How to use SkySafari with a GOTO mount?

[PeterC65]

4 hours ago, Zermelo said:

That would be the "Tilt device to slew" settings option?

I've never tried that, but I should give it a go. The Help text says that the manual slew buttons are hidden if the option is active. I'm wondering if the slew speeds in that mode are continuous, rather than the four discrete speeds available with the manual buttons. The app would be receiving information from the gyros at quite high resolution, so it should be possible.
I find that I usually want something like a speed "2.5" as the best compromise between speed and noise, so that would be quite handy.

Yes, that is the setting. I have also disabled orientation changes in the app so that I can tilt the tablet without the display turning around.

I've only used the tilt function with the virtual mount. It removes the four manual slew buttons and replaces them with one on the right of the display which you need to touch to enable the tilt function. You touch the button, then hold the tablet level, then tilt slewing engages until you touch the button again or zoom the display. If you just touch the button repeatedly you can toggle the tilt function on and off without having to level the tablet. If you change the zoom you have to level the tablet again.

The slew rate is still set from 1 to 4 by the same method as with the four manual slew buttons. It doesn't change rate with increased tilt.

This all seems to be well designed and probably easier to use, both for GOTO and for manual slewing, than the hand controller.

 

[Zermelo]

2 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

The slew rate is still set from 1 to 4 by the same method as with the four manual slew buttons. It doesn't change rate with increased tilt.

I feel a change request coming on ....

[PeterC65]

The SynScan WiFi Adapter has arrived and after a small amount of faffing it is working with the mount, both using the SynScan App and SkySafari (this is where the faffing was required).

I assume that I need to run the SynScan App first and that this runs a server that allows SkySafari to communicate with the mount? If I don't run the SynScan App, SkySafari doesn't seem to be able to connect.

I can report that tilting the tablet does indeed slew the mount. Just need some clear skies now.

 

[Zermelo]

1 hour ago, PeterC65 said:

The SynScan WiFi Adapter has arrived and after a small amount of faffing it is working with the mount, both using the SynScan App and SkySafari (this is where the faffing was required).

I assume that I need to run the SynScan App first and that this runs a server that allows SkySafari to communicate with the mount? If I don't run the SynScan App, SkySafari doesn't seem to be able to connect.

I can report that tilting the tablet does indeed slew the mount. Just need some clear skies now.

 

You can start the apps, but yes, connect Synscan to the scope first.

I start both apps at the same time because I sometimes need a reminder of where the Synscan alignment stars are, so I look them up in SkySafari.
But I align in Synscan first, then connect SkySafari, and it automatically goes to the current position (i.e. the final alignment star).  I find that (uncommonly) sometimes SkySafari will connect, but it thinks the scope is pointing North/level, i.e. where the alignment started. But just disconnecting and reconnecting SkySafari will cure that.

[Zermelo]

On 09/09/2023 at 09:54, Zermelo said:

historically, Android killed off background processes if they weren't used. But I think I've stopped it from doing that

It seems I was premature. In my most recent session, SkySafari lost connection with the scope several times. As usual, it was actually SynScan causing this and, when I checked afterwards, I found that the Android setting that I'd previously changed had been reset to default.

Android tries to preserve battery life by preventing apps from continuously running in the background (it calls this "optimisation"). This is generally a good idea, but not what you want if you're using SkySafari in the foreground and relying on SynScan in the background to talk to the mount.

The settings navigation and display sometimes vary with Android version and device manufacturer, but you need to get into the Android settings for the SynScan app, and find the battery settings within that. On my tablet, the options look like this:

and you want it set to "unrestricted". Android should then let SynScan run in background without timing it out.

[PeterC65]

2 hours ago, Zermelo said:

Android tries to preserve battery life by preventing apps from continuously running in the background (it calls this "optimisation"). This is generally a good idea, but not what you want if you're using SkySafari in the foreground and relying on SynScan in the background to talk to the mount.

Very useful to know. I have made the necessary changes on my tablet. This would have been a difficult one to track down!

[Zermelo]

56 minutes ago, PeterC65 said:

Very useful to know. I have made the necessary changes on my tablet. This would have been a difficult one to track down!

In my experience that's the usual culprit, though I think there are sometimes also utilities bundled with vendor-specific Android flavours that do a similar job.

[Gfamily]

One thing I particularly like about the Synscan app is that it has a 'Point And Track' capability.

This means you can use the scope for tracking without having to do an initial align.

