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EQMod - scope won't point at selected object


malc-c

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Having a frustrating time trying to resolve an issue with the goto via eqmod following the building of a new PC for the observatory. I've set a custom park position and the scope will park to this, then to the default home position and back again just fine but selecting an object in CDC the scope goes in totally the wrong direction. I've set the mount to use the 4:1 ration as the HEQ5 is belt driven, and even tried other setting (which make no difference) so I can only assume for some reason it's ignoring these settings even though they remain as set when the settings are viewed again). I've checked the settings in both EQMOD and CDC both show the correct long/lat for the location (used a GPS dongle) and cdc is set to use the system time which is updated via the net. To give you an example, CDC shows the RA / DEC for the sun as 08:58:50n / +17:07:14 but when I manually positioned the scope on the sun using the game pad, EQ Mod displays RA 10:18:32 and +33:51:42 DEC. Any guidance would be appreciated

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I'm having the same issue as you so you're not alone Malc.I got told to delete the .ini file using the EQMOD toolbox,you'll have to input all your settings again although this didn't help me any.

Hopefully,Chris from the EQMOD group should be along to help

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The one thing both you guys seem to have in common is a mount mod. Malcolm, is the only difference in your setup (from when it was all working) the new PC? Have you tried removing the custom home position and doing a fresh alignment based on default home position? (clearing all existing align points first). Does the slew to polar-scope home position come up very close to polaris through the polar scope? Also, is there any binding on the axes?

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Now it gets better - parked to normal defalt home position, unparked and reset encoders - using the game pad I centred on the sun and then synced via CdC. Re-parked the scope, and then sent the scope to goto the sun - bingo upn completing the slew the sun was bang centre to the fov (I am using solar film by the way :) ) - re-parked to the custom park and then repeated the above - again the sun was centred in the field of view. Parked the scope to the custom position, closed CdC and EQMod. Launched CDC and connected to the telescope, unparked and then slecyed the sun again - half way through the slew it stopped with EQMod reporting Horizon limits with RA at 01:46:55 and dec at +17:06:33 - Why !!

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Yes the only difference is the new PC. Both Ascom and EQmod were fresh installs. And I've set the 4:1 ratio from the drop down option in the drive settings. I still have the old PC, so if this can't get resolved I'll switch back... I've removed the limit option and that resolved the previous error, will just have to hope the skies clear to try out some other targets later - nice to hear that I'm not alone :)

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I had exactly the same problem a while back after I upgraded my obsy PC. Turned out to be the W7 system clock being wrong and the auto net updating not working. Once I'd got all the times correct everything was fine. Such a simple thing got me tearing my hair out and checking all manner of things!!!

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Thanks Gina, I had neglected to state that I had checked the windows location, time and date options, all of which appear correct. The strange thing is when it was slewing off target, it wasn't anything obvious like the RA being 15 degrees off to indicate it was a UT / BST issue. It was in both axis and out by miles

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I guess it's because you have a new "black magic" machine - wild and wonderful - which you need to tame :D Took my quite a while to tame mine :( Magic still happens, of course!!

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OK this is a strange one. I've attached some screen grabs which hopefully might give you guys an insight to my problem.

Basically, with the scope parked in the home position, launching EQASCOM shows the co-ordinates that I would expect. Indeed loading CDC (and for that matter C2A) the tesliscopes position is show just a degree or so off Polaris. But if I then click on un-park and then click back on park to home position CDC reports the scopes position as been some way off, which is also reflected in the info in the scope position window in EQMod / Ascom.

The location details are set the same in both apps, and the time settings in CDC seem OK and match taht of the PC.

Any ideas

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post-10726-0-59064500-1375634732_thumb.p

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Why does it matter what coordinates are shown when your mount is parked? Are the coordinates ok when unparked?

EQASCOM V1.24b is rather old now and I'm sure at one point I did make a change to the reporting of coordinates when in the parked state (the pointing model only activated when unparked and this 'bothered' some folks). Try repeating your test with the latest test release.

