Andrew Jeffries created a new topic ' Losing track of object' in the forum. 2 years ago

I've been having a problem with my mount not tracking correctly recently.  I use Stellarmate for mount control and guidance and the first thing I noticed was when polar aligning I would get the message... Mount aborted. Please restart the process and reduce the speed... so I reduced the speed and got the same message this happened repeatedly. I eventually managed to get an alignment and tried some images When I did the first thing I noticed was the reticle on the screen of my laptop was jumping about in an EW or NS direction. Then it started drifting as the object I was photographing moved westwards. I'm guessing from what I observed on the calibration plot this also happened during polar aligning.  Checking the mount settings tab and the tracking had shut down. The following night I set up again to go through the mount and the complete system having done a quick Internet search to find the problem may well lie with connections. I know the RPi3B+ is a bit fussy over the power supply so I reverted to my original power setup that had worked for the past two years with no problems and had a good 15 minute run.  After a second 15 minute run which showed one problem I swapped to the official RPi power supply even though the new board exceeded the spec of the official supply. After some experimenting I found the official supply appeared to give the best performance with a 20 minute tracking run and no errors. .The following night again I replicated this set up outside and immediately started to see the same errors despite now using the official RPi power supply. So after gathering some images I noted the reticle flicking about on the screen didn't appear to make a difference to the image quality. Problems only became apparent when the mount tracking was turned off which is to be expected. I then powered down and disconnected the RPi and the Lynx Astro FTDI EQDIR USB Adapter and attached the hand controller to the mount which then tracked perfectly.  So I don't believe it to be a mount issue.  The Lynx Astro lead is also in good condition.

I did note on checking that the RPi's RTC had lost the time and It has occurred to me that this may be the reason although I can't really see how.  Checking on the forums I know this problem has occurred on two other occasions but apart from some questions about mount behaviour there has never been a solution mentioned. Has anyone else been experiencing the same problem and how did you resolve it? I'm currently thinking of reinstalling Stellarmate on the RPi but is there something I may be missing?

I've attached an image which shows the effect visually and I've added a logfile for information.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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