Craig Oakley replied to the topic 'Celestron AUX 2nd try' in the forum. 4 years ago

I'm curious if anyone has made any progress using the Celestron AUX driver on an EQ setup?

The device page for the driver states the "driver was tested with NexStar Evolution (Alt/Az) and CPC (EQ) mounts".

I have spent several sessions over the past few weeks with some success. The major problem remaining is the alignment is off; despite initial success with solving and syncing.

My setup consists of a Celestron CGEM mount with the SkyPortal WiFi module. Connecting and controlling the mount works correctly, but pointing accuracy is erratic and inconsistent.

I tried following the recommendations of the driver's author (Jochym) from a previous thread:

Celestron SKYQ Support

This involves activating the alignment system and using the built-in math plugin to sync on stars in a triangle. However, the thread was using the older NexstarEvo driver.

Some interesting things I discovered in my testing:

- Since the driver doesn't know the correct home position and the mount's pointing gets worse over use, I found parking the mount at the start, and then moving the mount to the index marks before unparking, allowed me to set and quickly reset back to the home position (North/Polaris).

- Although I am not using any limits, the driver will stop when slewing left of West. No such problems in the East.

- After syncing on multiple stars, I will eventually get the message: "Alpha matrix is singular and cannot be inverted".

In the meantime, I have been using INDI to image and Celestron's PWI to control the mount.

Read More...