Ekos plate solving. No go?

[wimvb]

Camera information is taken from the camera firmware, and you should never need to edit that. Otoh, if you have two cameras of the same manufacturer, you always need to double check that the right camera is used for guiding and the right camera for imaging.

The FL of the guide scope seems a bit short at 190 mm, but I guess you entered that ok. You can easily check the FL by taking an image and uploading that to a plate solver.

[Steenamaroo]

I only have one camera of that make/model, and 190 is correct for the guide scope - Corrected to 188.something on successful solve,
but thank you for that info.

[BCN_Sean]

A couple more things to try, in the options for the alignment; in the Scale and Position options, make sure the Use Scale is selected (and also try toggling Use Position), and another one that's caught me out a couple of times on my mount (also via EQMod) is that if the mount is not tracking then it may fail (even if the exposure is short) with the solving for polar alignment.
Also another thing I've learned from it is to speed it up a bit is when the mount is pointing somewhere before starting the process, syncing it through the kstars interface to a rough ball park area (right click, eqmod->sync).

[Steenamaroo]

Hey,
Thanks @BCN_Sean - That's really helpful!
I'll give all of those things a go.
Thank you.

[Steenamaroo]

I've tried to snatch some breaks in the cloud here and there but, honestly, it's been a real pain trying to get more than 10 or 15 minutes without cloud or rain.
From the brief windows that I did get, I think I can confirm that it'll plate solve just fine if it knows what it's looking at already.
If it doesn't, it wont.

Kind of seems like that defeats the purpose a little, since the setup procedure for go-to use would involve slewing to some star then solving so it can realise it's not actually at that star then correct for it.

@BCN_Sean- it was your comment that made me realise this, combined with noticing that every time I try to begin polar alignment, ekos decides my mount is somewhere else.
I mean, I'll point the mount/scope at the polaris, tell ekos I'm at polaris...sync to polaris, set home polaris...
If I click 'goto polaris' it goes 'beep beep' you're already there.
Then I do polar alignment and the instant I click start it goes boom...your mount is somewhere else now, then fails.

I've no idea what that somewhere else is or how to override it, other than manually slew to 'the pole', then going over and manually fixing the mount so it's actually at the pole again, in order to do polar alignment with successful solving.

I guess now that I know that I can just do that but I sort of thought that's what 'sync' was for.
Looking forward to the next clear night.

[bottletopburly]

I read this on cloudy nights post from may 2020 , if no go try Astap works well for me in APT 

In the newest version of EKOS, you go into the alignment settings, and below the python setting, there's a new "sextractor" setting. Select this instead. It's much faster than Python, and about as fast as ASTAP, but more reliable.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/696428-ekos-plate-solving/

[alacant]

On 17/02/2022 at 19:59, wimvb said:

Camera information is taken from the camera firmware

Hi

We -and other indi users- couldn't connect a qhy5 a while back so I thought it maybe worth checking. Particularly relevant for the OP's model. The values which are used are stored in the db.

One hack is to enter the correct size -or anything else you like- and make the db read only. 

Here is an example of the simulator on a remote machine. I think it would look the same for local too.

HTH

 

Edited February 23, 2022 by alacant

[Steenamaroo]

@bottletopburly- I wasn't aware of that. Certainly something to try. Thank you.
@alacant- As far as I know the values read and shown are correct.
If I'm wrong of course I want to know, but everything seemed to match up with manufacturers specs.

[Steenamaroo]

Hi folks,
Just following up on this. I've had much more success over the last few nights.
I think this issue was caused mainly by two things.
One : Not giving the mount a rough idea of where it's pointing first - Thanks @BCN_Sean
Two : I started using dark frames when solving. I noticed a few white specs - dead pixels maybe? - and it seems like these were really causing issues.
I had a few failed solves which succeeded when I retried with darks in use.

Thanks to everyone who commented and offered help! Much appreciated, folks.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Steenamaroo

[Vulisha]

I had to UNcheck Use scale, then it started working... Also had to reset some settings to defaults