hello Suman.
Windows is supported so you can bring your laptop next to the scope and run everything from there.
this is a good resource to get set up.
www.indilib.org/about/ekos/setup.html
I do like you, first a very rough PA with phone compass app. Then when I have the pc connected and everything running I do a PA with Ekos. If I really want to nail it down I also do some final PA, again with the Ekos routine, on the target for the night. I feel that final step ensures the best possible PA needed with a smaller pixel scale and slow optics (I image unguided these days). with your setup is sounds like you are good to go already. With a very good PA perhaps you can go to 2-3 or more minutes exposure if you desire.
Happy imaging 
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Hi. I'll have a go at this since I am a happy SA and Kstars user.
it seems from this page
www.indilib.org/individuals/devices/telescopes/skywatcher.html
that the non-2i SA does not support goto. Just try if the driver labelled wifi works, if not go for the one which is actually a simulator (last item in table in the link above). In that case you just have to rotate by hand. At the very least you can supply the mount with power via usb.
Wherher or not you can get Ekos to rotate the RA, polar alignment is a dream with this setup. I never use the polar scope. i first do a rough PA around polaris, then a second one (or 2,3,4 attempts until I am happy) once I am in focus and on target. It works well to polar align other parts of the sky. I rotate in the direction that is most convenient and never think about the meridian with this mount. Just make sure that scope and cables are in a reasonable place so I can image for hours after without snagging or crashing
Camera: try the canon dslr driver. hopefully works without installing anything else than Kstars.
you can also use plate solving with this setup(actually required for PA to work) This works very well and convenient for example if you need to be accurate when combining images from multiple sessions. but it takes some setting up. Get the right astrometry files downloaded, correct sensor size and focal length etc. It is pretty well documented and there are many 'mouse-over' tips within Ekos. Sometimes the mount reports dec of 0 which can trip up the plate solving, most common fix for me when it fails is to Right click in the Kstars planetarium roughly where scope is pointing and click sync.
Hope you can get this to work.
Cheers
Hnastro
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good that you got it working, and clever to check the Ra changing. My intention was to only check the last line of the log for the error. If all is ok that error will be replaced by something else. But this will not work if there are older log files in there with the error as the last line. And it is possible that my code does not in fact only check the last line.
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yes, that can happen, and then you must ctrl-c-it. Its not very elegant. The script checks the last line (i think) of every log file in your kstars log dir. So if you get a loop maybe easiest to remove all old log files. I think its unlikely that log files end with this error though. There is probably a way to get tail to only check the newest log file. Also I noticed the error could be slightly different so I just made it look for those words. Of course if some other indi device starts sending the an error with "input/outpu error" that might be a problem too.
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hello Åke
I've had the same issue since i bought my mount, a Ioptron GEM28. Since it helps to just disconnect and connect again, I made a script which looks for error messages in the logs, disconnects the mount, connects again and then continues to look for errors.
However, since I finished the script about 2 months ago I have not had one of these errors so this remains untested. I paste the script at the bottom of this message. change your user name and name of mount (by writing indi_getprop in terminal). Then save the script somewhere, for example ioptron_disconnect.sh, and let it run in terminal when you image. I am using Ubuntu. Beware it is not actually tested at this point, but maybe this can be of help to you.
Another thing I did was to buy a usb-cable marketed for music instruments since I figured that musicians dont like equipment disconnecting either. It is possible that this is what finally helped for me, but I am not sure. I feel like really cold temperatures (-15C) play a part in these issues.
Cheers
Hnastro
//
link to cable:
www.gear4music.no/no/G4M/UDG-Cable-USB-2...utm_content=ord-line
the script:
tail -F -n 1 /home/USER/.local/share/kstars/logs/*/* |
grep --line-buffered 'Input/output error' |
while read ; do echo 'connection error, disconnecting in 5';
sleep 5; indi_setprop 'iOptron GEM28.CONNECTION.DISCONNECT=On' ;
echo 'disconnected, reconnecting again in 5' ;
sleep 5; indi_setprop 'iOptron GEM28.CONNECTION.CONNECT=On' ;
echo 'connected again, monitoring for more errors'; done
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Thanks for this. Hopefully this will help my system get through the night without getting into Donut land
I installed "bleeding" which says it is 3.6.9 stable this morning and have the donut checkbox but not the special profile "Default donut" that you show in the video.
See attached screenshot
Cheers and thanks again
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Just adding another datapoint to this:
Tried with another computer today running Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS (the other one is 23.10)
Same crash after about an hour of imaging with the last entry in Kstars log being
"PlayerOne CCD Uranus-C : "[INFO] Taking a 60 seconds frame... "
Trying with Ekos debugger now but cant get it to work with starting indi from the debugger.
Cheers!
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Hello, thanks
This is on 3.6.8 stable. (noticed there was a newer one but haven't yet updated since it has been clear a couple of nights)
Computer has 8 Gb of RAM which I monitored with top and hovers around 3Gb total., 1 for Kstars. It is an old computer but seems pretty ok for this. Havent checked if it goes up during guiding starting though.
Don't know how to monitor VM I am afraid
Also noticed some reports of troubles with the FITS-viewer so turned that off but did not change anything.
Thanks for the tip of Ekos debugger
I dont know how to code.
Cheers
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Hello and thank you to everyone for this wonderful project.
I am plagued by sudden crashes of Kstars during imaging. Since I run automatically while sleeping etc, I am not usually around to restart the system so lose a lot of precious clear night-time.
Nothing in the kstars logs, however one clue might be that it always(?) happens after
"org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Guiding resumed."
verbose logging on .
In the system logs (running Ubuntu) I have this entry:
"malloc(): invalid size (unsorted)"
I have now 93 entries of malloc accumulated over a year or so 
.
So it has something to do with memory and happens when guiding resumes.
Anyone have any clues how I can fix this?
Cheers
Hinorthastro
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