EQMod For Mac

[OzDave]

Just a quick note to say v0.0.2 has been released on the website.

It adds the Stellarium interface + a configuration tool to configure Stellarium automatically for you (mostly).

Also added (but not extensively tested) is N-point alignment using a nearest point algorithm (i.e. multiple 1-star alignments).

Finally, I have fixed a number of bugs that were preventing proper operation in the southern hemisphere. The software should now allow you to define your location properly and should track and slew correctly. The polar alignment feature is currently not useful in the southern hemisphere.

Please have a look at the updates I've made to the documentation page regarding the Stellarium interface and how to enable it.

If you have any issues, please send me a PM or leave a message here.

Regards,

David

[gbealnz]

Got it thank you David, and the location issues are no longer there. Should the LST be correct? It shows 0320, when the actual time is 0909hrs.

I will set it up on a laptop, if I can extract this from my son who owns it, and report back with "it works", or otherwise.

Gary

[OzDave]

Got it thank you David, and the location issues are no longer there. Should the LST be correct? It shows 0320, when the actual time is 0909hrs.

I will set it up on a laptop, if I can extract this from my son who owns it, and report back with "it works", or otherwise.

The LST should be correct. I tested the release by setting up a location with longitude 175 E and latitude 45 S. This gave me a certain LST. I then went to a US Navy website that computes local sidereal time for a given longitude, and it agreed with what EQMac was reporting. I concluded that it was correct.

Checking again now with the same US Navy site, it says the LST for longitude 175 E is 0401hrs. Since you posted your message quite recently, at a rough inspection, I'd say the LST is correct for your location. LST does not necessarily bear any relation to the current wallclock time. Basically the current LST tells you the RA of objects currently transiting the meridian in your location. So if the LST is 0320, then anything with RA = 3h 20' will be on the meridian at that moment.

Here is the site if you want to check for yourself: US Navy Sidereal Time Calculator

However, if you believe it is not working for you, could you let me know your current wallclock time, the LST that EQMac reports and the Longitude (degrees only is fine). I can check what is going on from this information.

David

[gbealnz]

David,

just checked the US Navy as well, and yes, you are correct.

I am mixing LST as being LMT, somewhat different as we both know, me more so now.

I'll give it a try when I can prise the MacBook from my son.

Gary

[engstrom]

Just been paid so I'm going to fork out for an EQDIR adapter to test this out with Stellarium.

But first...some noob questions/assumptions. I'd need to polar align the mount pretty accurately first in order to use Stellarium, correct? If it's aligned properly then Stellarium/EQMac will use the current settings of the RA/Dec motors to calculate where it is pointing yes?

[OzDave]

But first...some noob questions/assumptions. I'd need to polar align the mount pretty accurately first in order to use Stellarium, correct? If it's aligned properly then Stellarium/EQMac will use the current settings of the RA/Dec motors to calculate where it is pointing yes?

You dont need to polar align it any more accurately than you would when using the normal hand control. Of course, the better you do it, tge more accurate it will be with slews and tracking.

Stellarium just sends RA/DEC coordinates to EQMac. In turn EQMac converts these into commands to drive the mount to the correct position based on your location.

Just think of the whole thing as a replacement hand control with a more graphical user interface.

David

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[James]

Well, I got a chance to give EQMac a try tonight and it worked a treat with my EQ6. I also tried the Stellarium setup too which also worked nicely although I got a bit mixed up issuing commands in Stellarium and EQMac which lead to some 'inaccuracies' - next time I'll read the documentation which does clearly state I shouldn't do what I did

I'm pretty impressed so far

[gbealnz]

I tried it too, and couldn't connect, not sure why.

I was presented with three options in the serial port menu, two of which were bluetooth, and the other didn't seem to connect. I wasn't able to slew or synch.

Gary

[NickK]

Have you installed the OSX serial drivers for your usb-serial device?

