Hello,

I've searched the forum under "Paramount" and read all 53 responses and didn't find an answer to this issue.

I have my friend’s Paramount ME in my garage to evaluate using Ekos as a remote control protocol when installed at his observatory. The ME is about 10 years old and uses the MKS 4000 control system, firmware version 2.5.19.

Configuration: Goal is to use an RPi 4, Stellarmate OS 1.5.6 to run both KStars/Ekos and TheSkyX. I have run the Package Updater again just today. TheSkyX Professional is Version 10.5.0 Build 12739.

Procedure: Power on the ME, apply power to the camera, filter wheel, and autofocuser. Power up Stellarmate RPi 4.

SIDE NOTE: I connect to the RPi 4 over ethernet on my local network. The Rpi 4 never connects to the network after booting up unless I unplug the ethernet cable at the RPi4 and then plug it back in about a minute after applying power to the RPi 4. All is well after that. Anyone else have a similar problem? Solution?

Procedure continued: Connect to the RPi 4 on my local network and from my desktop Linux machine browser, open the Stellarmate desktop. Launch TheSkyX Professional. From within TSX connect to the telescope. Home the mount. Mount moves to Home position. Launch KStars app installed on the Linux desktop, then Ekos. In the Ekos Setup window select the profile that includes the Paramount ME, CCD camera, filter wheel, autofocuser, and guide camera. The profile is configured for remote operation so INDI Web Manager is enabled at the Remote Host address on the the local network and port 7624. Press the Start arrow. Very reliably, all 5 hardware connections are made. I have configured the Connection tab in Paramount to be at Address 127.0.0.1 and Port 3040. In TSX I have enabled TCP Server to listen for connections.

The mount slews and tracks seemingly just fine. And it slews to targets selected in the KStars planetarium window.

ISSUE: The mount does not respond to Tracking OFF (or ON) with the buttons in the Ekos Mount window or in the Mount Control sub-window. It does respond to the Park button.

ERROR: If I press the Homing button in the INDI Control Panel/Paramount tab/Main Control tab, the mount does indeed go to the home position but throws an error: “Invalid response: ” and then as the mount moves, “Error reading coordinates (0).” It never acknowledges arriving at the home position - although TSX does confirm Home in its Telescope window observed from Stellarmate. I have attached a verbose Log (see entries following time 14:45:08) which adds “Another socket command in progress. Error = 219” then “Error reading coordinates (0).”

Are others using Ekos with TSX and a 10 year old Paramount ME? Looking for advice and suggestions. Maybe this mount and control firmware is too old for support? I hope not since I much prefer Ekos to TSX. I hope to test the mount, plate solving, and guiding on the sky later this week at which time I will probably have many more problems and questions.

Thanks,
Bob Fugate

Welcome Bob.

I’ve been running a similar setup but with the MKS3000 and 5000 controller and can confirm the bugs youve identified exists with both. I’ve logged the tracking bug amongst others on the projects GitHub, you should check here and add you voice if required.

There are a ew other gotcha to using TSX with Ekos, but it’s getting better all the time.

Note there’s also a funky “tracking at custom rate” bug that will mess up you tracking, be interested to see if you get that one too!.

Roll on/off or dome?

xthestreams, thanks for the reply and info! There is no rolloff roof but a motorized shutter and dome. Not sure what the software and mechanism are for controlling it, but I think my friend's plan is partial remote operation initially since he lives very near the observatory. But I understand there are some issues using Ekos with dome control.

I will look in at GitHub and add my experiences. I do some asteroid and comet tracking so will encounter a need for custom rates at some point. I will let you know how it goes.

I hope to rely on your experiences as I move forward.

Thanks.

Happy to help where/if I can. I've only been at this hobby a year this month and only know enough to cause trouble!

