I do keep getting this error when they occur

EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "

What are your settings, both in Ekos and in INDI for the pulse limits?

Update. I ended up changing the time and location updates in the INDI options from KStars to the mount and there's no spikes to be seen. Currently been over 30 minutes

Ah! yes, I knew there was one more change that I made, I just could not recall what it was. I had been reading the thread about GPS and time sync, so wanted to see what would happen if I changed to kstars updates mount some time ago. I did switch it back to using the GPS along with the other changes. If that is the only thing you have changed, that must be the problem.

Jim

I've been having to throw away half of my subs for the past 3 months because of this issue, so hopefully it doesn't budge and stays exactly like it is

Matt

Tonight we are back to this mess. No settings changed from 2 nights ago when I had excellent guiding.



continuing to investigate, checking hardware logs as well. Bad cable? Bad connection? It is possible that 3 people with 3 different EQmod mounts have bad connections... but how likely?

It is a little different tonight though.
1) I only have 1 line of the Invalid parameter error in the log.
2) I have 109 "read error, will retry again" messages in about 90 minutes of operation... seems high. I went back to my old log, where I had a long stretch of good operation... No read errors.
3) The system running the ZWO cameras is reporting a USB reset after every image comes in from the guider camera:I did not look at this log prior to know if it was still doing this during the good operating time. It is doing it during the short windows of good guiding tonight though.

Of these things, number 2 above bothers me the most. The read errors stopped at the same time the mount started acting normal 2 nights ago. Going out to check some hardware now. Will park and re-power the mount, will pull the EQdirect wire and inspect, etc.

I've just had a look and there's quite a few read errors on mine too. Sometimes just before the spike and some not. Communication error in the eqdirect wire? Could also be voltage drops from psu? What psu are you both using?

Initially, I had a 10A medical grade PSU that I used to run everything except the dew heaters. I later moved the mount to its own PSU as well, and have been running with that dedicated PSU ever since. Looks like I should put a voltage meter on it. It sure would be nice if the mount would report voltage.


All of the entries in the syslog are from the ASI camera usb port, and they are WARN of reset. I will open this in another report, because I don't think it should be happening after every exposure, but it does not seem to be hurting anything. They are consistent as well; as long as there are guider images coming in, there are the USB reset WARNs.
That is it though. There are no other system/OS reported USB errors to go along with those timeouts that INDI is reporting as a COMM error. It has become pretty apparent though, that these are the cause of the large spikes and failed guiding. If there were a cable or port problem, I would hope there would be an error indicating such.

Other notes:
My issues seem to be primarily in RA. Any time the mount "drifts away" DEC looks fine, but RA RMS goes high.
The direction that RA goes does not seem to matter. It has drifted both positive and negative, so doesn't seem like "drift" in that case. It seems more like a correction was issues and it times out trying to stop it, so the correction keeps going.

Edit: I looked last night and the current supply is a 12v 5A supply, dedicated to the mount.

I need to come back to this thread, because that last evening, two nights ago, was quite frustrating. I checked the connections, everything seems tight and clean. The power supply is a regulated 12v 5A, which should be more than enough, but it could be getting weak. To address that, I just bought a 13.5v 90w medical grade PSU, and the custom GX12-2 connector to solder directly to the PSU to get rid of any connections on the way to powering the mount. While this might not be the solution, at least it is one less thing to worry about. The other thing that could be a problem would be the EQdirect cable, and I do have a spare that I will try, but if that was faulty, I would expect that there would be more problems than just this one. That statement goes for the PSU as well. At this point, it feels more like timing issues in talking to the mount than it does hardware. It looks like a few clear-ish nights coming up, so will keep trying.

@knro, any thoughts on this ?

Any updates from other eqmod users that have had problems with timeouts?

Jim

Well, we have drifted away from the initial subject But since you're asking, I've faced many, many issues with the EQMod driver and kstars/ekos. At the point where it is sometimes barely usable and I lost tens of minutes if not hours of valuable time trying to make the mount answer my godamn orders correctly.

For instance, almost every time I use the "Sync" context menu item from kstars, the mount refuses to move afterwards. Strangely enough, using sync from the alignment module or the mount control does not produce this behavior.

Also sometimes the mount would move in the opposite direction of where it's supposed to go. When it does, the scope pointer in kstars is generally doing some crazy stuff, like going "out" of the sky or jumping from one point to another part of the sky for no reason. The only thing that works in such situations is to completely reset the mount to factory settings using the synscan remote **and** purge configuration data. Sometimes even a reboot is needed despite the previous steps.

One time also, kstars refused to set the mount to a precise coordinate. When moving the mount, the coordinates were just "jumping" above a few arc minutes while the mount itself was moving normally. Again, a complete factory reset / configuration purge did the trick.

There is probably more to it I can't remember...

My bad. I was looking to keep it in the context of the initial subject of guiding. It does sound though, like you should be opening another post for some of the other errors. I have not tried `sync` from the context menu, but I do not have the other problems you speak of.

Without even starting tracking, the mount is throwing the COMM errors. Hoping it is a bad cable at this point. I do happen to have a spare. Going to change it out. I am using a EQdirect type cable.

<code>[2020-12-03T20:01:25.396 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:01:34.795 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:03:25.696 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:03:31.770 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:04:20.921 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:05:24.364 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:06:24.481 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
[2020-12-03T20:06:38.370 CST DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - EQMod Mount : "[COMM] read error, will retry again... "
</code>

At this point though, the subject of the initial post about the (direction differs) warnings seems to be related to the guiding settings vs the INDI mount eqmod settings. After I made the adjustment to the eqmod settings, I do not see those warnings anymore, just the timeouts.