If you can see your target (Moon, planet, brighter target) you can find it in the app's catalogue, point the telescope at it (using the finder if necessary) you can then simply use the Point And Track option. The scope then knows what its future movement will be across the sky, and can track it.

[PeterC65]

@Gfamily, that's useful to know. I also like that I don't have to set the date and time every time with the SynScan App which I do with the hand controller.

It's raining heavily here today, and forecast to do so for the rest of the week, but I'm looking forward to trying both the SynScan App and the SkySafari App in practice, probably with the 72mm refractor and my new StellaLyra UFF 30mm eyepiece.

 

[Gfamily]

1 hour ago, PeterC65 said:

@Gfamily, that's useful to know. I also like that I don't have to set the date and time every time with the SynScan App which I do with the hand controller.

It's raining heavily here today, and forecast to do so for the rest of the week, but I'm looking forward to trying both the SynScan App and the SkySafari App in practice, probably with the 72mm refractor and my new StellaLyra UFF 30mm eyepiece.

 

It's worth noting that if you use the Point And Track with the SynScan app, it doesn't update the telescope position details onto Sky Safari.

I'm not sure if anyone's mentioned that you can run the SynScan app in 'Emulator mode' so you can practice linking that app with the Sky Safari app. 

Also, when using Sky Safari to find your targets, it can often be useful to adjust the 'Star Magnitude' until it only shows the stars you can see through the eyepiece. That is how I make sure I'm seeing what I want to look at.

[happy-kat]

Cloudy weather is perfect for indoor practicing

[Gfamily]

5 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Cloudy weather is perfect for indoor practicing

Ah, but not all systems are immediately conducive to allowing indoor practice.

 

I was asked to help someone out with a Celestron SLT today - my first experience with this scope. Unfortunately, because (I assume) it works on relative displacements between whatever three bright 'alignment' stars are selected, I wasn't able to do a fake sorry indoor alignment .   

[happy-kat]

That's why I use synscan one star alignment three times as it does slew to where the mount thinks the star is, or I guess slew the mount to where I think the star I chose might be. It's a fudge but it enables indoor practice

Edited September 20, 2023 by happy-kat

[PeterC65]

I tried using WiFi / SynScan App / SkySafari to control the mount last night. It was for a widefield session so fairly forgiving on pointing accuracy.

I found the tablet screen to be very bright and quite distracting, even with the brightness turned right down and with the apps set to night mode. Even though I had disabled the shutdown of background apps, Android still occasionally shut down the SynScan App and I lost mount communications. To restore it I had to reveal the normal, none night mode, screen and that spoiled my dark adaption.

I did an alignment with the SynScan App and that was easier than with the hand controller. The process seemed quicker and there were many more alignment targets (I used Saturn as my second which isn't possible with the hand controller).

While the tablet screen was too bright, I found it hard to read any detail in SkySafari. I'd made the mistake of creating an observing list of all 45 of my favourite widefield visual objects and this just cluttered the screen. I should have just made a much shorter list for this session.

I was able to get information about other objects in the field of view, to be aware of interesting objects just outside of the field of view that I could slew to, and I was able to select a few objects from the sky chart on the fly. These are all advantages that I would not have had with the hand controller.

I could identify the pattern of stars I was seeing in the sky chart, but especially in night mode, SkySafari wasn't really showing me what I should be looking at as such, not like the images I get with Stellarium. So It was good for making sure I was looking in the right place but not for checking what the object should look like.

Tilting the tablet to slew the mount worked well and is more intuitive and easier to do in the dark than using the hand controller keys. It was useful to be able to see the area of sky I was now pointing at after a slew in the sky chart. The downside was the light from the tablet when slewing. With the hand controller I can more easily keep it in my hand and just turn it over if the screen and key illumination gets in the way.

I will persevere with this setup as I think there are some advantages and I usually find the first session with new kit frustrating.

One thing I noticed, outside in the dark, is that there is a connector on the hand controller that looks like it would fit the WiFi Adapter so I am wondering if I can use WiFi with the hand controller and get the best of both worlds?

 

[RobertI]

1 hour ago, PeterC65 said:

I could identify the pattern of stars I was seeing in the sky chart, but especially in night mode, SkySafari wasn't really showing me what I should be looking at as such, not like the images I get with Stellarium. So It was good for making sure I was looking in the right place but not for checking what the object should look like.

