I've had no real issues plate solving with EKOS previously, but the last few times out plate solving has stopped working and continues to just time out.

I've got a big list of plate solving files on there (maybe too many) so this shouldn't be an issue. My setup is to run EKOS on a Mac and select "remote" as the option in the plate solving tab. Once I got the settings right (binning etc), I've previously had a good experience here and relatively quick plate solving too at around 5-15seconds. I have the FoV settings in there for the scope, am binning etc for the plate solving image. Kstars is also recording relatively accurately where it's pointing in the sky too, so it shouldn't be needing to do a blind solve.

The only thing that has changed has been upgrades up to v3.x of Kstars/EKOS. All other camera settings etc are the same as I've been using for a while now.

I've attached the logs in the hope this shows what the issue is and can help other folks too.

Might not be related to your issue but I'll share anyway.

Have you checked you still have all the Astrometry index files? I have found there are 2 separate folders where they are stored. 1 is the usual bin/usr/share/astrometry that opens up when you check via Ekos. On my laptop, I downloaded extra files but they were not appearing in the above Astrometry folder. I eventually found them nestled away in a folder with an extension something like this: /home/USERNAME/local/shared/kstars/astrometry. There was also a Kstars configuration file in there when opened it showed that both folders were used. Worth checking you still have all your files there if at all.

So have I got this correct, you run ekos on your Mac, and set it to remote, so you then have all the astrometry index files on the remote rpi where your equipment is connected....yes..??

Yes that’s right. I’ve used it that way before and the only big change is firmware is now 1.4.2.

Plate solving is taking a lot longer than it used to now (60-180secs) or timing out.

Plate solving is a hardware intense exercise so IMO it would make more sense to plate solve on the Mac and to unburden the much weaker Stellarmate from doing this job.

Plate solving takes between 1 and 5 seconds on my Mac when everything is configured properly. A Pi takes significantly longer to do it, but still it is probably less than 30 seconds. There are a number of settings that need to be tweaked to get astrometry to solve quickly. Solving in 60 - 180 seconds means that your settings are not optimized probably. Try making some changes to see if it solves faster. And definitely check what index files are installed.

I also noted that you said that you have lots of index files on your Mac and you selected "remote" as the solver. Note that if you are solving using the "remote" setting, that means you are plate solving with the Pi, so the index files on the PI are the ones that will be used, not the ones on the Mac. If you select "local" that means it will use astrometry on the Mac and the index files on the Mac.

On a third note, about the issue with multiple different folders for index files on a Linux system. I just spent the last several days working very hard on trying to update the interface so that it will be much easier to see what folders will be used for index files, what files are installed and what folders they are in, and making sure the index file downloader should work much better on Linux. These changes will be coming out in KStars 3.3.6 very shortly.

Hi rlancaste,
Can you elaborate on tweaking the solver?
I run Astrometry on my laptop under Windows 10 and use the Pi solely for the drivers, so Kstars also on my laptop.
Solving takes at least 30 seconds ( the first time ) for an approx 100x78 arcmin frame.
Cheers

Are you solving with ANSVR since you are on a Windows Laptop? If so, your solving times should be much shorter than 30 seconds, but that is no guarantee, sometimes astrometry can struggle with certain fields of stars. But on average, I would say something less than 10 seconds on a decent laptop.

There are many things you can tweak. Take longer or shorter images to get more or less stars. Often you can get by with images less than 5 seconds, but not always. Definitely bin your images, and the downsample selection in Ekos can bin it even more. Try adjusting those to see if it solves faster. Try a different filter, I usually use Luminance. Different index files can help, either add more that would help it solve faster or take some out that aren't needed. To test this, upload some sample images to nova.astrometry.net and see what it uses to solve. You can try adjusting the field size or location parameters too, but be careful because while more restrictive size and location settings can definitely make it solve faster, too restrictive of settings could prevent it from solving at all. And you can also try a different area of the sky if an area of sky is giving you trouble, sometimes some starfields are just difficult for astrometry to solve. There are other settings too, try playing around with them. Just make note of what your settings are now so that if you change something and it doesn't work, you can go back.

My other problem is that, on a Mac, every time EKOS goes to take an image in the solving tab, I have this stupid 30-90sec lockup problem on the Mac. I get the "spinning ball of death" for 30-60secs....and once it clears it then takes the image and solves. But this timeout is a massive PITA, especially if your using the scheduler and have multiple solves for multiple panels. This has been happening in EKOS for the last few versions now. I hope v3.3.6 resovles this problem.

If someone could help me figure why EKOS does this on a Mac, I'd move off using the StellarMate for solving.

However that said, again, StellarMate used to solve (a) pretty consistently and (b) in far less time than its taking now.

This is strange, can you see if the latest Mac version 3.3.6 does this? It would be nice to see what the issue might be.

My Mac usually takes the image immediately and then solves in less than 3 seconds.

I am running v3.3.6 of Kstars on the Mac.

I have no good explanation for this behaviour.....Nothing is showing up in the OS logs on the machine either. There is clearly some type of file system lock up happening that is unique to Kstars as nothing else on this laptop is doing this. I get this ~30-40sec timeout (spinning ball on the Mac, and during this time Kstars/EKOS completely locks up, you can't go to any other tabs in EKOS) only when in the plate solving tab in EKOS and it happens as soon as you select any of the "capture and solve" types of options. Once the timeout passes, plate solving on the Mac is actually really fast. This timeout is driving me nuts though. I was hoping the logs I provided would help......which is why I'm going back to doing plate solving on the StellarMate in the hope to get past it. Its really annoying as it effects doing the polar alignment routine as well as that also uses the plate solver. I'm running OSX v10.14.6.