SGPro and Pulsar motorised Dome slaving an AZEQ6 mount

[alcol620]

By way of an update, Matthew has kindly agreed to Teamviewer my laptop on Monday and update all the Pulsar software. Further reports in due course.

[alcol620]

On 26/10/2017 at 19:48, alcol620 said:

By way of an update, Matthew has kindly agreed to Teamviewer my laptop on Monday and update all the Pulsar software. Further reports in due course.

Matthew duly took over the control of the laptop and after what looked like at my end of proceedings, random movements of the mouse, he checked over and updated the dome software. Following this he signed off with the offer to contact him again if I had problems.

Later in the evening I installed the updated software on the dome controller and re-calibrated the dome, then ran SGPro and connected up all the gear. Clicked "slave" and the dome slaved the scope. I was images for about 5 hours, with the dome continuing to slave the scope, including an unaided meridian flip, where the slaving continued with no problem. Hopefully, this wasn't a one off - time will tell! I will update again in due course if further problems arise.

Many thanks to Matthew for taking time out to get things to this stage. 

[PhotoGav]

1 hour ago, alcol620 said:

Matthew duly took over the control of the laptop and after what looked like at my end of proceedings, random movements of the mouse, he checked over and updated the dome software. Following this he signed off with the offer to contact him again if I had problems.

Later in the evening I installed the updated software on the dome controller and re-calibrated the dome, then ran SGPro and connected up all the gear. Clicked "slave" and the dome slaved the scope. I was images for about 5 hours, with the dome continuing to slave the scope, including an unaided meridian flip, where the slaving continued with no problem. Hopefully, this wasn't a one off - time will tell! I will update again in due course if further problems arise.

Many thanks to Matthew for taking time out to get things to this stage. 

Excellent news!

What versions of everything are you running now? SGP, Dome hardware and Dome ASCOM driver?

[alcol620]

17 minutes ago, PhotoGav said:

Excellent news!

What versions of everything are you running now? SGP, Dome hardware and Dome ASCOM driver?

The files I have are i) Pulsar Client Setup 1.0.19.0(1).msi (Installation data base)   

ii) Pulsar Observatories Package.exe 

iii) Pulsar Observatories Ascom setup exe version 1.0.0.0 (dome driver setup)

iv) Pulsar Observatories Ascom driver msi (Installation database)

SGPro 2.6.0.23

Pulsar dome control box.

Hope this helps, not sure these files do as my IT understanding is v limited.

Alec

Perhaps Matthew can explain?

[PhotoGav]

Thank you Alec. The one crucial difference between our set-ups is that I am using SGPro beta version 3.0.0.2. I think that something must have changed in SGPro in the late version 2s as it all used to be fine for me, but is now a bit iffy.

Good luck with your system Alec and I would recommend not touching it if it all works!!! All we need now are some clear skies and a little less Moon...

[alcol620]

Thanks Gav. Presumably beta version 3 is for experts and when it finally gets issued as a full version 3, will come under the new pay-for versions of SGPro?

[PhotoGav]

The beta versions are available for anyone to download, but come with a warning that they might not work! So, not for experts, but for fools who would rather ensure a very tentative and unstable environment is even more unstable and tentative! The SGP developers seem to be putting everything into the big Version 3 release, so yes, once it is released it will be the new all-included version of SGP. To be honest, it pretty much works perfectly already and has some nice new features, but it does have one major issue as far as I am concerned!!

[alcol620]

I'm ignorant, what is that?

[PhotoGav]

9 minutes ago, alcol620 said:

I'm ignorant, what is that?

As in the major issue? It doesn't slave my dome!

[alcol620]

how thick am I?

Is this a problem of SGPro or the developers and Pulsar not putting their heads together?

[steppenwolf]

I haven't dived in here before because, although I have tested SGPro with my Pulsar Dome so that I could write the manual for Pulsar, I have had no further experience of SGPro and it's continued development! However, have you tried using POTH as an intermediary and letting it do the slaving for you as this would take this function away from SGPro?

[alcol620]

Hi Steve

I did run the set up with POTH but for some reason which I can't remember I decided to change back to SGPro. You may recall that you gave me advice on the mount/scope/dome dimensions to get the scope to slave in the right position.

I will give SGPro another chance now that Matthew has checked over the Pulsar software and it ran fine without a problem last night. Anymore problems and I will give POTH another run. Thanks for your input. SGPro is superb when everything runs OK.

Regards  Alec

[KyleStoke]

20 hours ago, alcol620 said:

Hi Steve

I did run the set up with POTH but for some reason which I can't remember I decided to change back to SGPro. You may recall that you gave me advice on the mount/scope/dome dimensions to get the scope to slave in the right position.