Chris

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Hi Malcolm,

Might be a red herring but I noticed in your final picture that you have 3 alignment points being used - are these valid for your setup? What happens if you remove them?

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Thanks guys for the comments. I had un-installed and re-inatalled EQMod and CDC several times, but alas not the latest version of the former. I deleted all settings I could find in the APPdata folder in both EQMOD and CDC, then un-installed and re-installed the latest version of EQMOD, and then re-entered the site data and mount settings and repeated the above - Pleased to say that the reticule in CDC remained in the same position when CDC connected - so far it's looking good, but needs confirming by adding some new alignment points the next clear night we have.

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Grasping at straws here Malc but have you say you have re entered your site location in eqmod . Have you also done the same in CDC ? I know that can be a pain if eqmod and CDC have not got the same positions ?

Sorry i can't help anymore than that.

Nick

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Grasping at straws here Malc but have you say you have re entered your site location in eqmod . Have you also done the same in CDC ? I know that can be a pain if eqmod and CDC have not got the same positions ?

Sorry i can't help anymore than that.

Nick

Actually the only 'negative' effect of having the wrong site location in CDC is that it won't draw the sky as you see it. All goto commands between CDC and EQMOD use RA/DEC coordinates which don't vary with site location.

Chris.

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One thing I have done (Maybe?) is scan forward / back through time in CdC, following an active session - Then exited CdC, "saved settings" etc. When restarted, CdC comes up with a displaced-time sky and then (perhaps) asks EQMod to slew to stars in an entirely wrong place? If you don't have "limits" set, the mount can end up in all sorts of "scary" positions? At night, I suspect I have recognised this - I usually know approximately what should be e.g. in the Southern sky! But not so by DAY, when the situation occurred. If I remember I reset (double-check) CdC time to machine time by clicking on the TIME "square" between the arrows. Must read the manual properly, re. this "save settings" feature - I usually reply "yes" (no) without knowing exactly why! :)

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Well I have no idea what's going wrong. Tonight it was slewing akk over the place, and missing targets by miles. But it screws up way before I select a slew

This is what I've done tonight.

Park the scope in the default home position, then un parked it.

Closed CdC (and thus EQMod) down without saving settings

Launched the toolbox and deleted the INI file

Launched the driver settings via toolbox and set the driver to HEQ5 4:1 ratio as I've converted the mount to belt drive and saved settings

Set the coms port to the one used by the scope

Entered the Lat/Long and elivation for the site with data from my GPS

Closed the tool box and re-launched CdC

Click on connect to scope - EQmod launches, shows DEC at 90 degree which is what you would expect when the mount is in the park position

CdC shows the scopes pointing just off of Polaris

Re-synced the encoders

Click on park to home position - EQMod flashed PARKED

Click on UN-PARK and the telescope marker jumps and points close to M102 and EQMod displays a DEC of +61:24:29

The site location in CdC is showing the same co-ordinates as EQMod

The PC is set to UTC for London Edinburgh etc and set to sync with the internet and is set to daylight saving

CDC is set to UTC with +1 hr as its BST - it shows the same local time as the PC

If I then click on Park to home EQMod flashes PARKED without changing the RA / DEC values - it remains at +61:24:29

If I then disconnect CdC in its telescope control and then re-connect EQMod reports the scopes position being back at 90 degrees DEC but parked, with the scopes position in CDC back just below Polaris

Clicking un-park it once again jumps to +61:24:29 etc.....

Needless to say any possibility of slewing to a target is a wast of time as it often way of target given the scope thinks it's in a different starting position.

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Well it has to be something with the new PC. I put the old PC back and that's working fine (three park positions and pointed at the sun without issue) - time to re-build the new PC from scratch this time...just debating what OS to use - I used windows 7 on both, but feel it's the security issues that's probably screwing something up - so might go back to XP which seems less temperamental

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...so might go back to XP which seems less temperamental

I'd certainly give it serious consideration - XP works just great for me on the laptop that I use solely for mount control, guiding and image capture.

