In my last two sessions, I've started having a meridian flip issue. The mount properly counts down to the MF and initiates it correctly (around 22:18 in the attached), but immediately reports that it failed and would wait 4 minutes to try again. It also stopped guiding, but performed alignment. However, it resets the mount countdown to around 12 minutes and begins capturing again without guiding (I manually restarted guiding). Then after 12 minutes it properly performed the MF.My main question is why does MF fail? Secondarily, when the MF fails why the weird behavior... stop guiding, waiting 12 minutes, etc.Thanks,Ron
My guess is that you hadn't yet tracked far enough past the meridian for the mount to switch to the east side when it received a goto command from Ekos.
Certainly a possibility... I can increase the parameter. The mount was point at 182 degrees azimuth when it tried. It's weird, because I'm been using the same settings for the last several months.
I'm not how I would know what the mount thought... is there a place I can check?
I verified through Stellarium that EKOS was correct with its readings. Are you suggesting that EKOS may not be syncing with the mount? Interesting... Since I don't use the sandbox, is there a way to verify?
BTW... I hadn't thought of this before... I just got my EQ6-R Pro back from servicing at SkyWatcher... they indicated that they upgraded the firmware of the mount. Hmmm... maybe a clue!
We're at the limits of my knowledge. I don't know if Ekos and the mount communicate regarding geographic position. I can imagine a scenario where they could properly sync on a target without agreeing on the geographic position of the mount, and thus when the meridian flip is necessary.
Looking at the manual, I see that the EQ6-R does not have a GPS. "At the end of the initialization of the SynScan hand control, after entering the proper local longitude, latitude". If you did not do this at least once after receiving the mount back perhaps it doesn't have the right coordinates?
I'll dig up the handbox and give it a go. Perhaps the geographic location is stored in non-volatile RAM? I would think that EKOS would communicate the location to the mount... but who knows!
Edit: I found a setting in the INDI Configuration that indicates if EKOS updates date/time/location to the mount. I'll check the setting to see if it got changed somehow.