[gbealnz]

Nope? Didn't know or think to. In some respects, as much as I want to get this up and running, and be of some limited assistance, loading and installing all manner of things on someone elses computer is not going to be where I am at.

I'll have a look and see what is involved.

Gary

[OzDave]

Well, I got a chance to give EQMac a try tonight and it worked a treat with my EQ6. I also tried the Stellarium setup too which also worked nicely although I got a bit mixed up issuing commands in Stellarium and EQMac which lead to some 'inaccuracies' - next time I'll read the documentation which does clearly state I shouldn't do what I did

I'm pretty impressed so far

Great! I'm very pleased that everything worked for you. I know that not everything is perfect yet, and there are many rough edges needing polish, and of course a long list of features I'd like to add. But getting the basics working is probably the most important thing right now. So thanks for the "It works" report!

David

[OzDave]

Nope? Didn't know or think to. In some respects, as much as I want to get this up and running, and be of some limited assistance, loading and installing all manner of things on someone elses computer is not going to be where I am at.

I'll have a look and see what is involved.

Sorry about that Gary. Unfortunately, installing the drivers for the USB device is something that I cannot simplify in the EQMac software, otherwise I would have tried. However, I am fairly confident that once you manage to install the correct driver things should start working - barring software bugs - and you should not need to install anything else.

The EQMac software itself is easy to install/remove just by downloading, or dragging to the trash if you don't want it anymore.

Again, I'm sorry this hasn't been a simple experience for you so far, mostly I guess because of the southern hemisphere issues that arose.

Regards,

David

[dazza1639]

Do you think that this will work with my wedge mounted Nexstar 8 GPS. I can connect the computer to the scope via the handset and drive it from stellarium using the scope control plugin. Can you see any reason why EQMac wouldn't be able to connect as the celestron controller is basically the same as the skywatcher ones.

Regards

[gbealnz]

Got it working, and while my time with it was limited to driving it around indoors, all that I tried seemed to go just fine.

Connection needed a decent unplug and replug, then away it went.

Bearing in mind it was indoors I took it from the park position (pointed at the SCP, C/W down), to Alpha Cent (Rigel Kent), and it was about where I would expect to see this star.

Then slewed east and slightly north to Antares, again, about where one would expect to see the star. Tinkered with a slight fictitious adjustment, then went synch. Not much else I could do, so I parked it.

All in all, it seemed to work without any glitches.

What now? Can you make it work with CdC?

Moot point really in my case, as I am sort of committed to a damn PC for the imaging software, and I don't have a Mac at the scope. Mind you, enough of this and I could change.

Gary

[OzDave]

Do you think that this will work with my wedge mounted Nexstar 8 GPS. I can connect the computer to the scope via the handset and drive it from stellarium using the scope control plugin. Can you see any reason why EQMac wouldn't be able to connect as the celestron controller is basically the same as the skywatcher ones.

Dazza, EQMac is designed to communicate with Skywatcher EQ-series mounts (only) using the native serial protocol that the normal Synscan hand controller uses. This protocol is totally different to the Nexstar protocol that Stellarium uses to control your mount now.

So the short answer is, it definitely will not work.

However, aside from this project, I am also working with NickK on a Mac project called AOSX (Astronomy on OS X), which aims to support lots of different types of equipment in the same way that ASCOM does on Windows.

Within AOSX, you could expect to find (one day) a plugin driver for a Nexstar mount that would allow you to control it using an interface like EQMac has today.

Essentially I have released the current EQMac as a standalone application for now, but I am converting it to work within the AOSX framework and it will be re-released as part of AOSX in the near future. Although it will still only work with Skywatcher EQ-series mounts until someone provides a suitable AOSX driver for Nexstar. It is possible that Nick or myself could do the coding since the protocol is well known, but it will be impossible to test on real hardware.

Hope this makes sense, and sorry we can't help you out right now, but watch the AOSX project for future announcements.

David

[OzDave]

Got it working, and while my time with it was limited to driving it around indoors, all that I tried seemed to go just fine.