To be clear on the Tracking and Custom Tracking bug (because I think they might be related), here is the behaviour I am seeing;
1). startup up TSX from Park/cold start/Not Tracking & Ekos and Connect to the profile of choice (NOT tracking)
2). Ekos/INDI connects to the Paramount
3). Turn on Tracking eg: through an automated Ekos batch or the Control Panel "tracking on"
4). Check the TSX UI, you should notice that instead of saying "Tracking At Sidereal Rate" it will read "Tracking At Custom Rate"
5). Check the tracking through an eyepiece or camera, you should see that the tracking is not correct (stars leaving the FOV)

Switching "on" tracking does not behave as expected the first time, however if you switch it to something different (eg: Solar) and then back to Siderial, it works fine, so I have build that into my startup script eg:

indi_setprop -t 10 -h yourhost "Paramount.TELESCOPE_TRACK_STATE.TRACK_ON=On"
indi_setprop -t 10 -h yourhost "Paramount.TELESCOPE_TRACK_MODE.TRACK_SOLAR=On"
sleep 10s
indi_setprop -t 10 -h yourhost "Paramount.TELESCOPE_TRACK_MODE.TRACK_SIDEREAL=On"

Note, you should try and get a version of Ken Sturrock's PySkyX TSX Python scripts that DON'T require the TSX socket to be shut down between commands (the newest one does), they enable you do to things like issue a Connect command to TSX from the command line so that you can connect INDI to TSX without having to do a manual operation (again, if you are doing remote, this is important). I might try updating the Paramount driver myself to do this, when I can get a clean compile going again.

eg:

---

#!/usr/bin/python3
import PySkyX_ks as tsx

tsx.verbose = True
host = "your mount.yourdomain.com" #or local IP or 127.0.0.1

tsx.TSXSend("sky6RASCOMTele.Connect()")
tsx.TSXSend("sky6RASCOMTele.FindHome()")

---

If I read this correctly, you're configuring this in Ekos INSIDE StellarMate? If yes, then don't. Leave it as "Local" and uncheck INDI Web Manager. the "Remote + INDI Web Manager" is used if you want to use KStars say on your PC/Mac and then you want to communicate with StellarMate remotely. Since you're already IN Ekos and all the equipment are attached to it, then it's 100% local. This wouldn't resolve the bugs you mentioned nonetheless. I'll take a look at the tracking error reported by Paul quite a while ago.

Jasem, thanks for the reply! I may not have explained my set up correctly. I am not using Ekos within Stellarmate.

I have an RPi at the telescope which runs Stellarmate OS. It has TheSkyX installed on it which connects to the Paramount ME. It also connects via USB to the camera, filter wheel, focuser, and guider. The RPi is on my local network via ethernet.

In my house I have a desktop linux computer that runs KStars/Ekos. I have a profile in the Ekos on the linux computer that includes all the components at the telescope - camera, filter wheel, focuser, guider, and Paramount via TSX. So I connect to the RPi from the linux desktop by setting the profile to Remote using INDI Web Manager.

Am I doing this correctly? Thanks for all the work you do on this amazing software! Bob

No need to rush Jassem, you already do way too much for the community and I suspect this isn't a huge problem and my workaround is good enough!

I REALLY need to get my head around driver coding and debugging so I can start to fix some of these things myself. I know enough to breaks things, that's about as good as I can do at the moment!

Thank you, Paul. You are doing amazingly well for only a year at this crazy hobby.

I misunderstood the Tracking and Custom Tracking bug but understand it now. I have had a look at your entry at GitHub as well. I will take a closer look at what I am seeing in that regard today.

I also looked at Ken’s current Python scripts that apparently DO require the TSX socket to be open. He seems amenable to discussion so may approach him for the older version. I have also spent some time looking around on the Software Bisque scripting forum and see that Ken is very active there.

I am grateful you have responded to my post. I am also grateful that there is a driver connecting INDI with the Paramount universe.

I will let you know what I find on the Tracking and Custom Tracking issue for my set up.

Absolutely, this is indeed the correct way to set up the system. Will check out the tracking issue and see if anything can be done about that.

Here is more detailed Paramount ME/INDI control information.

Paul, I do indeed confirm the “Tracking at custom rates” bug. In fact I opened the mount to watch the belt drive on the RA axis and can confirm that “Tracking at custom rates” means not moving at all. The RA motor is stopped.

Here is my test sequence, I was saving verbose log (attached) for the mount.

