to work ok (tracking and guiding) except meridian flip but I'm not too worried about meridian flip yet as the other 2 problems are more serious.

Just wondering if anyone else out there could share their experience. Maybe this mount is not suitable for full remote use? Maybe it needs a manual align before it can be used?

Thanks,
Derek
5 months 3 weeks ago #96887

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic Help / Advice: Star Adventurer GTI mount fully remote

This is using the EQMod driver internally which is very reliable and been well tested. This might point to a communication issue. Is this over USB?
The following user(s) said Thank You: Derek
5 months 3 weeks ago #96905

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  • Thank you received: 76

Replied by Derek on topic Help / Advice: Star Adventurer GTI mount fully remote

Thanks Jasem,

Yes its USB and I'm suspecting some coms issue. I've also heard something about skywatcher mounts fussy about voltage so I'll measure that and test with a battery instead.

I enabled debug logging in the mount and tried a slew. On slew start, the cursor jumped to a random spot on the kstars sky map, Nothing really suspicious in the log except that its reporting east side which should be west side.
[2023-11-04T12:07:35.844 GMT DEBG ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB : "[DEBUG] Scope RA ( 9:07:00) DE (81:14:49) Aligned RA ( 4:38:28) DE (-28:07:13) AZ (301:35:06) ALT (-55:58:18), PierSide (East) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.360 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - Target coordinates updated to JNow RA: "02h 00m 29s" DE: " 10° 06' 14\""
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Starting Goto RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038 (current RA=4.44751 DE=90) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] GOTO ALign Nearest: delta RA = -18.799423, delta DEC  = 91.601182 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Aligned Eqmod Goto RA=-16.7913 DE=101.705 (target RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Setting Eqmod Goto RA=-16.7913 DE=101.705 (target RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.505 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Slewing mount: RA increment = -417456, DE increment = 94389 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.509 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Slewing to RA:  2:00:29 - DEC: 10:06:14 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.155 GMT DEBG ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.mount] - Mount status changed from  "Tracking"  to  "Slewing"
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.155 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Mount is moving. Resetting calibration..."
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.156 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Calibration is cleared."
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.530 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[WARNING] Horizon Limits: Scope at AZ=343.016 ALT=-39.965 is outside limits. Nothing to abort. "
[2023-11-04T20:07:44.568 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (1): RA diff = 129613.67 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:44.569 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (1): slew mount to RA increment = 574, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:45.571 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (2): RA diff = 129601.01 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:45.571 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (2): slew mount to RA increment = 43, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:46.577 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (3): RA diff = 129601.00 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:46.577 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (3): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:47.581 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (4): RA diff = 129601.00 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:47.581 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (4): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:48.586 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (5): RA diff = 129601.01 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:48.586 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (5): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.589 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (6): RA diff = 129601.02 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.590 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto Limit reached (6 iterations): RA diff = 129601.02 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.591 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Telescope slew is complete. Tracking TRACK_SIDEREAL... "
[2023-11-04T20:07:50.155 GMT DEBG ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.mount] - Mount status changed from  "Slewing"  to  "Tracking"
5 months 3 weeks ago #96931

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Replied by Derek on topic Help / Advice: Star Adventurer GTI mount fully remote

An update on this for reference if anyone finds this in a search:

Yesterday I swapped my 12v mains PSU for a 12v car battery to power the mount. (actually observatory ground staff did it aka: my dad :-) )
This improved things drastically. No more random jumping of the red cursor in the Kstars map. The red cursor followed the mount's real position. I still had a bit of strangeness with the pier-side-east/west but if I was physically there in the obs last night to unlock the ra & dec axis and do a manual meridian flip I think it would have solved this.

If anyone has any suggestions for a Skywatcher 12v compatible PSU please let me know.
My other PSU is happily powering a CEM120, 2 cameras, a focuser, dew heaters with zero issues there. For some reason the skywatcher seems to prefer slightly more than 12v..... Bizzare.

D
5 months 3 weeks ago #96942

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