Not to say you should have to do this, but, it has bit me once and I swore to not have to deal with it again. Generally software should be bug free but with community contributions to a complex codebase things can happen.

I keep 2 SD cards for my Raspberry Pi, you can do the same with a bootable USD Thumb drive if using Kstars from a Linux laptop ( Mac is a bit more complicated ). One SD card has a know working ( at least the parts I use ) copy of everything I use for astro. When I want to upgrade I update one of the SD cards, and take it out for the night. If I discover a breaking bug that can't be worked around I shutdown the Pi and swap to the known backup SD card. I might lose some updated profile settings but at least I can still image unless it is a true hardware failure.

Once I have a good number of imaging runs under my belt I clone the new SD card onto the old one and that becomes the new backup. I do this every time I update Kstars to make sure that I have a fallback in case of technical issues.

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Hey,

Both Dither frequency and the in-sequence focus checks are set outside of the sequencer tab. Dither in the guide tab options, and the focus check in the overall EKOS settings.

These are both something that are very much tied to the length of your sub exposure. For example, if I am shooting 5 minute subs, then maybe I want to dither every exposure, if I am shooting 30 second subs I might want to dither every 4-12 ( individually or on each LRGB set of 3 ).

Focus check is a similar thing, where maybe I want to do it every 3 5 minute exposures, but every 12 30 second exposures.

This means that both of the above would be great to be set in the actual sequence, based on the type of exposure we would like to do. Is there any way to do that now? Would it be possible to make these controllable via the sequence?

I wanted to try and see if there was a way to set these via the sequence scripts option. I haven't had a chance to do that but I think at least for Dithering it is not updated when guiding is currently active?

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I have not encountered this issue since putting the CEM40 on a dedicated, unpowered, usb hub. I had the CEM40 going through a USB3.0 powered 12v hub, the same hub all my other gear was going through, and encountered this issue constantly, to the point of it not really being usable. I tried many different cables but it was always the same result.

I couldn't put the CEM40 directly into the Pi because the USB controller used in the CEM40 is not compatible with linux. I instead got a cheap USB2.0 unpowered hub off Amazon and connected it through that as this gets around the non-compatible controller issue, and since then I have zero subsystem crashes. It appears that something with that powered hub was not happy with the CEM40, and it caused the whole thing to go down.

If you have a similar issue the cheap USB2.0 hub is a good bet and doesn't cost much more than a new cable to try.

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Yes, it connects directly to the Pi.

I already had a case with space for a HAT, since this is a fairly common thing it is easy to find cases with space for the hat. The connection points are also all in the same location so you can easily find universal cases that support it.

The Waveshare motor hat connects directly to the same Pi that runs kstars/EKOS. It can drive 2 stepper motors at the same time, and has multiple connection options either via a standard connector, terminal blocks, or headers.

The HAT takes 12v input via a barrel connector, so it is easy to power alongside cooled cameras or other 12v things like dew heaters. No more need to have a 3amp usbc input to power the Pi as the HAT will power it directly.

You don't need to have the Pi near the motor, it uses a 4 wire connection and so you can easily get a wire long enough to place the Pi somewhere other than on the scope, mine is about a foot away from the focuser, but it could be farther.

Kevin has made a driver that will handle everything you need. It lets you set the stepping speed, motor backlash, etc.

It was super easy to setup for me, just put the HAT on the Pi, plug the wire from the stepper motor into the terminal block and then set the delay in the driver. The motor is connected to the fine focus shaft on my focuser and has no issues with torque. I removed the fine focus knob and used a coupler to connect the shafts. I did design and 3d print a bracket to hold the motor and connect to my focuser, but you can pick up a commercial metal bracket that can be adapted.

You do need to build the driver as it is not included in the Stellarmate OS, but, it is a very simple procedure, and all of the steps are outlined on the driver's page. You do need to figure out how to wire the motor into the HAT, in my case the motor was not labeled the same as the HAT, which was the only annoyance.

Once the driver is setup, you just use it like any other driver in kstars/EKOS.

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Vote 2 for the Waveshare if you are using the RaspberryPi.

I got it and a stepper motor from a local electronics shop and it cost me ~$50 to add autofocus to my rig.

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I normally update via the Updater tool, but when that fails I generate a backup using the web interface, and then re-flash the flash drive with the latest image.

Sometimes restoring from the backup doesn't work, but if you just look in the backup tar all it is is a copy of a bunch of files. It is easy enough to put the kstars files back where they should be as everything is relative to the root / directory.

