AFAIK, Modeling affects GOTO accuracy, not tracking.

Yeah. I looked at TheSky and it falls short of KStars and Nina - except in this one area, with its TPoint technology.
I wish iOptron had opted to work this technology into EKOS.

With plate-solving being common place now, it's not as important as before. TPoint is from the days where you perform modelling, then you issue GOTOs and expect the mount to be at the center of your intended target without needing to verify this with a plate-solve. But it's not perfect, and with plate-solving, no longer necessary since the whole alignment workflow is there to ensure target is centered at all times.

What I was referring to is the modeling that allows unguided tracking in both RA and DEC on mounts with hi-precision encoders such as the CEM120 EC2. iOptron claims that "The two encoders enable the mount to perform dual axes tracking with advanced sky modeling to account and adjust for polar alignment error as well as changes in atmospheric (refractive) distortion ." They claim that they have been working to have this feature working with TheSky (Software Bisque) only. I am hoping that this means Software Bisque is going to include the CEM120 EC2 to use their ProTrack system that they have with their Paramount Mounts that allow 10 minute unguided tracking with large scopes. It seems like a waste of time if they are just talking about GOTO accuracy, as EKOs already can move my EC2 mount to any point in the sky accurately night after night right fro startup. I use the alignment pate solver to fine tune the pointing, and it gets me within a couple of arc seconds on the second try. So I am just hoping they are referring to highly accuracy TRACKING accuracy for unguided imaging.

Ok this is different then. Initial guess is that some pointing measurements are passed to the mount to make necessary adjustments at the controller board level.

I emailed iOptron yesterday and they confirmed this morning that yes, they are working with Software Bisque engineers to provide the same ProTrack unguided tracking system that they have for the Paramount mounts. This uses the TPoint sky modeling system in TheSky to achieve an accurate model of the sky as seen by the mount, so that polar alignment error and atmospheric refraction are handled during the mount’s tracking. Precision encoders on both axis are required, such as the EC2 models.

I don’t know if any other astro software has this, other than TheSky.

Doug,

Did you ever reach closure on this issue? Because I had the exact same questions regarding my CGX-L and I found your post when doing a search.

To answer one question: all the smarts in your "mount" are contained in the hand controller. It's pretty amazing what the hand controller can calculate given the usual Celestron "2 guide stars plus 4 calibration stars" routine. I'm running INDI and Ekos on Linux so I don't use the CPWI program.

I just did a new alignment on my CGX-L after moving some things around, rebalancing, etc. I deleted the Mount Model in the Mount Ekos tab. Stars are appearing OK in my guide scope camera. Now, the question is: what happens when I do a plate solve and sync the scope to the result? What happens when I get a bright star in my FOV and tell my Celestron mount via INDI to sync on that star? Do those results go into the pointing model? Does the model persist between sessions?

There's probably a bunch of other questions that I should be asking.

Thanks,
Bob