EQMod For Mac

[OzDave]

I have just released version 0.0.3 of EQMac which fixes a bug and adds the ability to slew using the arrow keys.

So, not a massive update, but still useful none-the-less since the N-point alignment feature wasn't working properly due to the bug (thanks to James for figuring that out!). Also the arrow keys are much easier to slew with than the mouse!

In case you didn't see it above, the new release is at the new EQMac site, which is here.

Regards,

David

[peppertarts]

Hi David,

EQMac is looking very interesting. I'll be following this very closely.

On and off for the past few months I've been writing some control software for my HEQ5 mount concentrating on making it cross platform. My ultimate aim has been to control the mount directly in Linux with guiding. Having figured out most of the serial commands that the HEQ5/EQ6 accepts I have completed a library (in C#) that initializes the mount, moves each axis in a specified direction a number of degrees, parks it and reads the current location. I am currently working on an application that uses the library to move the mount to a set of coordinates.

However, it seems you've beaten me to it on the Mac and are well on your way to implementing the features found in EQMod for Windows. You have already said that you will be open sourcing the project. Instead of continuing on my version is there anything I can do to help? I would be particularly interested in getting the server to work in Linux. Would you be willing to grant read access to your repository so that I can see how feasible that would be?

Peter.

[OzDave]

Hi Peter,

I am working on migrating the EQMac software to the AOSX platform, which is kind of a Mac-only software intitative to parallel ASCOM on Windows.

AOSX doesnt have to be mac only, but currebtly is due to the way clients and the server coomunicate. If that were done using a more cross platform technology, Linux could be supported but that isnt the plan right now.

I can probably bundle up some code if you like until the project goes open source. I dont think EQMac will get opensourced, but all the code is moving to AOSX which will be opensource.

Is there any aspect of the code you are most interested in?

David

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[James]

I have just released version 0.0.3 of EQMac which fixes a bug and adds the ability to slew using the arrow keys.

... and it all works a treat now

James

[appalachik]

This is very good news! I'm a Mac user so I'll be watching this development with great interest and will be very happy to try it out

Jenna

[MikeWilson]

Very good news, I'm going to keep an eye on this Thanks OZDave!

[peppertarts]

I can probably bundle up some code if you like until the project goes open source. I dont think EQMac will get opensourced, but all the code is moving to AOSX which will be opensource.

Is there any aspect of the code you are most interested in?

Thanks, I'll take a look at the code once it's integrated into AOSX.

My software is now able to determine the coordinates at which the mount is pointing and can move the mount to a set of coordinates, but only when the target RA is nearby. I haven't been able to figure out how to move the mount a large distance in RA. At the moment my software simply tells the mount to move the RA axis all the way round instead of using the Dec axis to switch sides.... I hope that makes some sense.

An example... To move from 20h0m0s to 8h0m0s the RA axis doesn't need to move, instead the Dec axis should switch sides (move beyond 90 degrees).

On reflection it may have been a better idea to write a direct HEQ5/EQ6 driver for INDI (the Linux equivalent of ASCOM and AOSX) and not need to worry about this kind of logic.

[James]

This is working perfectly with an HEQ5 Syntrek mount, next chance I get I'll check it with an EQ5 Pro

James

[ThomasBR]

Hi, I need some help with EQmac. I have downloaded the software to my MacBook pro. I also have an HitechAstro EQdir (USB version). When I try to find my serial port in EQmac it only lists Bluetooth-PDA-sync and Bluetooth-modem and nothing else. I have tried plugging and unpluging the EQdirand and closing and opening the preferences (as per EQmac documentation).

I have tested the EQdir with a PC and it works fine. I have also tested the USB port with a USB stick and it also works fine. It seems that EQmac does not update the serial port list.

Can anyone help?

It should be noted that I am a Mac newbie so I may be overlooking something very obvious.

Thanks for you help.

Thomas

[James]

Thomas - you may need to download some Prolific drivers for your Mac. Have a look here and find the Mac OS X download and go from there

James

[ThomasBR]

Thank you James, I have downloaded the driver and will try it with the mouint tomorrow :-)

Th

[perfrej]

Dave!

This is absolutely wonderful so far. I have tried 0.0.2 a bit on the living room floor and will give 0.0.3 a spin now that the skies have turned fairly dark again.

One suggestion...

My prime reason for trying this is that I have one of the new Airs with really long battery life. I guess the capture time available with that kind of battery will be a lot better than with my Macbook Pro running Windows 7 (which is good too).

On the Macbook Air's screen, the Mount user interface does not quite fit vertically. With the window in the topmost position, the screen cuts right through the top of the version number.

May I please press you to, at a convenient time, compress the window slightly vertically? Below is a reference image that shows the EQMac windows as they appear. The image is full screen vertically.

All the best,

Per

[OzDave]

Thank you James, I have downloaded the driver and will try it with the mouint tomorrow :-)

Th

Someone else had a similar problem a while back which turned out to be needing the driver installed. After that it all worked fine. I must update the site docs to mention drivers!

David

[OzDave]

Hi there and thanks for the comments.

I would definitely recommend using the latest version at all times because so far each release has fixed some important issues. Right now I think you'll not have the star alignment working properly.

As for the window height, yes I can certainly do a release to fix that. Out of interest, what size air do you have? The 11" or the larger screen?

The window layouts are a bit higglety pigglety at the moment, so maybe I'll sort that out in the next release also. Look out for a 0.0.4 shortly.

Regards,

David

Dave!