I will give SGPro another chance now that Matthew has checked over the Pulsar software and it ran fine without a problem last night. Anymore problems and I will give POTH another run. Thanks for your input. SGPro is superb when everything runs OK.

Regards  Alec

Hi Alec glad it's working. You still use sgpro with poth. It just used poth as the interface between all the various components instead of individually 

[alcol620]

Hi folks, bad news. Turned the kit on at dust and left the scope moving in sidereal and the dome tracking the scope. It successfully slaved for an hour and then dropped out as it did before. The only way to get it going again was to pull the Dome USB lead (which crashes SGPro) and replace the lead and restart SGPro. Re-select dome slaving in SGPro and slaving starts again. Running at this moment 19.41 hrs 

[PhotoGav]

22 minutes ago, alcol620 said:

Hi folks, bad news. Turned the kit on at dust and left the scope moving in sidereal and the dome tracking the scope. It successfully slaved for an hour and then dropped out as it did before. The only way to get it going again was to pull the Dome USB lead (which crashes SGPro) and replace the lead and restart SGPro. Re-select dome slaving in SGPro and slaving starts again. Running at this moment 19.41 hrs 

Damn.... it’s so frustrating, isn’t it...

[PhotoGav]

Out of interest, at what dome azimuth did it fall over?

[alcol620]

Not sure Gav, I didn't note it down. I recorded it after the re-start at 20.00 hrs and it was 44.60 (I assume you mean the Azimuth reading as shown by the Observatory window in SGPro?). It's still slaving at 20.50 hrs and the Azimuth is 15.70 degrees.

[alcol620]

Further update continued to slave until around 21.36 hrs Azimuth at 330.60 when it stopped slaving. However, this time pulling the dome USB cable didn't crash SGPro, so paused the sequence, turned off dome (in SGpro), turned on again and clicked slave and the dome begins slaving again. Azimuth 316.10 at 21.55 hrs. 

Slaving again, see where it gets too this time!

[PhotoGav]

I only asked as my dome tends to stop slaving at around 180º and I wondered if there might be a connection, but you appear to be at the opposite side of the sky! What are you pointing at? I am running some experiments on NGC891 and the dome is currently at 179.70º - it will be interesting to see if it freezes there again... Oh the joys!

[alcol620]

I have been imaging the Wizard Nebula all evening, very poor seeing initially but pretty good now. So with a couple of lost slaves it has followed the Wizard across the sky, it even slaved through a meridian flip again with no problem. Still slaving following the restart at 21.55 now at azimuth of 307.60 22.30 hrs

Refreshing knowledge on POTH set up and may give this another go next time out. Too late to get my head around it tonight.

[PhotoGav]

Sure enough, it got stuck at 179.70º - a quick nudge and it caught up with itself again.

[PhotoGav]

On 31/10/2017 at 21:31, steppenwolf said:

I haven't dived in here before because, although I have tested SGPro with my Pulsar Dome so that I could write the manual for Pulsar, I have had no further experience of SGPro and it's continued development! However, have you tried using POTH as an intermediary and letting it do the slaving for you as this would take this function away from SGPro?

Thank you for the idea Steve. I might have to resort to that if SGP doesn't start behaving in the next release or two! I may well be back to ask for advice on how to set it up properly though...

[PhotoGav]

3 minutes ago, alcol620 said:

I have been imaging the Wizard Nebula all evening, very poor seeing initially but pretty good now. So with a couple of lost slaves it has followed the Wizard across the sky, it even slaved through a meridian flip again with no problem. Still slaving following the restart at 21.55 now at azimuth of 307.60 22.30 hrs

Refreshing knowledge on POTH set up and may give this another go next time out. Too late to get my head around it tonight.

Good stuff. Indeed, the POTH is a crafty idea, but will require some research to get up and running. My overriding feeling is that it all really should work with SGP though.

[alcol620]

On 31/10/2017 at 21:31, steppenwolf said:

I haven't dived in here before because, although I have tested SGPro with my Pulsar Dome so that I could write the manual for Pulsar, I have had no further experience of SGPro and it's continued development! However, have you tried using POTH as an intermediary and letting it do the slaving for you as this would take this function away from SGPro?

Following a discussion with Steve I am now slaving the dome to the mount using POTH, with no input from SGPro, and await the result. At least it will confirm or otherwise that this is possible without falling over. If successful the next step would be to power up SGPro and run the other utilities, guiding, focusing etc. I have attached a diagram from Steve illustrating where POTH sits in the process.

[PhotoGav]

That's very useful Alec (and Steve!). I look forward to hearing how you get on and I will give this a go too.

I'm still frustrated that SGP doesn't work properly (I'll apologise now for dissing SGP when we discover it has nothing to do with SGP!).