The presence of HC does cause problems and eventually hangs the mount when using the Celestron Evolution Wifi driver. I just takes a while to see it. After using the HC to set up the initial scope position and polar alignment I disconnect the HC. I ended up building a computer interface a la John Schnupp to avoid any issues with wifi that might occur. Pointing, alignment and tracking all work fine with this new interface or with the wifi Skyportal dongle without the HC.

Now I'm on to autoguiding using PHD2. When I was using the INDI Nexstar driver, I could autoguide through the mount on my wedge mounted 6SE rather than having to use an ST-4 cable. Can someone confirm that the Celestron Evolution Wifi AUX driver supports PHD2 autoguiding through the mount on the 6SE? I'm having trouble getting it to work with the simulators (it's cloudy) but I don't know where the issue lies, with the guider simulator, or the AUX driver. I can get it to guide when simulating connection via an ST-4 cable, but I would rather do it through the mount. I have upgraded to Stellarmate 1.7.4.

Mike

The AUX driver provides guider interface, so it's *guidable* from any INDI client. This includes PHD2.

Thanks, Jasem. I have read some confusing posts about the 6SE not being able to do guiding through the mount, rather only through the ST-4 cable. Do you know if this is true?

Mike

Jasem, Mike,

The bug report on SE mounts and the AUX commands for GUIDE
github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty/issues/685

And my pleas for alpha testers on non-SE mounts
indilib.org/forum/mounts/12675-celestron...for-new-updates.html

Gene

That's consistent with what I see here. When using PHD2 with the AUX driver, the SE mount does not move or barely so in response to the guiding commands. In addition, the manual guiding does not work and PHD2 appears only to displays the commands intermittently. With the hard-wired serial adapter I do see a series of timeout error messages.

I could guide using PHD2 through the SS HC and the Nexstar driver, but the strange DST issue is preventing me from doing the Quick Align and testing autoguiding again. I can try doing a "Fake One star Align" with the Nexstar+ HC and see where that gets me.

Mike

So I connected the RPi to the 6SE mount through the NexStar+ HC USB port. My Fake One star Align isn't all that simple since the +HC forces me to do a Fake Three Star alignment first. After that fails, I can do a Fake One Star alignment. But the upshot is that the autoguiding works through the mount in this configuration. You can do PHD2 guiding through the 6SE mount if you get by the alignment nonsense on the HC. Clearly the driver is translating the PHD2 pulse guiding commands into something the motor driver understands with the HC as an intermediary.

Mike

Mike,

The AUX driver -never- expects you to touch the HC, it owns everything, the HC is just a passtrhough.

Fire up Kstars/Ekos
Connect to AUX driver only, please do not have anything plugged into the AUX port.
In Kstars, pick a star and 'Sync'

Can you guide via PHD now?

Gene

Sorry, my previous note was about guiding with the NexStar driver through the NexStar+ HC. It is confusing with all the permutations I have done.

But to answer your question: Following your instructions, when I use the Celestron AUX driver either through the NexStar+ HC, with the hardwired serial interface, or the Wifi adapter, autoguiding with PHD2 does not work when attempting to guide through the mount. The mount refuses to budge during calibration and seemingly is not receiving the pulse commands as manual guiding does nothing either. Nothing is displayed on the PHD2 window at the bottom where you would normally expect the guiding pulses to be decoded (e.g. an arrow, direction and duration in ms). Well not completely nothing. When manual guiding, the decoded pulse are intermittently and very briefly displayed.

It is different when using the NexStar driver with the NexStar+ HC. In this case autoguiding through the mount appears to work as expected. My conclusion is that the NexStar+ HC takes guide pulse commands from the Pi and translates them into motor movement commands of an equivalent duration. I'm not sure this will work in practice because of the odd way I have to fool the HC into doing the initial fake alignment. I will try on the next good night.

Mike

I had enough clear skies tonight to try the NexStar driver with the Nexstar+ HC attached to the RPi with the USB connector. The autoguiding did work as I expected. The alignment is a bit dodgy since I had to fool the HC with a fake one star alignment. I didn't have enough cloudless time to work through the alignment issues. However, I think this shows that the SE mounts cannot accept the guide commands directly and need some sort of translation in the HC or in driver software specifically for the SE mounts. I would really like to see the AUX driver modified for the SE, but that's just my desire not to have to buy a new mount!

Mike

Mike,

The Celestron GPS driver is much more feature rich than the AUX driver.

In the GPS driver, if the motor cards have a version >= 6.12 then the driver talks directly to the mount motor cards for MC_AUX_GUIDE and MC_AUX_GUIDE_ACTIVE.
In the GPS driver, if the motor cards have a version < 6.12, then the driver uses MC commnads on MC_MOVE_POS : MC_MOVE_NEG to move at speed one for a time interval, and keeps timing until the requested amount of guide time has passed, then stops this speed one motion.
Note: The GPS driver uses the -same- HC bypass command format as the AUX driver does.

In the AUX driver, the only thing it knows are the HC bypass AUX commands MC_AUX_GUIDE and MC_AUX_GUIDE_ACTIVE so will not work on firmware version < 6.12

This is -all- in the bug report I filed.

Gene

Gene,
Ah, that makes total sense. I'm not ready to give up on the AUX driver just yet as it is very convenient and avoids all the pesky conflicts with HCs in the NexStar driver. I'm going to try using an ST-4 cable and see if that works, retro I know. PHD2 sets up properly in the daylight and now I just have to make the rain go away.

Mike

Simply horrendous seeing conditions tonight with the full moon and high humidity. However I can report success! With the AUX driver using my home-built USB to AUX interface to the 6SE mount and no HC I was able to autoguide using the ST-4 cable and the On-Camera connection. Autoguding with the NexStar driver and the NexStar+ HC seems to be a bit better than using the AUX driver and ST-4 cable, but not having to deal with the intitial alignment on the NexStar+ HC is worth a lot. Alignment on the AUX driver was a little rocky tonight, but I attribute that to being able to barely see the stars at all with the moon washing out everything and condensation dripping from every piece of equipment including me. I'm looking forward to a better seeing night to really test out the AUX driver set-up.

To review my process for setting up: Without EKOS connected, I use the NexStar+ HC to set the OTA to home position. Then I do a polar alignment with the Polemaster that I have attached to the the pier of the 6SE mount, I also use the HC for this polar alignment. Once the polar alignment is done, I turn off the mount power, detach the HC and attach the USB to AUX adapter. After turning on the power I start EKOS and align with Capture and Solve. Then I go to the target of interest and start autoguiding with the ST-4 connection.

One thing that I have learned is that the presence of the HC at the same time as the AUX driver can cause problems. It may be fine to use the HC connected to the Pi witht he HC's USB port but I haven't been able to avoid difficulties with this configuration. My recommendation is to build a USB to AUX adapter or use the Wifi dongle and to air-gap the HC from the AUX driver.

Mike