This is absolutely wonderful so far. I have tried 0.0.2 a bit on the living room floor and will give 0.0.3 a spin now that the skies have turned fairly dark again.

One suggestion...

My prime reason for trying this is that I have one of the new Airs with really long battery life. I guess the capture time available with that kind of battery will be a lot better than with my Macbook Pro running Windows 7 (which is good too).

On the Macbook Air's screen, the Mount user interface does not quite fit vertically. With the window in the topmost position, the screen cuts right through the top of the version number.

May I please press you to, at a convenient time, compress the window slightly vertically? Below is a reference image that shows the EQMac windows as they appear. The image is full screen vertically.

All the best,

Per

[ThomasBR]

Hi, I am in the garden with scope setup and Mac and EQdir (of course clouds just rolled in contrary to promises by the weather service). I can find the usbserial in EQmac preferences. The indicator goes from red to yellow and it says detecting mount but never gets any further. Any suggestions?

Kind regards

Thomas

[perfrej]

David!

Thanks for the note on the screen size. It's an Air 11" with 1366x768 screen size.

As for the version; yes I use the latest

[OzDave]

David!

Thanks for the note on the screen size. It's an Air 11" with 1366x768 screen size.

As for the version; yes I use the latest

Just in case, since you said you were using v0.0.2, and that is the last version released to the *OLD* EQMac site, you can find all the newer updates (v0.0.3) on the new site, which is here:

New EQMac Site

I should really take down the old site because it is potentially confusing.

Regards,

David

[OzDave]

Just a quick note to say that v0.0.4 is now posted to the *NEW* site. It simply provides a cleanup to the layout of the main windows so they fit better on smaller screens.

As a technical note, this is the first release I have produced using OS X Lion. It is supposed to work on Snow Leopard still, but in case there are problems, please let me know.

Regards,

David

[Matti]

This looks great! I will try this out with my Vixen GP with Synscan drive. I am just about to get a guide camera and this might just be what tips the scale towards geting a mac compatible camera instead of relying on Parallels. At the same time, I wouldn't need a camera with guide port.

/matti

[buzz]

OzDave - its working like a dream on its own and with Stellarium (I just realised - all my free software is working and all the paid stuff has issues!) -

I use PHD and Nebulosity - which I link together to pause guiding during downloading. Is there a benefit to use pulse guiding through EQMAC rather than use the ST4 guide port directly from my Lodestar to the mount?

[OzDave]

OzDave - its working like a dream on its own and with Stellarium (I just realised - all my free software is working and all the paid stuff has issues!) -

I use PHD and Nebulosity - which I link together to pause guiding during downloading. Is there a benefit to use pulse guiding through EQMAC rather than use the ST4 guide port directly from my Lodestar to the mount?

Hi,

See my longer reply on the EQMac pulse guiding thread.

I am just wondering why you'd want to pause guiding during a download?

Also, I think that there are benefits to pulse guiding, mainly the fact that you have finer control over exactly what is going on. (Caveat, those finer controls are not present in EQMac yet, but if you look at what EQMod provides, you'll see what I mean). With ST4, the guide pulses are sent to the mount directly and that's the end of it - you'd better hope the device that sent them got it right because there is no chance for adjustment of the pulses on the way to the mount. With pulse guiding you do get that opportunity.

Some people say that you pay for that opportunity by introducing a small amount of latency into the guiding system, but as I said in my reply on the other thread, I don't think this is either significant or problem-causing.

David

[buzz]

David - when you run Nebulosity and PHD, there is a link between them, which pauses autoguiding during download. According to Stark Labs, this is to reduce readout noise in the CCD. Starlight Xpress do something similar, they do not temperature manage during download either. Clearly, both are just reducing the modulation of the power supply.

hope this helps

[MikeWilson]

David - when you run Nebulosity and PHD, there is a link between them, which pauses autoguiding during download. According to Stark Labs, this is to reduce readout noise in the CCD. Starlight Xpress do something similar, they do not temperature manage during download either. Clearly, both are just reducing the modulation of the power supply.

hope this helps

Hi buzz,

If this is dithering, doesn't that work by effectively using a slightly different set of sensor pixels for each image, thereby helping to reduce the effect of stuck pixels on the final image?

I'm not entirely sure but I was using this feature for the first time in Neb2+PHD on Sunday and I noticed on the smallest dither setting, Neb2 waited about ten seconds until the image had drifted just enough to clear a pixel or two before re-enabling guiding and starting the next exposure.

All the best,

Mike

[buzz]

regarding PHD and Nebulosity linking - Dithering is another option of making the two working together but to quote the instructions:

PHD Guiding is the popular freeware guiding package by Stark Labs. With it, guiding can

simple as “Push Here Dummy.” With the PHD Guiding dialog, you can establish a link to

Guiding so that the two packages can talk to each other. This gives you two powerful features.

First, it lets you pause guiding during the download of your main image. Some cameras

sensitive to interruptions on the USB bus and if the guide camera shares the USB bus, the

feature.

On another note - I just made up the FTD USB-UART (5V) cable and cannot get it to connect to the scope. This is the one recommended on the EQMOD website.

Has anyone had any luck with this cable - it seemed more elegant and cheaper than the modules. I'm connecting orange - Pin6, black (pin 4-5) and Yellow pin9 on the DB9 connector- as per the instructions.

regards

Chris

[perfrej]

You shure about those pin numbers? Maybe they differ from +/-12V RS232 which has 2,3 and 5 in the DB9 version...