Connection needed a decent unplug and replug, then away it went.

Bearing in mind it was indoors I took it from the park position (pointed at the SCP, C/W down), to Alpha Cent (Rigel Kent), and it was about where I would expect to see this star.

Then slewed east and slightly north to Antares, again, about where one would expect to see the star. Tinkered with a slight fictitious adjustment, then went synch. Not much else I could do, so I parked it.

All in all, it seemed to work without any glitches.

What now? Can you make it work with CdC?

Moot point really in my case, as I am sort of committed to a damn PC for the imaging software, and I don't have a Mac at the scope. Mind you, enough of this and I could change.

Gary

Great to hear you got it working in the end Gary and also good that the slews seem to be roughly in the right place!

I will look into CdC at some point, but I have a few other things that need to be done before this will be possible. I will keep it on the feature request list.

It is interesting that you say you're tie to the PC for imaging. As I've said elsewhere on this thread, there is another project called AOSX (Astronomy on OS X) that aims to provide support for a lot of different devices in the same way ASCOM does on Windows. Look out for it and you may find that support for imaging and your particular camera may be available at some point.

AOSX is still in its infancy, but we hope to make an alpha release in the near future with support for Skywatcher EQ-series mounts at least. Other types of device will come over time.

David

[engstrom]

So I got an EQDIR and installed a usb-serial driver for osx but it asks me to configure the connection in OSX and assumes it's a modem. I try to connect and it says there's been a network error and it's not connected. EQMOD says it's initialising the mount but does nothing else...

[NickK]

I think one thing to perhaps add is a debug log so that users can attach that with their feedback.

[OzDave]

So I got an EQDIR and installed a usb-serial driver for osx but it asks me to configure the connection in OSX and assumes it's a modem. I try to connect and it says there's been a network error and it's not connected. EQMOD says it's initialising the mount but does nothing else...

I'd like to help you get this working, but I need some more information. Firstly, which usb-serial driver did you install?

If I remember correctly, OSX does try to add a network device for new serial ports. These appear in the NETWORK area of the System Preferences. You should not try to connect to it using this network device as it definitely isn't a modem. Just ignore that network device.

Next thing, unplug your EQDIR completely and run the EQMac software. Go into Preferences and Serial Port, and look at the list of available serial ports. Write them all down. Then quit out of the software.

Now plug in your EQDIR device, then run EQMac software again. Go back into Preferences and Serial Port and look at the list of available serial ports. Compare it with the ones yo wrote down previously. If your USB-serial driver has worked properly, there should be exactly one new entry in the serial ports list compared to what you wrote down. Choose this new entry and close the Preferences.

At this point, EQMac should be showing a yellow "Detecting Mount" status.

If you connect the other end of the EQDIR directly to your mount where the hand control would normally plug in and power up the mount, EQMac should switch to a green status and say "Idle" after 5-10 seconds.

If this still isn't working after following these instructions, try to provide me as much information as possible about which step went wrong. If necessary I will make a new release of the software with some diagnostics to help figure out what is wrong.

The other thing you could also try if you have a Windows Virtual Machine on your Mac is to install the Windows driver for the EQDIR and see if it is working in the Windows version of EQMOD.

By the sound of it, I believe it is some kind of serial port driver / configuration issue, but we should be able to get to the bottom of it with a bit of patience.

Regards,

David

[engstrom]

You sir are a genius!

Turned out it was in fact the order in which I was plugging stuff in and turning it on.

It works! :-) Hopefully get a real field test soon. Thank you so much.

[OzDave]

You sir are a genius!

Turned out it was in fact the order in which I was plugging stuff in and turning it on.

It works! :-) Hopefully get a real field test soon. Thank you so much.

Great stuff! So glad you got it working. Looking forward to the field trial results.

David

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[James]

Tried out a Hitec EQDIR adaptor last night and it worked a treat. I'd downloaded Prolific drivers previously (five minute job), connected it all up and away it went. It took about 20 seconds for the mount to initially fire up but then was fine.

