If you have a camera connected, you don't need to manually sync. You just need to slew to a star and capture and solve. That's how I did it and it works quiet well.

Thanks, Jasem. I will try again tonight if the clouds cooperate.
Mike

We had another beautiful clear night here tonight and I was able to experiment with the Celestron AUX driver. The plain Celestron AUX driver assumes that the home position points to the north celestial pole. I could not get this driver to work with my wedge mounted 6SE. The Evolution Wifi Wedge driver assumes that the home position has the OTA pointing south at the celestial equator which is what is called for by the 6SE. After setting the home position with the Nexstar + HC, I cycled the mount power and started up EKOS. Following Jasem’s advice, I use KStars to pick a GOTO position. After the mount finishes moving, I do a Capture and solve and slew with the attached camera. This works pretty well. However the pointing error never gets below 60 arcsec and seems worse for objects near the zenith. On the bullseye, the pointing position seems to be systematically S and E of the target. I don’t see this behavior when I use the Nexstar driver.
As far as guiding is concerned, my old mount is a challenge. I have never been able to get the internal guider in EKOS to work. I assume this is because of my old mount and its excessive backlash. I can get PHD2 to work moderately well using the standard Nexstar INDI driver since PHD2 tolerates backlash pretty well. However I could not get PHD2 to work with the Celestron AUX driver. The calibration never ended and I either got stuck in an endless loop of picking a guide star and recalibration or the system just crashed.
I’m not too disappointed though. The Celestron AUX driver seems perfectly good for visual observation. So my search for automation continues. Maybe my observations above might give you and the other developers some clues for improvements. I can always go back to using the Starsense HC and Quick Align even though the process is awkward and kludgy.
Mike

I am going to try the Celestron AUX driver one more time (the Evolution Wifi Wedge version). I get the following messages on the console for the mount upon start up. There are two error messages that appear the significance of which is not apparent. The driver appears to run, but maybe some of the things I saw before are caused by this?
Mike

2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Observer location updated: Latitude 36:29:17.0 (36.49) Longitude -121:57:40.0 (-121.96)
2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Device configuration applied.
2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Observer location updated: Latitude 36:29:17.0 (36.49) Longitude -121:57:40.0 (-121.96)
2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Dome Policy set to: Dome ignored. Mount can park or unpark regardless of dome parking state.
2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Auto search is enabled. When connecting, the driver shall attempt to communicate with all available system ports until a connection is established.
2022-11-21T16:44:39: [INFO] Loading device configuration...
2022-11-21T16:44:38: [ERROR] RES
2022-11-21T16:44:38: [ERROR] Resp. char 4 is 00 ascii
2022-11-21T16:44:38: [INFO] Mount is unparked.
2022-11-21T16:44:38: [INFO] InitPark: No Park data in file /home/stellarmate/.indi/ParkData.xml: No park data found for this device
2022-11-21T16:44:34: [INFO] Evolution WiFi Wedge is online.
2022-11-21T16:44:34: [INFO] Got response from target ALT or AZM.
2022-11-21T16:44:34: [INFO] Detected Hand Controller (v5.34) serial connection.
2022-11-21T16:44:34: [INFO] Setting serial speed to 9600 baud.

Mike,
If you enabled deeper debug on the OPTIONS tab, SERIAL and AUX, 'save' the config then restart everything, there will be more info available.

The two errors in your log are the same error reported from two different routines (most likely), deeper debug will bring it out.

Gene

Gene,
Sorry to be clueless, but I don't see where to do this. Can you be more specific? Thank.
Mike

Hi Mike,

In Ekos, enable Debug and Mount logging

Then on the AUX driver OPTION's tab, enable all logging
NOTE: It is very chatty so also select Log to File

Gene

With all 'Logging Level's chosen

Thanks, Gene. I attached the log file that just encompasses startup. It is very chatty. My index files are not in the usual location, they are in a different partition on my SSD. I suspect this is why the debugger doesn't find them. There are some other warnings, but I'm not sure they are of significance.
Mike

Gene,
The two error messages from the AUX driver are near the bottom of the file.
Mike

Gene,
Sorry, here's the logfile with everything checked. I stopped the logging after a while since it was continuing to log the current position.
Mike

Hi Mike,

Hmmmm

How are you cabled into your Celestron Focuser, direct USB serial or through the AUX port on the mount?

The response packet causing the error, I am clueless.

If you have time and are so inclined, try a startup with your Ekos profile only having the AUX driver and say CCD Simulator, then connect.
Would be interesting if you see the error this way.
It does look like on startup your system is quite busy.

The last command executed was a get AZM encoder position
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.010 UTC : "[CAUX] CMD <MC_GET_POSITION> APP -> AZM "
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.048 UTC : "[CSER] CMD <50 01 10 01 00 00 00 03> "

Then it spits out
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.716 UTC : "[ERROR] Resp. char 4 is 00 ascii "
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.718 UTC : "[ERROR] RES <2C F7 AB 88 55 00 00 00>

This response cannot be parsed so it is bit bucketed, no harm done

Then it asks for ALT
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.720 UTC : "[CAUX] CMD <MC_GET_POSITION> APP -> ALT "
[2022-11-22T20:28:28.764 UTC : "[CSER] CMD <50 01 11 01 00 00 00 03> "

Which gets no response and times out

Then starts the normal 1 second polling interval for ALT and AZ

[2022-11-22T20:28:30.767 UTC : "[CAUX] CMD <MC_GET_POSITION> APP -> AZM "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.817 UTC : "[CSER] CMD <50 01 10 01 00 00 00 03> "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.817 UTC : "[CSER] RES (8 : <3B 04 10 20 01 00 00 00> "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.818 UTC : "[CSER] Got 4 bytes: ; payload length field: 4 ; MSG: "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.818 UTC : "[CSER] [00 04 10 20 01 00] "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.818 UTC : "[CAUX] RES <MC_GET_POSITION> AZM -> APP [00 00 00] "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.818 UTC : "[CAUX] CMD <MC_GET_POSITION> APP -> ALT "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.874 UTC : "[CSER] CMD <50 01 11 01 00 00 00 03> "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.874 UTC : "[CSER] RES (8 : <3B 04 11 20 01 00 00 04> "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.875 UTC : "[CSER] Got 4 bytes: ; payload length field: 4 ; MSG: "
[2022-11-22T20:28:30.875 UTC : "[CSER] [00 04 11 20 01 00] "