You probably already have this switched on Peter, but there is an option to show objects as images in SkySafari (I’m using SS 7 Pro)….

[PeterC65]

Yes I have that set. It may be that my eyesight is not so good in red night light. I wear an eyepatch when observing and with it in place everything on the screen was blurred. To be fair, I have to remove the eyepiece to read the display on the hand controller or even to read paper notes.

One good thing last night is that at no stage did I feel the need to go inside and look at Stellarium. Just as well as I'd upgraded to v23.2 and it had crashed (back to v23.1 now).

 

[Zermelo]

7 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

SkySafari wasn't really showing me what I should be looking at as such

I don't download the DSS images into SkySafari by default, because they obviously take up space, and some of them are pretty unenlightening. The ones I find most useful are open clusters, if they're located in a busy area of sky and I want to be sure I've found them.

[PeterC65]

23 hours ago, PeterC65 said:

One thing I noticed, outside in the dark, is that there is a connector on the hand controller that looks like it would fit the WiFi Adapter so I am wondering if I can use WiFi with the hand controller and get the best of both worlds?

Having checked the manual, the RJ-11 connector at the bottom of the hand controller is for an RS232 connection and is probably not suitable for use with the WiFi Adapter.

My next challenge is to control the mount via WiFi from the laptop. I've got that working with SynScan Pro running on the laptop but can't currently get SharpCap or Stellarium to control it via the SynScan Pro ASCOM driver. Too much software!

 

[happy-kat]

the latest skywatcher ascom driver 140 did not work for me had go back to my older copy 130 for ascom to connect

[PeterC65]

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

the latest skywatcher ascom driver 140 did not work for me had go back to my older copy 130 for ascom to connect

I'm using v1.4.0. Everything works fine with SynScan Pro operating in emulator mode and I can connect SharpCap and Stellarium, but when I switch WiFi networks from my home router to the SynScan WiFi Adapter the ASCOM driver can no longer see SynScan Pro. This doesn't sound like an ASCOM driver issue, more of a configuration issue, but can you point me at the v1.3.0 version of the ASCOM SynScan Pro driver and I will give that a go?

[PeterC65]

I've spent much of the day trying to get WiFi mount control working from the laptop and have so far failed.

I can get SynScan Pro working in emulator mode on the laptop, connect to it via its ASCOM driver and then through that control it via SharpCap and Stellarium (which is my objective). This all works fine with the laptop connected to home WiFi and with WiFi disabled, but when I connect the laptop to the SynScan WiFi, even with SynScan Pro still operating in emulator mode, the ASCOM driver stops working and control via SharpCap and Stellarium fails. Weird!

After testing this a few times to confirm I've got the failure mode right, it occurred to me that the fix might be to operate the SynScan WiFi Adapter in Station Mode, so that it connects to the home WiFi which seems to leave the ASCOM driver intact. So the second half of the day has been spent trying to do that which has also so far failed (see this thread).

So at the moment I can use the WiFi Adapter for visual, in Access Point Mode and using SkySafari on the tablet, but for EAA when I use the laptop I need to reconnect the hand controller and connect via USB.

Don't you just love technology!

 

[PeterC65]

I contacted FLO who weren't able to offer any fixes, and nobody on SGL has responded (it's only been a day I know).

Today I reset the SynScan WiFi Adapter to factory default and tried both Access Point Mode and Station Mode again.

In Access Point Mode, whenever I connect the laptop to the Adapter’s WiFi network the ASCOM SynScan App Driver stops working, then recovers when I disconnect. I can see this happening in Stellarium, with nothing else changing and with SynScan Pro in Emulator Mode, and I can repeat it. This is a very odd effect, some kind of interaction between ASCOM and the Adapters WiFi.

In Station Mode, the Adapter will not join my home network.

So I can only use it for visual with the tablet, and when I do EAA I would need swap back to the hand controller. The RJ-12 connector is not designed for multiple make / de-make cycles so I don't want to do this. Instead I will just use the hand controller for visual and have SkySafari on the tablet if I need to look at a reference.

Sadly, the Adapter will be going back to FLO.

 

[happy-kat]

Why not wait until you get hold of an earlier version of the skywatcher ascom driver try version 130

[bosun21]

Have you checked all the settings on your BT router?

[PeterC65]

3 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Why not wait until you get hold of an earlier version of the skywatcher ascom driver try version 130

I can't find v1.3.0. Only the v1.4.0 is available on the Sky-Watcher website.