Thanks all, I don't think it is site management, as I think this was setup correctly. However, in my understanding, this wouldn't result in a continuous slew (which is the one that bothers me). As I said before, it might mean I don't slew to the correct location, but I will check through that again and ensure it is all correct.
One thing that does worry me is whether this relates to the fact I'm doing a serial connection into the handset, rather than bypassing the handset. Would this mean any difference - does the time/location of the handset actually come into this, or is it irrelevant because we're in PC direct mode (which is as I thought it was). Ideally I'd put a EQD cable in, but haven't got to that yet. I also wondered if comms issues might have resulted in the continous slew, but I don't know if I could debug this somehow. This is a r-pi with a usb-serial (prolifics) to the mount. The r-pi is also running the DSLR and a v4l guide cam (spc900). I'm wondering if thats too much without a powered hub too.
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Wolfgang - yes, I checked the time/timezone and the location too. I don't think it is that, because the motor never stops - it might account for the mis-slew in the first place though, but everything looked ok to me there. When trying to park, I watched kstars plotting the mount position on the chart, and you could see it reporting the RA moving continuously with no real attempt to move towards home or stop. It's concerning, as it means I can't leave anything unattended yet as it can be erratic
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Hi All,
First, big fan of ekos/kstars - I've got my rig setup so that it is all setup as a R-PI so that its all connected up, I just take it outside, plug in one power plug and polar align/focus and I'm done. I can go inside and everything is connected and on wifi.
The problem I've had in recent upgrades (sorry, not sure exactly when this started happening) is that the mount is now mis-aligning. To try and sort it out, I tell it to park at polar home (sometimes it is off), I then adjust the clutches so it is definitely in polar home. At this point, it should in theory know roughly where it is. I then tell it to slew to a target - it got that wrong by miles: ~90 degrees azimuth and maybe 20-30 degrees altitude (i.e. no small amount in either direction). I then told it to park again at polar home, and whilst DEC slews fine, RA just keeps running for ever!
In terms of kit, this is an EQ5 skywatcher mount, which has run fine on windows with eqmod/etc for ages. Its connected now to a stellarmate raspberry pi running kstars-bleeding at latest levels (apt update/apt upgrade yesterday). The mount is connected via serial connection into the handcontroller (no EQDIRECT cable yet) with PC Direct mode.
Happy to talk technical, I know linux and astro pretty well, so more than happy to tinker to resolve this, but can't solve this one.
One other thing I would note (and I've had this with EQMOD too on windows, different laptop): I can't enable the horizon abort logic - if I do, then the mount will just randomly stop during tracking (even though it is not near a limit). It is odd - I know how to polar align/drift align, the mount is looking to be fine in the alt/az numbers, but it will still stop the mount. Not sure if that is related, but as it is a mount related issue, I'll pass it on in case it inspires.
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