How did my mount end up like this?? I had to free my scope from the tripod legs with some difficulty...

[pipnina]

Imaging was going well on M101 a few nights ago, but when it crossed the meridian EKOS/Indi or the mount itself had a wobbly performing the flip and it kept pointing in the wrong direction.

I went outside a few times to right it back to home position after hitting park in EKOS. It messed up each time. Eventually i hit park for the final time and gave up.

When I looked at it the next day I saw it like THIS! I had to perform a lot of careful maneuvers to get it out of there between the tripod legs! I have no idea how it managed it or how mount positioning could go so wrong... Could this be something to do with EKOS's alignment settings? I cleared them a few times when it was parked and also let it "sync" in the park position so it knew it was pointed at 88 degrees on DEC etc. It still refused to point properly.

[Celerondon]

I see why you are confused because this story is as confusing as that picture. From your account, I can’t understand how the mount did anything after you parked it.  It is also hard to figure out how a GEM in the northern hemisphere tracked itself into the position shown in this picture. 
 

is there any way that someone or something could have slewed your HEQ5 into this unnatural position?  Doesn’t your mount park itself while pointed at the north celestial pole?  A tracking mount should rotate in the other direction and I don’t get why your dec axis isn’t aimed at the pole.   Kids, or cats, perhaps?

 

Don

[ONIKKINEN]

Sorry, dont know anything about EKOS/Indi, but something like this has happened to my EQM-35 and AZ-EQ6 when using NINA. So there is a chance this is a Skywatcher thing and not a software thing.

For me the weird wrong way slewing happened randomly and wouldn't go away within the night it happened. I ruled out different things and was left with only one option, the mount itself being confused by sync commands from NINA creating a bogus pointing model of some sort. At the time i used the USB port on the hand controller as a way to connect the mount to the PC, and a temporary fix was to factory reset the mount through the handset. Most likely not helpful for your case, different mount and control setup and all but thought to mention that a very similar thing happened with my mounts.

[Elp]

If you've parked and powered down I don't understand how this has happened. Was it off prior?

[pipnina]

1 hour ago, Celerondon said:

I see why you are confused because this story is as confusing as that picture. From your account, I can’t understand how the mount did anything after you parked it.  It is also hard to figure out how a GEM in the northern hemisphere tracked itself into the position shown in this picture. 
 

is there any way that someone or something could have slewed your HEQ5 into this unnatural position?  Doesn’t your mount park itself while pointed at the north celestial pole?  A tracking mount should rotate in the other direction and I don’t get why your dec axis isn’t aimed at the pole.   Kids, or cats, perhaps?

 

Don

I do have a mischievous cat however even his powers of destruction haven't affected my telescope yet. No kids to speak of.

I have only assumed so far that the mount or EKOS simply loses track of where the mount should be pointed... But why now after years of it working fine? Perhaps i need to look into mechanical issues as a struggling stepper motor or slippery clutch could maybe cause it to wig out?

52 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Sorry, dont know anything about EKOS/Indi, but something like this has happened to my EQM-35 and AZ-EQ6 when using NINA. So there is a chance this is a Skywatcher thing and not a software thing.

For me the weird wrong way slewing happened randomly and wouldn't go away within the night it happened. I ruled out different things and was left with only one option, the mount itself being confused by sync commands from NINA creating a bogus pointing model of some sort. At the time i used the USB port on the hand controller as a way to connect the mount to the PC, and a temporary fix was to factory reset the mount through the handset. Most likely not helpful for your case, different mount and control setup and all but thought to mention that a very similar thing happened with my mounts.

I don't know enough about the finder details of the skywatcher mounts under-the-hood operation, do the handsets act as the whole brain while the board inside the mount simply works as a stepper motor controller? If so It could be EKOS making alignment issues. If the brains are inside the mount then maybe I could plug my handset in and give it a factory wipe of some sort?

33 minutes ago, Elp said:

If you've parked and powered down I don't understand how this has happened. Was it off prior?

I always power up my setup pointed at the pole star with the counterweight pointing as close to straight down as possible. Usually the first goto slew will be off by some ten thousand arcseconds or so but the first platesolve will bring it within a few hundred, and by 4-5 platesolves it's normally in the 20 second tolerance I have set in EKOS.

I feel like I should have a security cam pointed at it (for multiple reasons) as I think many issues with controlling it from indoors would be solved if I could see it while controlling it!

[ONIKKINEN]

7 minutes ago, pipnina said:

If the brains are inside the mount then maybe I could plug my handset in and give it a factory wipe of some sort?

I'd say this is a possibility. My issues persisted even without the hand controller plugged in, so there is a chance the alignment model is stored somewhere on the mount head itself.

[Ratlet]

I had something similar happen with my gem28.  Came very close to ripping the power cord out of my camera sideways.

Basically it got confused about where home was* (my fault) so why I moved it to manually it thought it was point about 90° away from home.  I'd then move it to a new target and it would completely miss, and eventually went for the legs.

Is there a feature like 'set home' position on the software?  Gem28 has a version called set zero position.

*By got confused I mean I had been imaging with a side by side mount and swapped to a normal mounted scope.

[Elp]

So it continued to run? If so isn't it something to do with auto meridian flip settings then? You also have to usually make sure the mounts handset is in UTC time format to ensure meridian flips are minimally affected.

[alacant]

2 hours ago, pipnina said:

It still refused to point properly.

Hi

You can trace what happened from the log at:
~/.local/share/kstars/logs

Although I'm sure you'll know, a few pointers anyway...
If you're certain the computer clock is correct and your park position is toward the pole, don't sync. Rather, slew somewhere away from the pole and solve there. e.g. for m101, Mizar would be good. Finally, kstars EKOS uses local time or perhaps better said, whatever time the computer is set to use, usually local time. Make sure kstars time is synchronised with computer time and that the computer clock is correct (kstars -> time -> set to now). My money would be firmly on the time being wrong. 

Cheers and HTH
 

 

Edited April 21 by alacant

[Peter Drew]

Could cable management have anything to do with the problem?        🙂

[dph1nm]

I had the same problem earlier in the year. Tried to go to the other side of the meridian with ekos/indi and the pointing went pear shaped (astrometry wouldn't solve). Tried to re-home , then park + rehome, but still couldn't get it to work out where it was. Gave up in the end and went out to the observatory to find the telescope pointing at the ground, with one of the cables jammed tight round the mount. Now whether the cable problem was a consequence or the reason it is impossible to say, but it seems likely that the cable jamming causing the mount to lose its position (and its inability to go home).

NigelM

[Celerondon]

For some reason, I cannot see the image that pipnina posted anymore.  However, I want to ask a question.  It appears to me that this mount slewed itself into that position.  Does anyone see how it could have tracked its way down there?  

Don