Magnus,

Very sorry about the issues you're having, and I appreciate you sending in logs and raising the issue.

I did look through the log, and it looks like the guider is doing what it should, e.g. it measures error and sends out the appropriate pulses to counter the error.
Unfortunately, it looks like the computed pulses are having no effect at all on the mount, as if it was not even connected.
Yes, very similar to what you said "as a Guide Assistant run in PHD2, that is, with no corrections sent to the mount".
In fact if you view the phdlogview output to the file you sent me, you can see that.

 

I will ask around, but, sorry, I have no idea what could cause the signals from the internal guider to be "not sent to" or "ignored by" the mount.

Hy

This was on 3.5.1 which should work but it's better if you use 3.5.3 the latest stable release. Your proportional gains are set to 133.33 and your mount guide rate is 0.5x, correct?

Magnus, I agree this looks like the mount didn't receive the correction pulses at all. This reminds me of my tracking issues. The mount behaves like it never received the commands (and in fact hand controller debug mode confirms they ARE not received). Can this be connectd, by any chance? I haven't guided in months due to bad weather. Should I spot some stars tonight I will try to guide on them and report back.

Sorry, no stars, it's been cloudy with intermittent rain. I'll try to guide as soon as possible, a few minutes should suffice. Do all other commands actually arrive at your mount as expected? My handbox displays the usual :Gm# , :GD#, :GR# etc. traffic. But other commands like :hN, :hW, lunar rate, king rate, etc. are nerver received. Almost never, to be exact.

Hi!

Tonight, there is some clear sky here so I try a bit. Yes, it seems that all commands to my mount works well - Gemini 2 and G11. No problems there, that I can see. 

I tried tonight with a 3.5.3, but because of several Kstars-crashes, I switched back to 3.5.1 (anthter R-Pi)

With this, guding works OK-ish tonight - that is, it is guiding. But as you can see in the log, it goes off in some very wild RA bounces, seemingly some resonance (?). So I turned off, switched back to PHD2, and again, nothing of the sort there. 

My settings with internal: I use the GPG RA Guider, have guide rate 0.5, and started out with 133 in proportional. (does that matter when I run GPG?) To try to reduce the swings, I first increased, then decreased the proportional gain, but could not get rid of them. So shut it down. 

What might I do wrong here? What settings should I tweak? (the previous non-guiding situation still being a mystery - did not even upgrade the Kstars-Ekos). 

Magnus

Hi Magnus,
there is one thing that looks strange in your logs from the night where the internal guider seem to send no correction signals to the mount: how did you manage it having both running PHD2 AND the internal guider between 22:50 and 22:58? Did you run EKOS with the internal guider and have PHD2 running in parallel?

I haven't tried that, but I would not be surprised if that causes trouble.

Wolfgang

Hi!

Interesting. I don't know now, when and how I had PHD2 running. But I switched the Ekos profile between PHD2 and internal. Stopping, changing, restarting it.

I don't see any references to PHD2 btw 22:50 and 22:58 - what makes you think they both ran? What do you see in the log?

Magnus

Wolfgang: That log that Magnus included is not a PHD2 log, it is an Ekos internal-guider log, that outputs in PHD2 log format, so that one can view the recording with phdlogview.

Magnus: Do you have any logs or other information related to the 3.5.3 crashes you experienced?

Also, you say that PHD2 worked well after the EKos logging. Can you send me the PHD2 log for that, that comes right after the EKos guide_log on May 15 23:15--23:21 (filename guide_log-2021-05-15T23-15-16.txt)? I'm curious to compare the calibrations used (which are given in the header of the guide log).  For instance, the Ekos one says:  xAngle = 90.1, xRate = 1.651, yAngle = 5.0, yRate = 7.561

Hy

Hi!

I don't have a log for the 3.5.3-session - logging was not turned on, unfortunately. I've updated it now and turned logging on and will see of I can produce more crashes. 

Attached is the PHD2 log, starting immediately after I turned off the internal solver. 

Magnus

Sorry, as Hi pointed out, I was mislead by the EKOS guiding log, I thought it was a PHD log.

Thanks.  The calibration angles aren't too different. However, the calibration pixels/second parameter (how many seconds of pulse are required to move so many pixels) vary a moderate amount, e.g. PHD2 calibrated RA as 1.3 pixels/second and Ekos found 1.65. So, assuming you're using GPG in Ekos (and Predictive PEC in PHD2), ekos would be a bit less aggressive for the same parameters. I kind of doubt that's the issue, though. (They vary more in DEC, but Ekos doesn't use the DEC pixels/second calibration value).

I did notice that in your PHD2 log, that it was calm for the first 15 minutes (23:23 - 23:38), but then there were 4 RA spikes during PHD2 guiding between 23:38 and 23:51, similar to the ones you observed in Ekos.
If you have a chance, could you repeat the experiment (guiding with PHD2 first for 10 minutes, then Ekos this time for 10 minutes or until things get obviously bad) to double check?

Here's a screen shot of a part of the first PHD2 guiding data

 

Thanks!

Hi!

The RA spikes have been a recurrent issue with the mount (stiil not fully understood). I do not have many of them nowadays, so I was surprised to see these four yesterday. However, in Ekos, they turned into wild swings, not just a one-sided spike, if I got it right. 

I'll do a test run next time the cluods part. 

Magnus