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again, thanks for the input guys.

I plugged in the old PC (HP530 SFF, win 7, 4gb ram) and booted up CdC - un-parked the scope and set it to default home - released the cluches and let the mount run to the home position and then manually moved and locked the scope in the home position, selected the sun as the target and it slewed away and positioned the scope within the field of view in the camera's viewfinder. Re-parked the scope back to the home position.

I then conneted a mouse, keyboard and monitor to the new PC, formatted the hard drive and installed a fresh copy of win 7. Located the same version of Ascom, CdC and EQMod that was running on the HP machine (only CdC was an older version, Ascom and EQMod were the latest versions) and installed that and the drivers for the FTDI cable. Opened Toolbox and set the driver up as per the old machine, entering the 4:1 ratio, long and lat position etc like for like. Opened up CDC and entered the location, date and time settings as per the HP machine. connected the EQDirect cable and launched cdc - when connected CDC reported the scopes position as just off Polaris, and the scope as being parked with a dec of +90 degrees. Un-parking and re-parking / disconnecting and reconnecting the scope made no difference to the reported position that I experienced before. So I selected the sun as the target and slewed away.... and away and eventually the scope was pointing way off target.when it completed the slew. !!!!

Parked the scope back in the home position, swiched back to the old PC and launched CDC - selected the sun and again it slewed to the correct position - and the sun was visible in the FOV of the viewfinder. Parked the scope to Home removed the cable, connected to the new PC and launched CDC - this time when connected to the scope CDC showed the scopes position way off Polaris, and with a dec of +68 degrees. took the cable out and plucged it back in to the HP machine and repeated the slew to the sun without issue - and without doing anything to the mount.

No idea what is going one... need to dig out my old XP disks and try that. The only thing I did notice after the fact was there was a slight difference in the Julian date in CDC settings. On the HP machine the last 6 digits are .088846 on the new machine it reads .088930 yet the system time on both machines were identicle

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I'd certainly give it serious consideration - XP works just great for me on the laptop that I use solely for mount control, guiding and image capture.

Ok so I formatted the hard drive, dug out my old XP pro CD and installed that... Oh how I forgot what an experience this used to be, having to source all the hardware drivers. Since Vista we've been spoiled by an almost true Plug n play !

Anyway, having installed all the platforms etc I connected the scope and launched CDC - it said the scope was in the parked position so I manually placed it in the parked position and then re-synced the encoders. Confirmed that the location co-ordinates were the same in both apps (GPS data was ported into EQMod) and selected the sun - The scope slewed to a totally incorrect position....... ARHHHH !!!

Just to check a few things, I changed the location to madrid - The chart updated itself to show the horizon was a lot lower than UK and I then parked and re-selected the sun as the target, expecting the scope to slew to more or less the same RA but with the tube raised more to reflect that the sun would be higher in the sky for the given location.... but no the scope slewed to exactly the same position, ignoring the changes.

I installed and configured C2A and did the same... again the scope slewed to the same position as CDC - so whilst I can't conclude what the issue is, I can conclude that it's not CDC.

Location and time zone etc in Windows is correct.

Now about to give up on this and continue to use the old PC, which whilst it struggled when everything was running, pointed the scope in the correct direction !

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Small update... I located and copied over all the INI files for EQMOD and the config files for CDC from the old PC to the new machine, overwriting the existing ones - loaded CDC and connected to the scope and having set the driver up to the correct com port and reset the park position slewed to the sun - this time it was it was spot on !

I have no idea why the correct data wasn't being saved to these INI files when the programs were first installed. On Win7, possibly the tight security settings were to blame, but XP... nah !

Now need another clear night to check the goto's again and then install the remaining apps before retiring the old PC. I'll won't wipe it as it will become a backup should this new PC fails in any way

What a palava !!!!

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