A journey into the Raspberry Pi world

[JSeaman]

No I had already done that following your comment so it's something else

[Stuart1971]

1 hour ago, JSeaman said:

No I had already done that following your comment so it's something else

I must admit I have lost home position a few times  over the years, with no real explanation…..but it’s usually after something has changed, or an update, it also happened once when I used a new EQMOD cable 🤔🤔

[JSeaman]

OK one to watch, hopefully the additional logging will help if it reoccurs but I haven't been able to make it today

[Dean Hale]

Thanks for this @JSeaman ekos initially looked a little daunting and this helped me find my way around. Only daylight testing so far of the windmill a few hundred metres away and some random star hopping but happily painless to install and detect my kit. I used a couple of smartphone adapter mounts to attach the PI and battery to the mount. Hopefully a clear night soon.

Edited July 1, 2021 by Dean Hale
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[JSeaman]

Fantastic, really glad it's helped you. Last night I ran the rig up and it behaved perfectly. There are things that could be improved but there is some incredible functionality for a free OS/software package, good luck!

[powerlord]

I read this thread and found it very useful. As an asiair pro user, and keeping getting told to try astroberry I thought I'd give it a try. I have a pi400, so I had a go yesterday and want to tell you my experience so far.

Initially it was straight forward, got it on the wifi,did all the updates, and set up my INDI devices - GTI AZ in EQ mode, zwo EAF, asi224, canon dslr.

all connected and controllable.

I then started to play with the canon, using the eaf to focus, and then later putting an AF DSLR lens on and using the canon to focus (via ekos).

I have to say, feature wise its great. Stability wise though...after about 4 hours yesterday:

- after turning DSLR off and on, found it impossible to get it to work again without full reboot (tried reloading drivers, restarting indi, etc)

- regular complete crashes of kstars/ekos which need a reboot before it will work again

- regular crashes of indi server which need a reboot before work again

- focus sometimes moves when you press, sometimes takes ages. and by then you might have pressed again.. and it buffers them all up.. making it all but impossible to use

- autofocus I couldn't get to work at all with artifical stars - i'd start with nearly focused, and it would detect stars, then adjust further and further out of focus before complaining it had lost the stars and stop.

- regular lockups of the dslr control where nothing will fix it until rebooted.

Now, I did do all the upgrades before I started, and I will have another go today with fresh eyes/head. But to be honest I'll take stability over features any day of the week. Have I just got unlucky with my equipment ? I assume so, as no one would use it if it was this bad.

I will say, comparing it with asiair pro is like comparing apples and oranges. So I'll not do that. What I was hoping was that it would be useful as a second mount control for guiding - where I'd use one of my AZ GTIs in EQ mode with the DSLR and probably a DSLR lens. Being able to guide with it would help exposure lengths over my current non guiding if using a second mount (where my asiair is in use on my main EQ5). But that looks like just not a goer. It's a pity as I really liked the idea of remote focus control for my 300mm F4 L - especially if I use it with a canon extender. It would make focusing a lot easier. Even if autofocus routine didn't work, and I could fit my bahtinov mask, but avoid touching setup.. but it seems manual control isn't really possible as all you get is out/in at one speed (massive amount).

I wish stellarmate was available as a trial to compare it. As it is, I will have another play today, and also compare it with running the same stuff on an old windoze laptop I have to see if that's any better.

stu

[BCN_Sean]

10 minutes ago, powerlord said:

Now, I did do all the upgrades before I started, and I will have another go today with fresh eyes/head. But to be honest I'll take stability over features any day of the week. Have I just got unlucky with my equipment ? I assume so, as no one would use it if it was this bad.

That's some of the problem, last week the 1.9.1 version of Indi was pushed to the astroberry repo, and there's all sorts of broken with it at the moment in other areas.

With the camera, stop indi, turn the camera off, unplug it and then reverse the process; that's something in the ptp control protocol which locks the camera in those situations.  It is the same with my cameras, and not just on an astroberry.

The lock ups of the SLR could be the memory card in the camera; I've had similar lockups when using slower SD cards, but after putting 170mbps cards in there it's not appeared and make sure the indi control panel has the images set to save in native format.

Never managed a focus routine with artificial stars, either, real ones not usually an issue (usually when it is more down to me not tensioning the focuser correctly before starting!), though never tried it with the lens' built in focus motor always on an external.

As for the other bits, if indi locks up, open terminal and type "killall indiserver", and that should shut it and the drivers down; the rest of it, I don't know as I don't have access to the same kit nor is the raspberry in the same configuration, so can't tell whether it is the configuration or you've got issues coming in somewhere else.

[AstroMuni]

20 minutes ago, BCN_Sean said:

With the camera, stop indi, turn the camera off, unplug it and then reverse the process; that's something in the ptp control protocol which locks the camera in those situations.

I'll second that....I find that on some days my ASI camera locks up. A simple reset in the Indi panel sorts it out most of the time.

But if a full INDI stop is called for, I save the mount model so that when you restart, you load the mount model and the mount doesnt have to be realigned from scratch.

Edited July 5, 2021 by AstroMuni

[JSeaman]

I have only found a couple of quirks - setting a specific position to move the lakeside focuser occasionally caused it to kill the focus driver until I switched the Pi off and on again, then it went back to normal. Happened a couple of times but hopefully not a problem in normal (auto focus) operation

I had one failed park which I haven't been able to reproduce

Everything else has worked well, a little clunky in places and I'd like to be able to cool the CCD as part of the schedule but otherwise it seems OK. For me the benefits of a single piece of software which has reliable USB outweight the nuances but there are some opportunities to improve I agree. I haven't tried a DSLR but certainly didn't have the sort of failures on the ZWO equipment, the 120 and 1600 have been rock steady. I have so far had no issues that would prevent me imaging on a normal night

[powerlord]

I had another go yesterday. 4 times it crashed out during autofocus routine. Firstly, it just seemed to stop doing anything, then it said driver was being restarted, but ekos just crashed/disappeared and took down kstars too.

At that point trying to restart INDI did nothing. Just ignored me. Reboot was required.

How do you save position data ? In the field I'd find the above unusable to be honest, each one of those crashes would have left me having to do a HOME again and start again to get to target, etc.

Maybe it is just DSLR control that's crufty, but that's the main reason I could see using it tbh. Pity. I'd have thought stellarmate would use the same INDI drivers, so doubt that's any better. I might have a look on the asiair pro and see what dslr driver it is using. Saying that - no focus at all for DSLRs there - maybe ZWO found it as unstable and crufty as I have and that's the reason they left it out ?

stu

[wimvb]

How long does it take to download an image from the dslr to the RPi? You may have to add a delay in the focus routine to allow for the download time. Just an idea.

[AstroMuni]

On 06/07/2021 at 12:54, powerlord said:

How do you save position data ? In the field I'd find the above unusable to be honest, each one of those crashes would have left me having to do a HOME again and start again to get to target, etc.

One simple way is save it as HOME position. But there maybe a better way to do this. Will check out when I get time tonight.

EDIT: Thought of another simple way..Once you have done alignment, save the mount model. When Ekos crashes restart and reload the mount model. Then go to the alignment tab and do a Load & Slew of the last image you captured

Edited July 12, 2021 by AstroMuni