Edwin Hekman replied to the topic 'New autoguiding issue' in the forum. 3 years ago

Still having trouble with declination guiding.  The guide log shows that sometimes it appears that the mount does no respond to declination guiding.  RA guiding is fine.  My best guess is that there is a mechanical problem with the declination axis motor control.  Possibly excessive backlash or stiction.   I would appreciate if someone could look at the attached log an offer an assessment.

Ed

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Edwin Hekman replied to the topic 'sudo apt-get upgrade fails' in the forum. 3 years ago

Thanks, Jasem. All fixed. Flashed a couple additional SDcards and copied the profiles. Sounds simple but took almost a full day to wrestle it into submission.

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Edwin Hekman created a new topic ' sudo apt-get upgrade fails' in the forum. 3 years ago

After a recent upgrade, SM fails to connect to any equipment.  The text below shows that 3 packages were not installed.  Is there a command to force the installation of these packages?  Is the only solution to flash a new sdcard with the latest download?

Ed
==============================================================
stellarmate@stellarmate2:~ $ sudo apt-get update
Get:1 archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster InRelease [32.6 kB]
Get:2 raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian buster InRelease [15.0 kB]                                          
Hit:3 ppa.stellarmate.com/repos/apt/stable buster InRelease
Get:4 archive.raspberrypi.org/debian buster/main armhf Packages [375 kB]
Fetched 422 kB in 2s (219 kB/s)   
Reading package lists... Done
stellarmate@stellarmate2:~ $ sudo apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  indi-bin indi-dbg libindi1
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
stellarmate@stellarmate2:~ $ 
 

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For the record here...

Jasem found the problem.

This file was missing:
/lib/udev/rules.d/60-gpsd.rules

Recreating the file with this in it fixed the problem:
SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1546", MODE="0666", SYMLINK+="gps", TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="gpsdctl@%k.service"

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A little more information...

The softlink goes away when the RPi is rebooted. If it is recreated immediately after reboot, all 3 platforms were able to respond with data to 'gpsmon /dev/gps'. The Astroberry was also able to report GPS data with the Indi Control Panel. But the 2 Stellarmate platforms did not report GPS data in the Indi Control Panel.

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I created the soft links, /dev/gps->/dev/ttyACM0, on the Stellarmate platforms or /dev/gps->/dev/ttyACM1 on Astroberry.

gpsmon /dev/gps returns data on 2 of the platforms (Astroberry & Stellarmate) but returns nothing on the 3rd (Stellarmate2).
cgps and the Indi Control Panel still return no data.

I don't see /etc/default/gps but I do see /etc/default/gpsd. It is not an executable file. Is there something that can be done with it if it is made executable (chmod +x)?

Ed

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Same problem here.  I have 2 Stellarmate systems and one Astroberry system - all up-to-date with apt-get update and apt-get upgrade.  U-blox 7 GPS receivers worked until a couple months ago.  No data with the indi control panel - cgps shows no data - gpsmon /dev/ttyACM0 shows all the data.  

I don't see a place to specify the port in Indi.  My USB hub is a 7 port hub RPi hat from Geekworm.  I would prefer not to have to dismantle the package and use a different USB hub.  I have years of Linux experience but only as a user.  If there is a workaround command to start a service in a terminal, I can follow instructions.  But I hope there will be a solution to get back to the plug-n-play operation we had previously.

Any suggestions?  Is there a workaround solution?  Will a future release likely have a solution for this problem?

Ed

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I found phd2logviewer on Astroberry but not on Stellarmate. Where can it be found?

Ed

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Edwin Hekman replied to the topic 'New autoguiding issue' in the forum. 3 years ago

The log file and the document describing what irregularities to look for was very helpful. The one obvious problem with my mount is the backlash or sluggishness in the DEC drive when dithering. Several 10's of seconds were often required to compensate for the declination error after dithering. I spent the day disassembling the DEC axis system and attempting to reduce the backlash and the sluggishness of the axis. It is not known whether any improvement was made in the performance. Testing will have to wait for clear skies.

Ed

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I haven't found it on Stellarmate. Installed it on Windows and found it extremely helpful for understanding the logs from Stellarmate.

Ed

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I think that focus attempt failed because there was not sufficient outward travel distance. The camera had to be pulled out by 10 - 20 mm to achieve focus. Subsequent attempts were able to find the best focus but the tolerance was set to 1%. After failing to meet that limit several times, it began to search too far out of focus.

Based on the recommendations in the thread recommended above, I will try setting exposure time to 5 seconds, max initial step to 25 and tolerance to 5%. I expect it to work well with those changes.

Ed

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Edwin Hekman replied to the topic 'New autoguiding issue' in the forum. 3 years ago

Hy,

Thanks for the info. I installed the PHD log viewer and downloaded the phd2 manual. This will keep me busy for some time.

Ed

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Very helpful explanation. Had some success a couple nights ago but need to make more adjustments to the settings.

I posted your link on FB in response to another question about autofocusing.

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