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Help - EQMod settings - Ekos

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Help! - 3 nights of failure, what am I doing wrong.

I am running KStars/Ekos on my RPi and up till now, it has worked superbly well.
I have an AZ-EQ6-GT mount and connect to it using the Indi EQMOD driver in Ekos.
When doing a Polar Alignment and using GOTO to go to anything to the East of the Meridien it works superbly. Plate solving works and I can get my targets spot on, this has worked for many months.

This week I thought I would try some new targets while we have a few nights of "clear" skies in Cheshire but its been a total disaster. I wanted to target SH2-101 but I could not get my mount to point there. I even tried Vega but again no joy. The nearest I can get when I plate solve is always over 2' out!

Am I missing something in the Indi EqMod driver settings. Anything to the west of the Meridien is just way out.

My scope is polar aligned and the mount is levelled but any target over the Meridian is just off.
4 years 4 months ago #45179

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Replied by Andrew on topic Help - EQMod settings - Ekos

You can try clearing the alignment model when it starts behaving oddly.
4 years 4 months ago #45180

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Thanks, I have tried clearing the alignment model and purging all the settings - still does not work.
The mount does not do a meridien flip.
It works fine using the mount simulator.
Last edit: 4 years 4 months ago by David Thompson.
4 years 4 months ago #45190

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Hmm it looks like you are saying two different things now. In your first post you mention not being able to point the telescope within 2' and in the second that the meridian flip doesn't work. So perhaps something more is going on then what lhoujin replied to.

Would it be possible to enable debug logging to file on Ekos INDI, Ekos Alignment, Ekos Mount and Drivers Mount and post the ountput here? In the Ekos Setup tab click the Logs button and enable the options I indicated. Then use the mount normally and try to first point at a source east and then one west of the meridian and post the logs here.
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4 years 4 months ago #45191

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Thanks, I will try today but won't be able to the alignment piece until the next clear sky. At least the mount should do a flip ?
4 years 4 months ago #45194

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Really appreciate the help. Just did a run starting from Parked. First did a move East selected Vega and did EqMt - GoTo. Then selected Capella and did a move West. The mount icon moved to both. Obviously could not do plate solve as its daytime.

Attached Verbose LogFile as requested.
4 years 4 months ago #45197
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Just did a second run. The mount certainly does a Meridien Flip so sorry for the confusion.

The attached log file is going from Park using GoTo.
First East to Nekkar, then West to Merak.
4 years 4 months ago #45198
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OK great to see that a dry run at least shows that a meridian flip is done. Let's wait for a clear night to see how well the pointing accuracy behaves.
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4 years 4 months ago #45200

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I took a quick look at your logfile.
The first line is
[2019-10-30T10:18:23.081 GMT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos] - "Enabling debug logging for EQMod Mount..."
You are in England.
Wouldn't 10:18GMT be daytime?

My guess is that your system clock is wrong, and if your system clock is 12 hours off, all bets are off!
This has happened to me several times--the Raspberry Pi doesn't have an internal clock, so if you're not on a network, it's not going to know what time it is when the power is turned on.

A good thing to know is the Unix command for setting the current day/time.

Can't check it now, but I believe it would be something like this:
sudo date -s CORRECT_DATE_TIME
e.g.
sudo date -s "10/30/2019 11:15pm"
but I'm not 100% sure (especially of whether month or day comes first).
4 years 4 months ago #45217

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Thanks for the reply. I thought I made it clear that I ran the test with the log file attached this morning in the UK indoors that's why I could not test the alignment part, there are no stars in the morning!
The system clock was correct as was the log file.

I will try again as soon as I get clear skies (in Cheshire,UK that could be a while :)

I really appreciate everyone giving input.
4 years 4 months ago #45218

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One thing to check is alignment mode in align tab of EQMod driver. "Nearest point" seems to work better with iterative plate solving based alignment where a lot of points are created. The default at least used to be "N-Star" which should be better and seems to work fine if the points aren't close together or near meridian, but breaks down in weird ways when there are a lot of points close to each other and also near meridian.
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4 years 4 months ago #45284

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Looking at your log files, I saw two communication errors. In the first file,
[2019-10-30T10:23:21.998 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] dispatch_command: \":d1\", 4 bytes written "
[2019-10-30T10:23:22.021 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read_eqmod: \"=8\", 9 bytes read "
[2019-10-30T10:23:22.023 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] dispatch_command: \":d2\", 4 bytes written "
[2019-10-30T10:23:22.032 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read_eqmod: \"=3B0980\", 8 bytes read "
[2019-10-30T10:23:22.032 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "Error: Invalid range for RA Steps (AUXENCRASteps). Valid range is from 0 to 1.67772e+07. Requested value is 4.29497e+09 "
And in the second one,
[2019-10-30T11:26:33.698 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] dispatch_command: \":j2\", 4 bytes written "
[2019-10-30T11:26:33.711 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read_eqmod: \"=\", 9 bytes read "
[2019-10-30T11:26:33.714 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[SCOPE] GetDEEncoder() = -759 "
[2019-10-30T11:26:33.715 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[SCOPE] Current encoders RA=7163292 DE=-759 "
[2019-10-30T11:26:33.722 GMT DEBG ][           org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "Error: Invalid range for DE Steps (DEStepsCurrent). Valid range is from 0 to 1.67772e+07. Requested value is 4.29497e+09 "
It seems some NULL characters have been inserted in the reply of both the RA motor controller and the DE motor controller.
You say that the mount has worked for months before, maybe you could check your serial/USB cable.
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4 years 4 months ago #45354

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