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Help! Frustration with Polar Align and Tracking

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Greetings friends.

I recently purchased StellarmateOS and have put it to good use on a Pi4-4GB.

I've spent many hours over the past two months trying to figure everything out. I've figured out focusing, solving, and (unguided) photography.

I'm stuck on two things, though, and I need help.

1) When I try to do a polar align, I select the default 30 (degrees, I assume). My telescope then takes a picture of the default position, pointed roughly at Polaris. Then, it rotates the telescope E or W (depending on which I select). So far so good. But it tries to rotate the telescope SO FAR it seems as if it wants to crawl under the tripod. It hits my AVX default slew limits, and Celestron, in their paternalistic wisdom, stop any further motion. "That's strange," thinks I. So, I change to "20" (degrees?). Same result for E and W. It never slows to the point where it takes a 2nd picture, much less a 3rd. I've searched the forums and I can't see anybody else complaining about this. Thus, it must be a problem with my behavior or something I've misconfigured. Can somebody help? I wasted HOURS last night trying to get this to work. I've yet to take a picture (other than darks) with EKOS/Stellarmate, and I'm desperate for an astropic-inspired endorphin rush.

2) "OK, I can at least do tracking," contemplates I. So... I try to use the tracking module. I get a nice focus through my Orion TOAG snuggled up to my Celestron 8300 camera. I trundle off to the Guiding module. I take a "Capture" image, and I see stars (the good kind). "Great," I emote with joy. Next, I click on "Guide," with a 2s exposure of my SSAG, using auto-star selection and via "AVX" mount (I've tried the camera guiding option too - and yes I have the ST4 cable connected). The calibration starts! I'm as optimistic as a senior on a prom date. It calibrates RA-. Finished that in a couple of seconds. Great! (I'm starting to get sweaty palms). Next, it performs the RA+ calibration... and performs it, and tries, and struggles, and after 21 tries, it gives me a soul-crushing error. So, I dash off to the options and change my pulse width to 300. Same symptom. It's like my telescope doesn't respond to the calibration commands. "Well," I think, "Perhaps there's a problem with sewing the mount." So, I launch the scope control gadget and slew left and right, up and down. No problem. Defeated, I call it a night at 4AM, for the fourth or fifth time since starting my relationship with the Stellarmate. I'm beginning to feel jilted. Can somebody help me think of what I'm doing wrong (besides my cologne and Hawaiian shirt)?
3 years 9 months ago #55615

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A few thoughts...maybe not as helpful as you hope, but hopefully something(s) to consider. I don't use the internal polar align SW, so I can't be of much assistance to you there. However, I do use drift align via PHD, and swear by it. PHD is always a good tool to have in your back pocket (for multiple reasons), so regardless of whether you intend to use it permanently, I recommend you be aware of PHD and give it a try. It's bundled with your SM OS, integrated with kstars/ekos, and not to difficult to configure / use. Your polar align and calibration issues can be tested against PHD to see if things behave differently (good or bad). If nothing else, PHD may give you more data points.

About that "under the mount move". Have you verified that your time+TZ are correct in both SM OS and kstars/ekos? What about lat/lon and TZ in kstars? One thought to help figure out the magnitude of what's going wrong might be to (carefully) slew to a target well away from Polaris, and then platesolve. Be prepared to STOP the mount if it wants to go below horizon! Assuming the move goes near the intended target, the error reported (as it tries to correct) should inform on magnitude of the issue. I'd be thinking time or TZ is an issue if you're not wildly off. You could alternatively have a Park position or HC index confusion problem. I have a Celestron CGX-L mount, not an AVX. Have you tried CPWI (Celestron free interface SW) to setup and drive the mount? If you try CPWI and it works, go back to kstars/Ekos and try again after a "quick align" near polaris (weights down). I've seen weird cases where initializing via CPWI helps resolve strange HC problems before.

