Hi!

I can't seem to get parking working with my eq6. I need to park my scope to a custom position. Sometime it works sometime it does not....

Here is what I tried to do, which I do not understand why it is not working:

1. Start indi, kstars, and ekos.
2. Unpark mount. kstars shows it is pointing near polaris. The mount does not, it points north and slightly down.
3. Turn on tracking. Right-click sync on some star which is currently north and slightly below the horizon. Kstars now show this correctly as the location of the mount. Not perfect, but likely OK for plate solving.
4. Go into indi control panel, find eqmod driver and under "site management" I press "current" under "park options" followed by "write data".
5. Then I press "park" in ekos.
6. Then I disconnect everything, closes kstars, closes indi and turns off power.

The next time I start up and unpark the mount, kstars shows it near polaris agan. So park/unpark is not working.

I don't get it. What am I doing wrong?

Best Regards,
Søren

I don't know about the EQ6, but give this a go indilib.org/forum/mounts/2518-accurately...sition-on-a-eq5.html

Wait a minute...
Default parking position is scope pointing to north celestial pole, counterweights down. I mean physical position. That's the default starting position for KStars/Ekos as well.
If you do not set physically this position, there is no way KStars/Ekos knows your scope/mount position (this is not the case for mounts with encoders, but HQ6 does not use encoders).
So you have to start from this physical position. You can change default behavior but this is another topic.

I recommend the following approach:
1. Set your scope pointing NCP, counterweights down.
2. Start KStars/Ekos with EQMod driver
3. Go to EQMod driver INDI panel Site Management tab
4. Park Options: Purge Data
5. Park Options: Write Current
6. Go to Main Control tab and Park your mount (it should not move at all)

Test it - unpark, slew to an object, park.

I need a custom parking position, otherwise the roof will collide with the mount. This is only possible for mounts with encoders?
If yes, can we discuss how to make this possible for mounts without encoders? Saving the park position as alt/AZ position and sync to this position when unpacking would seem like a way to do it....
Should this be implemented in the eqmod driver?

Custom park positions are already possible in EQMod driver. I suggest you go to the driver tab 'Side Management' and purge the park data and begin with your mount in the standard home position. Then drive the mount to where you wish it to park. Finally write that location as the park position within the EQMod driver, again in the site management tab, and save the configuration in the Options tab.

I have done exactly this countless times, and it does seem to work until it does not and the system suddenly think the mount is parked near the pole, while it in fact is not.
Is there a way to set the park position without actually parking the scope as described? E.g. by manually editing a file to write the correct alt/AZ position of the mount if something have gone wrong?

This sounds like a bug that should be fixed. In fact the park position gets written to the Park_data.xml file in the .indi directory in your home dir. i am not sure what the numbers in the file mean exactly though. Perhaps you can go through the exercise to set the park position once more and make a backup of the xml file so you can overwrite the incorrect xml file again if and when it goes wrong. Help trying to find the cause of this bug would be appreciated as well of course.

As far as I know, the numbers in the "Park_data.xml" are the positions of the motors, not the sky pointing position. I have no clue where the mount position (alt/az) is taken from, when one unparks, as it does not seem to be the numbers in "Park_data.xml".
I will try to redo it next time I get a chance and report back to see if I can reproduce. In any case, it would be nice to be able to explicitly tell the system where the mount is pointing in the parked state, e.g. if the system have crashed during park and the position was not recorded correctly.

You could add a flag on your park position and sync to in that situation. I am also curious what it would do if you cleared the telescope alignment model when it loads with the incorrect park position.