As someone who's always used a handset I've had to remember things like turning on sidereal tracking. My slews were all off by a fairly consistent two degrees or so; I'm wondering if there's something not right at my end.

The EQDIR adaptor even worked plugged into my USB hub along with two Starlight Xpress camera's and a filterwheel - magic!

James

[OzDave]

Hi James,

Regarding the slewing inaccuracy that you mention, can you provide any more details about this? Was it the same the first time you tried the software without EQDIR?

This time, did you do any sync operations? If so, was that from Stellarium or from EQMac itself?

It would be great if you could write down a set of things that you did, like slewed to this star, corrected, then moved to that star, etc. This might help to solve any problems, but any info at all is helpful.

David

[OzDave]

A while ago, I did a proper field trial of the EQMac software and I thought I would post the results here. I tried out the Polar Alignment routines and the Slew and Sync functionality.

Firstly, I found that the Polar Alignment worked ok. I was able to slew the mount in RA to position the polaris circle in the polarscope correctly. Did the alignment, then was able to correctly slew back to home position so I could mount the scope for slew testing. This was one of the easiest polar alignments I've done - no guesswork involved in positioning things.

I then moved on to general slew testing, which went pretty well it has to be said. I was using my Equinox 80 scope (FL 500mm) with a 25mm EP and a 50mm finder to get started. This probably wasn't the best choice of scope for this kind of test, but I wasn't sure how accurate things would be so I wanted something with a fairly wide FOV. Next time I'll break out the SkyMax 127 and see how I get on with a much longer FL.

Starting from home position, I did the initial slew to Vega and managed to land it within FOV of the finder and near the edge of the FOV of the 25mm EP. I centred the star approximately in the 25mm, then switched to a 5mm ultrascopic illuminated reticule EP and adjusted to exact centre.

I then issued a SYNC command, and the software computed the 1-star sync delta for future slews. Basically this is just an RA/DEC offset which gets applied to all future slews. I should note here that I hadn't added the N-point stuff when I did this testing, so I really need to try that out when I next get a chance.

After the SYNC, I tried some more slews to nearby stars and stars further away on the same side of the meridian. Then I tried some slews to stars on the opposite side of the meridian, near zenith and near horizon. Every slew I did landed the target within the FOV of the reticule EP, and most slews landed within the central half radius of the FOV. Slews nearby Vega landed pretty close to the reticule crosshairs.

According to the web, my reticule EP has an AFOV of 52 deg. On my scope, it gets 100x so the true FOV is 0.52 degrees, or around half a degree. I think most slews got within the centre half radius (0.25 degrees), so around +/-0.125 degrees, with slews on the Eastern side of Meridian being more accurate still.

In terms of accuracy, I'm not sure how good or bad that is, but if I'd been wanting to observe things that night, I'd have hit my targets pretty much every time, somewhere within the eyepiece FOV, which has to be a good start!

Backlash seemed to be a possible cause of inaccuracy, but I do not know how much of an effect it can have. I suspect it is not the only factor. Probably it needs a better alignment model based on 3-point triangles.

I guess I cannot tell more until I build in some more alignment data. At present, I do not think it performs worse than the Synscan handset with a 1-star alignment, but I do not have any objective way to measure that really. However, I now have confidence to go and build out the N-point alignment with 3-point triangles and see where that gets us.

One thing I definitely have to do soon is get the wireless joypad working so I can control slew rates and do sync adjustments like that. It is mildly difficult to look through the eyepiece and hold the laptop and move the mouse to press the N/S/E/W slew buttons!

I would be interested to hear if anyone has had significantly worse experiences with accuracy, and if so, would like as much information as you can remember about what you did and with what type of equipment.

Regards,

David

[OzDave]

I have recently moved EQMac to a new website that is easier to manage. You will find the software and any release notes or documentation here:

New EQMac Site

The new site is not password protected.

Regards,

David