The only annoying part of this is I have to connect to the hotspot and re-input my wifi password, but that takes all of a minute.

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I updated to a new install and the driver shows up under the focus options again.

I updated and cleaned the driver, and well see if it goes missing again for some reason.

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Sorry, forgot to include it : github.com/radon199/IndiDS18B20TemperatureSensor

It is my first driver, so not 100% sure on everything.

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I made a weather plugin for my One Wire DS18B20 temperature sensor so that I could use it as the focus temperature. The focus driver I use does not support focus temperature, so I wanted to use the fallback behavior of using the weather station.

The driver works fine, it shows up and connects via EKOS and I can see the current temperature and it updates as expected with the polling loop.

I got it to show up under the Focus temperature selection once, but now it no longer shows up ( just my cameras and the focus driver which doesn't actually display a temperature.

Is there something I can clear to make it show up again? What causes things to show up under the focus temperature selection?

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What is your motor micro-stepping set at? The plugin is hardcoded to 32 steps which is what the waveshare comes pre-configured with.
I would set your controller to a single step, and build the plugin again with the step size set to 1 as well, and try that.

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You should set "Delay per step" in a value between 50 and 200, or whatever works for you.

If you don't set this the motor will try and run as fast as physically possible, which results in it doing a whole lot of nothing because the torque is super low. I use around 150 or so, the docs say 200.

It might be good to default this value to 200 instead of 0 in the plugin.

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Thanks. I had the wrong PDF saved… I am running the latest firmware for both hand controller and mount, which is what it came with.

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I logged debug info for the iOptronV3 driver and this is the error. I am not sure how to debug multiple INDI drivers at the same time, as I am not sure what happens first, the ASI CCD failing to expose, or the CEM40 not returning to the command. I will debug the ASI driver next.

T22:02:59.795 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Image received. Mode: "Guide" Size: 1237440
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.151 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] RES <+2073037511691336011> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.181 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:GLS#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.182 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] RES <-4432800050135700210931> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.182 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] CMD <:GEP#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.182 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] RES <+2073037511691342011> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.182 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:ZE00080#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.852 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:GLS#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.876 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] RES <-4432800050135700210931> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:01.877 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] CMD <:GEP#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:04.831 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - ZWO CCD ASI120MM Mini : "[ERROR] Exposure failed after 3 attempts. "
[2022-09-07T22:03:04.831 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Exposure failed. Restarting exposure..."
[2022-09-07T22:03:06.879 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] Read Command Error: Timeout error "
[2022-09-07T22:03:07.479 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.mount] - Mount status changed from "Tracking" to "Error"
[2022-09-07T22:03:07.882 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:GLS#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:08.446 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - ZWO CCD ASI120MM Mini : "[ERROR] Exposure failed after 3 attempts. "
[2022-09-07T22:03:08.446 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Exposure failed. Restarting exposure..."
[2022-09-07T22:03:11.459 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] RES <> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:11.466 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] bool IOPv3::Driver::getStatus(IOPv3::IOPInfo*): Expected 23 bytes but received 0. "
[2022-09-07T22:03:11.467 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] CMD <:GEP#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:11.482 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] Write Command Error: Write Error: Input/output error "
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.067 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - ZWO CCD ASI120MM Mini : "[ERROR] Exposure failed after 3 attempts. "
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.067 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - "Exposure failed. Restarting exposure..."
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.457 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:GLS#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.459 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] Write Command Error: Write Error: Input/output error "
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.459 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[SCOPE] CMD <:GEP#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:12.461 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] Write Command Error: Write Error: Input/output error "
[2022-09-07T22:03:13.458 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:GLS#> "
[2022-09-07T22:03:13.460 PDT INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[ERROR] Write Command Error: Write Error: Input/output error "

The only part that is weird is this : [2022-09-07T22:03:01.182 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - iOptronV3 : "[DEBUG] CMD <:ZE00080#> "

The driver has this as a guide command, but I can't find it in the RS-232 command set, that instead appears to be expecting motion commands to be prefixed with :M

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Simply sending a disconnect and then reconnect didn't work, even after resetting the USB subsystem and being able to see all the USB devices with lsusb.

Unfortunately I was debugging INDI and when I attempted to restart the server Kstars crashed, so I wasn't able to see if restarting the indi server while Ekos is active is a valid workflow.

I will try again when not debugging.

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The driver is open source : github.com/indilib/indi/blob/master/driv...elescope/ioptronv3.h

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