Finally, my Celestron mount is particularly sensitive to balance; especially for guide calibration. Even when I thought I had it nailed, I didn't. You should really, really get the balance right for guide calibration to work correctly. I would start by ignoring advice to make the mount east heavy, and just evenly balance. Once you confirm that calibration succeeds, you can try to offset a bit east heavy to avoid oscillation if needed. If you note what axis is having problems during calibration, you can even adjust weights slightly to try and influence calibration success. If that helps calibration get further, you'll soon figure out how sensitive your rig is to balance. Hopefully something in this whole mess might be of help. cheers, Doug
The following user(s) said Thank You: T. Scott Thompson
3 years 9 months ago #55625

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sounds like you're doing everything by the book as it were, but questions nonetheless.

1). what driver have you selected for the mount?

2). what options are you using to manage time & location for INDI (check under the INDI section in Preferences)

3). When slewing using the Mount tab pop-up window do the speed settings and buttons do what you'd expect them to do?

The fact that #1 is occurring (incorrect mount control) would almost certainly lead me to believe the #2 has no chance.
3 years 9 months ago #55629

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Also don't think previously mentioned, check that the indi > telescope > site information is still intact as you would expect it to be. A few weeks ago I was in Korea without a clue how I got there.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Paul Muller
3 years 9 months ago #55657

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Thank you xthestreams and wotalota.

So... last night I tried alignment again and it sort-of worked. I noticed that I had not previously "parked" the mount before doing the alignment. After I did that step, it seemed to work. IMO, when you say "start" the application should check if the mount is parked, if not it should ask you if you wish to park or abort.

After I parked the mount, it solved the sky and gave me an arrow and told me to click on a star. I did that. Then it asked me to adjust alt/az to center the star etc. I don't know if that means to center it in Kstars or center it in the photographic plate that I can dynamically refresh/update. Also, my Celestron 8300 camera doesn't seem to cooperate with any binning other than 1x1 in the alignment application, giving me bogus "pictures" if I do anything other than 1x1. This makes doing "real time" adjustment of alt/az virtually impossible, as I have to wait about 30 seconds between "frame" refreshes. It's a work-night, so I called it quits at that point. BTW, if I remember correctly, my 8300 does binning just fine in the photography section, so I'm not sure why it throws a tantrum with binning under alignment module.

Anyway, I'll play again tonight and see if I can make progress with alignment.

My "eyeball" alignment, btw, was only about 1 degree off. So... I tried guiding again just for kicks. Same thing, when it tried to do RA negative, it just gave up. After I get the alignment spot-on, I'll try again.

To answer the helpful questions y'all asked: I'm using the Celestron-GPS driver for my Celestron AVX, though I don't have the GPS module installed. Also, location and date/time and DST seemed OK (at least last night).
The following user(s) said Thank You: Paul Muller
3 years 9 months ago #55658

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Great progress! Yes, if you are setting up "fresh" every night you want to be making sure that you are eliminating every variable going into the alignment process - this is one reason I moved to a permanent setup! :-)

I had a quick look at the driver notes for the 8300 you're using and saw "Hardware binning (vertical only. horizontal binning is implemented in software)" - not sure what this means in terms of the difference between teh alignment and imaging modules, but might explain what you're seeing. You might want to try playing with the binning in the driver control panel. IO'll do some more reading and see if I can find any pointers.

My advice, for the money, getting a ZWO even just for PA would be a huge headache saver - you're there to enjoy your hobby, not bash your head against a hardware designers bad choices.

