I just see in my first screenshot the mount's UTC time was wrong. My mount has a GPS which makes this strange.
I've just fixed that now by getting kstars to update the mount. Powered off *everything* started up again and I think the problem is solved!!!

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Another strange thing. Not sure if this is significant but I just did a capture-and-solve with the align feature. Then immediately another one and the error on the second one is half a million arc seconds out but the time between the two solves was less than 10seconds

A couple of weeks ago I rebuilt my main PC which runs kstars, indi and controls everything in my observatory.
Since doing this I cannot get my mount to behave. I'm currently wasting my 3rd clear night trying to sort this out and now I'm looking for help / tips.

I thought I had it sorted a few days ago and parked the scope. I've tried a lot of the location settings for "mount updates kstars" and "Kstars updates mount" but can't get it working.

When I unpark the scope. The red cursor in kstars goes to a crazy position below the horizion. so I manually sync to my park position Which is the eastern horizion. Sync works fine, then I go to slew to a nearby star maybe 10/15 degrees away and the mount starts slewing all over the place. Twice it crashed into the pier and I had to cut the power to the mount to avoid damage.

I can't understand what is going on because prior to rebuilding my PC from ubuntu 20.04 to 22.04 everything was fine even though my kstars was a bit old. Here's a screenshot of my mount location, kstars location and datetime. Anything jump out to anyone? Its driving me crazy at this stage and I consider(ed) myself to be a competent INDI / Kstars user (until now)
Thanks,
Derek

Magnus,
From your scheduler screenshot I see you are doing the same as me!!
AAVSO Variable star observations.
Derek

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Hi Fran,

I also do photometry for AAVSO and would be interested in this kind of feature.
I'm not sure where in EKOS it would fit. Maybe the capture module. Some way to target a specific peak flux (range) for a target star. Ekos could then dynamically adjust the exposure to get the desired peak flux.

There could be one problem with this and its having a library of master-darks. I keep a library of darks for 30sec, 60sec, 120sec, 180sec and 300sec to use for photometry and I only take captures using one of these durations.
If EKOS decided to take a 156sec exposure or a 87 second exposure,,,, then I'd need to create some more custom master-darks for these odd exposure durations.

I currently workaround this problem by checking AAVSO for the most recent V mag data for a specific star, then using one of the above x second exposures which would be close to not saturating the star.
I do this when building a schedule for the scheduler. I have a script to do it. Its a bit of a mess of python code but I could share if it helps.

Derek

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An update on this for reference if anyone finds this in a search:

Yesterday I swapped my 12v mains PSU for a 12v car battery to power the mount. (actually observatory ground staff did it aka: my dad )
This improved things drastically. No more random jumping of the red cursor in the Kstars map. The red cursor followed the mount's real position. I still had a bit of strangeness with the pier-side-east/west but if I was physically there in the obs last night to unlock the ra & dec axis and do a manual meridian flip I think it would have solved this.

If anyone has any suggestions for a Skywatcher 12v compatible PSU please let me know.
My other PSU is happily powering a CEM120, 2 cameras, a focuser, dew heaters with zero issues there. For some reason the skywatcher seems to prefer slightly more than 12v..... Bizzare.

D

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Thanks Jasem,

Yes its USB and I'm suspecting some coms issue. I've also heard something about skywatcher mounts fussy about voltage so I'll measure that and test with a battery instead.

I enabled debug logging in the mount and tried a slew. On slew start, the cursor jumped to a random spot on the kstars sky map, Nothing really suspicious in the log except that its reporting east side which should be west side.

[2023-11-04T12:07:35.844 GMT DEBG ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB : "[DEBUG] Scope RA ( 9:07:00) DE (81:14:49) Aligned RA ( 4:38:28) DE (-28:07:13) AZ (301:35:06) ALT (-55:58:18), PierSide (East) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.360 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - Target coordinates updated to JNow RA: "02h 00m 29s" DE: " 10° 06' 14\""
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Starting Goto RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038 (current RA=4.44751 DE=90) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] GOTO ALign Nearest: delta RA = -18.799423, delta DEC  = 91.601182 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Aligned Eqmod Goto RA=-16.7913 DE=101.705 (target RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.403 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Setting Eqmod Goto RA=-16.7913 DE=101.705 (target RA=2.00813 DE=10.1038) "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.505 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Slewing mount: RA increment = -417456, DE increment = 94389 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:30.509 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Slewing to RA:  2:00:29 - DEC: 10:06:14 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.155 GMT DEBG ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.mount] - Mount status changed from  "Tracking"  to  "Slewing"
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.155 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Mount is moving. Resetting calibration..."
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.156 GMT INFO ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Calibration is cleared."
[2023-11-04T20:07:31.530 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[WARNING] Horizon Limits: Scope at AZ=343.016 ALT=-39.965 is outside limits. Nothing to abort. "
[2023-11-04T20:07:44.568 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (1): RA diff = 129613.67 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:44.569 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (1): slew mount to RA increment = 574, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:45.571 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (2): RA diff = 129601.01 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:45.571 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (2): slew mount to RA increment = 43, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:46.577 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (3): RA diff = 129601.00 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:46.577 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (3): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:47.581 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (4): RA diff = 129601.00 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:47.581 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (4): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:48.586 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (5): RA diff = 129601.01 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:48.586 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative goto (5): slew mount to RA increment = 42, DE increment = 0 "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.589 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto (6): RA diff = 129601.02 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.590 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Iterative Goto Limit reached (6 iterations): RA diff = 129601.02 arcsecs DE diff = 84275.96 arcsecs "
[2023-11-04T20:07:49.591 GMT INFO ][] - Star Adventurer 2i USB :  "[INFO] Telescope slew is complete. Tracking TRACK_SIDEREAL... "
[2023-11-04T20:07:50.155 GMT DEBG ][     org.kde.kstars.ekos.mount] - Mount status changed from  "Slewing"  to  "Tracking"