Paramount ME power ON, previously Homed, Parked.
Stellarmate RPi running and controlled via VNC from my linux desktop computer, both on the local network via ethernet.
Stellarmate connected via USB/serial converter to ME, and via USB to camera, filter wheel, focuser, guide camera.
Start TheSkyX on Stellarmate.
Launch KStars/Ekos on the linux desktop.
Connect desktop Ekos to RPi Stellarmate via remote profile using INDI Web Manager.
In TSX on Stellarmate via VNC, connect the telescope.
TSX telescope status: Tracking Off. Startup drop down menu also indicates it it Parked.
Telescope was homed before connecting so no dialogue in TSX asking to Home. No change in any INDI displays which indicate the telescope is Unparked and tracking is OFF - so only partially right.

From Ekos window try pressing the Park button.
TSX Telescope Status responds with Parking then Parked.
Mount is Parked is displayed in the INDI console.

Check Unpark in Ekos.
Get Unparked then Tracking OFF in TSX.
Try Tracking ON in Ekos
Get Tracking at custom rates in TSX telescope status.
Tracking light remains yellow in INDI control panel.
Mount motors are not moving.

Try cycling tracking from ON to OFF and back to ON.
Tracking at custom rates does not change.
Seems no easy way to get the mount tracking. Motors are stopped.
Paul, I should have tried the Solar mode trick, but did not this time.

Now select Altair in the KStars planetarium and select Paramount -> GoTo
Mount starts slewing.
TSX confirms slewing
INDI control panel confirms slewing to RA… DEC…
Slewing finishes and is confirmed both in TSX and INDI console.
TSX telescope status now indicates Tracking at Sidereal rate.
Motors are indeed running.
Altair is not moving wrt the Paramount cross hairs in KStars planetarium display

Now try Tracking OFF in Ekos.
Everything keeps moving
TSX still says Tracking at sidereal rate
Now cycle Tracking ON and Tracking OFF in INDI control panel
Mount stops.
But TSX says Tracking at custom rates.

Select Park from Ekos
Mount responds by parking. No errors this time. But previously have seen "Error reading coordinates" for Park and Homing buttons.
confirmed in TSX and INDI console
Disconnect Ekos and stop INDI services
TSX disconnect telescope.

I have attached the verbose log from this session.

While somewhat annoying, I think I have a work around for making the mount track at sidereal rate and I can still try moving the mount from my garage to the outdoor pedestal and getting it on the sky as soon as this front passes through.

I will watch closely for any updates to the driver.

Thanks for all the info and help.

Hey Bob! Great news, the amazing and hard working @knro has updated the Paramount driver to fix a few bugs and minor problems and the dome slaving/pier side bug is now FIXED (I did 2 hours of testing, I could not fault it - perhaps others can!?)

The tracking bug is partially fixed - it's still behaving in a way that doesn't quite make sense to me - I will see if I can characterise the new behaviour, but the good news is that "custom rates" are no longer the default mode when tracking is initiated - it's now switching tracking off that seems to be problematic (or at least the GUI and TSX not keeping in synch).

Another minor glitch with the Home code showing error in teh log is now fixed, making that part one less distraction (and I hope ensures that indi_setprop returns 0 when homed, helpful for creating shutdown and startup scripts.

Keep testing, us Paramount folks need to stick together - especially on Linux/Raspberry Pi as there's not really an alternative automation tool out there that I can see.

Hey, Paul, thanks for that great news! I am encouraged that @knro has not given up on us.

I have been running the Paramount ME quite successfully on the sky, unguided, working around the minor annoyances which may now be largely fixed it seems. I will look into updating immediately.

Don’t know if you saw my post from one week ago about internal guider instability. Basically, I can’t get the internal guider to work without going unstable creating big oscillations in pointing. I attached an error graph in that post. I haven’t gotten a single reply so guess the problem has everyone stumped - and you and I maybe the only ones using ME mounts with Ekos.

Fortunately, I have been able to get a good polar alignment, then refined using a 60 point TPoint model (I had to collect the TPoint data on my MacBook laptop since I could not get the RPi to run the requisite software under TSX), which I was able to load into the RPi running TSX (I did a poor job describing all that, hope you know what I meant to say) with the bottom line that I can make 10 minute unguided exposures. The measured drift rate over a 4 hour period is less than 0.08"/min. So have been running the mount unguided with excellent image quality results - at least at 1.46"/pixel.

So basic question is, have you had any luck using the internal guider with the ME?