For me, after a lot fo messing around I've found the tricks for hassle-free alignment can be to;
1). (oddly) align the telescope before darkness - this takes a bunch of hassle out of the process later so that you are fine tuning versus major moves
- level and stables your tripod, mount and scope - mark the legs, etc to speed this up - keep the process as close to the same between nights as you can
- do a "starless" polar alignment - the simplest way I have found for doing this is to use my iPhone to get the scope RA axis to the same angle as my latitude (within the degree of accuracy that the iPhone level allows), if you can get better using something else go for it.
- likewise use the compass to point towards either north or better still the NCP
- while you're at it, make sure all cable drag etc is addressed, scope balanced - these things matter

2). be REALLY clear about where the mount is getting its location from
- as mentioned, DISABLE Site Info, it's not intended for local operations
- check the INDI control panel - is the mount time and location being "reset" by kstars?
- I know with my LX90 that the mount had to be the time and location "master", if kstars or a GPS tried to update it, it would throw off tracking and all manner of things, so my advice is be conservative until you can be sure how your mount and INDI interact (read lots of blogs!)
- see control panel screen shot for what I am talking about - you want "Mount updates kstars"
- do this before connecting your mount to the computer

3). after dark, reset the mount and EKOS to a known "parked" state
- align to the NCP with an eyepiece the best you can, again save time later
- park the mount (weight down, scope pointing to where you think the NCP is)
- reboot/restart everything - mount, computer, INDI, etc - but do not plug INDI in yet
- if you are using the mount as time/loc master, then do the basic alignment from your mount manufacturer (1 star should do for now, 2 better)
- plug in the mount and fire up kstars/INDI

4). start the PA tool with 30' increments just as you did originally
- a 30 second refresh is a long time, assuming this can't be addressed, then my advice is to get as close as you can but an arc minute or two out should be considered a huge success under the circumstances, hence the ZWO
- note that if your alignment is getting worse between runs, do the opposite of what the tool tells you to do, it's a known "strangeness" (hard to say it's a bug as it's not easily replicated between sites)

5). repeat 2-3 times until you're satisfied (or forever if OCD over 20 arcseconds drives you crazy)
- then ideally run out an buy a Telegizmos 365 cover and leave everything in the yard

6). enjoy imaging instead of tinkering

As a side-note I am thinking of adding a second-hand AVX as my portable mount, so I might be able to add some real-world experience to this thread soon.
3 years 9 months ago #55678
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Oh and firmware versions knight be worth checking both for the hand controller and mount
www.celestron.com/pages/firmware-update-history
3 years 9 months ago #55683

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I had a Celestron AVX and have used it many times with KStars/EKOS. That's the correct driver. It actually doesn't even access the GPS device if installed. Anyhow, I personally never used the Polar Alignment feature, so don't know how much help I can be there. But for me to do anything in KStars or EKOS with this mount, I always had to star align the mount first. It will not properly receive GOTO commands unless the mount knows where it's pointing. This was always a bit disappointing to me with the mount. Secondly, the builtin All Star Polar Alignment routine, always worked perfectly for me, which is why I never used the polar alignment feature. You basically do a 2+4 alignment using your camera with crosshairs showing on your computer screen. Then select align, polar align, and goto the polar alignment star to center with the hand set, then one more align with the manual controls and you're done.

Hope that helps.
The following user(s) said Thank You: T. Scott Thompson
3 years 9 months ago #55688

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Thank you, I did update my firmware the other night before heading out. I appreciate the advice.
3 years 9 months ago #55845

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Thank you Lead_weight. I went ahead and followed your advice and just used the mount's polar alignment routine (AVX + starsense).

I'm still having trouble with autoguiding, though. :(
3 years 9 months ago #55846

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Thank you so much Xstreams for your detailed advice.

I'm beginning to wonder if there's a problem with my AVX. I have a CGEM also that I don't use much - it's a heavier mount and I don't think I need it for my AT115EDT. But, I'll pull it out of the garage when the skies clear and see if it has the same problem with the autoguide module as the AVX has.
3 years 9 months ago #55847

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Once you polar align, you can go back into the align menu / polar align / display align and that shows the polar error. What do you see there? I always did it a few times to try and get it down to 0 or as close to 0 as I could.

If you're perfectly aligned, and still getting oval stars, check your tracking speed and make sure it's set to sidereal.
3 years 9 months ago #55848

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