LinuxUser,
If you still have your setup installed, I am getting signs of life here. Presently running EKos stable with INDI 1.8.8 but hopefully the same for a normal stable install. I running Mach1 with VCP4-P02-08 firmware.

To get the options tab, save and load buttons to work I needed to disable verbose logging in the EKos profile.

Options tab: Load and Save buttons not responding.
To reproduce. In the EKos profile being used, open "Logs" setting. Enable verbose logging
to file, along with some Ekos and INDI options selected.
In telescope INDI window the Debug levels, Logging Levels and Log Output entries will then
appear in the Options tab. At this point the options save button does not work.

Then needed to manually edit ~/.indi/AstroPhysics Experimental_config.xml to add an entry for the
cold start buttons:

<newSwitchVector device="AstroPhysics Experimental" name="STARTUP">
<oneSwitch name="COLD">
On
</oneSwitch>
<oneSwitch name="WARM">
Off
</oneSwitch>
</newSwitchVector>

Without the edit, manually selecting cold start first thing each time Ekos is started has the same effect.

Can now park/unpark, slew and return to park.

Hello all, I am new to this group and new to INDI. I am still mainly using Windows / ASCOM but I really want to switch to Linux and use CCDCiel or EKOS. To this end I have purchased a RPi4 and have it set up with all the software. However, on testing it seems that the mount is not working properly and specifically it seems to have problem parking and un-parking to/from Park 3. This is how I found this thread.

I am wondering if there is any update about potential fix for the problems with the driver? If one is not forthcoming in the near future, is there a workaround so that I can use my mount with INDI / CCDCiel? I do not mind parking and un-parking to/from a different position if that means it will work. If it matters, I am in New Zealand so I am east of Greenwich and also south of the Equator which I suspect will add to the complexity....

Thank you

--deleted -- duplicated

Henry,

I'm not sure the current status of the driver. I sold my Mach1 so I'm not working on it now.

The driver is being reworked and will hopefully be updated again soon.
Using EKOS I could get it to park/unpark by first using the cold start button. Since the introduction of the cold start button is recent I had to first
edit the configuration file to add the cold start button definition. Being a new install you might already have it working. See the post before yours.

Are you presently testing via EKOS.

Do you see the cold start button in the telescope's INDI configuration screen panel?

/Tom

I am using Indi with indistarter and ccdciel. I can see that the Mount is initialised with date time and location information. However I cannot seem to unpark the Mount and therefore I do not know if the Mount knows where it is pointing. There is a cold start button on the control panel.

Thank you for the update. It appears that Markus got very busy after the latest changes he made to the driver. Do you have any changes planned for this driver? What exactly needs to be done since I'm somewhat rusty on this particular driver.

I have not used it this winter so only have superficial impressions noted in my last but one post.

There is some odd behavior in the indi panel using the save button. I had to disable logging in the EKOS setup panel. That removes the logging check boxes from the telescope's INDI panel and then the save button would work.

But the main thing was the introduction of the cold start button in the INDI panel. The user has to locate it in the INDI panel and push it before any of the EKOS mount controls such has park/unpark will work. Not sure how that will play with the scheduler since it does not offer such an option. The initial startup conditions are different now: unparked and not tracking. However one can not slew to a position or do anything else until the cold start button is used. I think that is true even if the mount has not been powered down from one EKOS run to another. I would prefer whatever cold start does, for it to be automated or its requirement be conditional on identifying older mount firmware.

I think some of my initial difficulty with getting it to work was that the cold start button was not there or was not working, can't remember which. This was because was not defined in my mount's INDI XML file due to the file being retained across installs. When I tumbled onto that and edited the file things started to work.

Now I am happy to find the mount can be parked/unparked and slew to a position which appears to be accurate. This is west of Greenwich which I understood to have been an issue previously. This means I can stay with Ekos and will have an imaging session one fine night to try it out more fully.


[edit 1]
I went to the indi computer to get some file examples for Henry and did not find things as remembered and outlined above regarding initial conditions and the xml file. Once again did not find the cold start buttons to be stored in the file, but it did seem to work allowing park/unpark. Will update when I have time to try again.

[ edit2 ]

A simple test:

The Startup: cold/warm state is not stored in the xml file and that might be intentional in that they are operational and not meant to indicate a state to be preserved and used across invocations.

My system starts with Ekos indicating unparked. The indi panel parking buttons look identical with the parked/unparked state seemingly undetermined.

The Park button does not change anything.

Pressing INDI startup cold button will change Ekos Parking field to Parked and INDI also to parked.

Then pressing the Ekos unPark button will change Ekos to unparked. INDI will issue a warning "Status unparked, park first" Red LEDs on Parking and Unpark from fields. TheParking field is indicating Parked.

Now the Ekos Parking Park buttons blinks when pressed but does not changed status.

INDI message "Telescope already parked."

At this point the cold/warm start buttons do not help.

Henry,
See if using the cold start button in the indi panel allows you to unpark the mount.

Thanks Wotalota. I will give it a try.

I wonder if it is of value to monitor the serial communication between PC and mount on a functional Windows set up and see how the Windows driver initiate the mount? It is something I can potentially help with if it will help the driver development.

The mount initialization is well understood I think. The recent updates have always seemed to hint of confusion between the state between Ekos, INDI and the mount.
Doubt we can get far at this time without some fixes, see the second edit I am about to make to my previous post.
/Tom

I have gone through all six pages of posts in this thread. In the middle of this thread there is some comment about the park and unpack state at first boot up. I have come across an PDF from astrophysics which states that for firmware version S and before, the mount will immediately begin tracking upon start up, whereas after that version the mount will not track until it is told to do so. It also states that when you just turn off the mount without parking first the mount will store its current position and on power up resume from the same position. I wonder if this explains some of the confusion mentioned in those posts...

astro-physics.info/tech_support/mounts/p...ositions-defined.pdf