I recently pointed my scope to the moon and was surprised about INDI showing me that my tracking was set to solar rate. They are consistently mixed up for my iOptron CEM25P.
I was able to fix this with the following change:

diff --git a/drivers/telescope/ieqpro.cpp b/drivers/telescope/ieqpro.cpp
index 54ccf326..0a5be269 100644
--- a/drivers/telescope/ieqpro.cpp
+++ b/drivers/telescope/ieqpro.cpp
@@ -116,8 +116,8 @@ bool IEQPro::initProperties()
 
     /* Tracking Mode */
     AddTrackMode("TRACK_SIDEREAL", "Sidereal", true);
-    AddTrackMode("TRACK_SOLAR", "Solar");
     AddTrackMode("TRACK_LUNAR", "Lunar");
+    AddTrackMode("TRACK_SOLAR", "Solar");
     AddTrackMode("TRACK_KING", "King");
     AddTrackMode("TRACK_CUSTOM", "Custom");

Since I don't have a Github account, somebody please submit my patch for validation. I assume other iOptron mounts are also affected.

Thanks,
Max

Read More...

Max replied to the topic 'Parking position question' in the forum. 5 years ago

huh, looks like my first reply didn't make it. Sorry about that. It works as expected :-) An option for improvement:
Disable tracking when parking to an Alt/Az position. At the moment tracking stays enabled

Thanks for the implementation!!

Read More...

Max created a new topic ' iOptron daylight saving woes' in the forum. 5 years ago

Daylight saving started in Europe last Sunday. I thought it should be as simple as to set DST to "yes" with the handcontroller. Not so much...

I also had to adjust the clock, but that's not the issue. I had EKOS configured for the mount to set time and location via GPS. But after the change any slew was ~15° off. It also looked as if KStars was off by one hour with its display.

Correction attempt 1:
I thought I don't need the local time displayed on the handcontroller and thus disabled DST and set the time to UTC without any offset. This seemed to work a bit better, but somehow my slews were still off.

Correction attempt 2:
Then I thought it may be better to rely on KStars' ntp-synced clock instead. So I set my geographic location and switched the config. When I stepped out to reset something on the scope, the time there was different again. In this case the UTC offset was updated including the DST and without the DST flag being changed.

Questions:
* does INDI/Kstars observe the DST flag when talking to mounts?
* is syncing from/to mount done the same way in each direction?
* can I enable KStars to display the currently used time/TZ/DST and location somewhere?
* are there any general recommendations on how to configure this? Preferredly without the need to change anything when DST starts or stops.

Thanks for your recommendations!
P.S. Hopefully this will become a thing of the past when the EU decides to ditch DST altogether :-)

Read More...

Max replied to the topic 'Parking position question' in the forum. 5 years ago

I guess you meant "so it won't affect other users"... ;-) Please share the git branch or where you're working on this. I'm using the indi_ieq_telescope driver with my iOptron CEM25p at the moment. Thanks!

Read More...

Max created a new topic ' Parking position question' in the forum. 5 years ago

I was wondering if/why the parking position is in RA/Dec. I'd expect it to be in Alt/Az. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the concepts behind the different positions wrong. The terminology is unfortunately not always clear/the same. This is what I understand so far:

INDI/Ekos: Home Position == iOptron: Zero Position == celestial Pole (north or south)
INDI/Ekos: Parking Position == user defined Position (in the sky, aka not the spot on the wall to take a flat frame)

If I shut down at the end of the night and send the scope to park, I'd end up with the scope differently depending on the time of the shutdown. I haven't verified this yet because I'm afraid to crash the scope into the tripod...

Can somebody please shed more light on this topic?
Thanks, Max

Read More...