Hi all,

I've been getting this message in my log window for my iEQ45 mount (indi driver: indi_lx200zeq25):

2017-07-10T16:46:39: Error reading RA/DEC.
2017-07-10T16:46:21: Slew is complete. Tracking...
2017-07-10T16:46:05: Slewing to RA: 13:30:35 - DEC: 47:06:39
2017-07-10T16:40:08: Error reading RA/DEC.
2017-07-10T16:39:42: Error reading RA/DEC.
2017-07-10T16:39:33: Error reading RA/DEC.
2017-07-10T16:38:24: Error reading RA/DEC.
2017-07-10T16:39:09: Error reading RA/DEC.

The mount started off in the zero position and ended up pointing to M51. But the errors continue to happen periodically. Something I should worry about?

Thanks,

Charles

I have the same problem, but on a Sky Sensor 2000 PC.

It was working well last November before the clouds blanketed the winter sky.

Here is what the log has.

It made some operations intermittent. For example, you tell it to slew, and it would not respond. Or it slews then the slew never completes.

Going into picocom, I typed the :GD# and :GR# commands manually:

:GD#+00�51:57#
:GR#04:16:59#

The response for GD has non ASCII characters in it:

$ hd
:GD#+00�51:58#
00000000 3a 47 44 23 2b 30 30 ef bf bd 35 31 3a 35 38 23 |:GD#+00...51:58#|

So hex ef bf bd, but that was via copy/paste.

What can one do to troubleshoot this further?

The code to read this into 3 number is this in indicom.c:
So it skips any non-digit number until it encounters a digit.. put a breakpoint there and see how it breaks it down. ef bf bd is 3 bytes but I think it is probably just an artifact of your copy/paste.

Before going that route, is there an INDI log with all the commands sent and responses received?

It used to be under .indi/logs/yyyy-mm-dd/indi_device, but even when I click all the options in the new 'Logs' button in Ekos, I don't see anything written there ...

Or does this has to be done from the INDI tab for the device in question?

All are merged in the KStars logs now, so find everything there in one place.

Nice work on centralizing the logs.

Now that I tested verbose output, it seems that the problem is not in INDI. The f_scansexa works correctly despite the strange non-ASCII characters.

The issue seems to be in the Sky Sensor 2000 PC controller itself. It sometimes does not respond within 5 seconds to :GR# or :GD# commands. This only happens intermittently.

I am wondering if it would help to increase the 5 second timeout for LX200_TIMEOUT ...

So, this turned out to be nothing related to the Sky Sensor 2000 PC controller, nor to INDI.

I did two things, and the errors went away:

1. Reduce the baud rate from 19200 to 9600.

2. Remove the USB hub, and re-route the USB cable directly to from the controller to the laptop.

No errors after an hour of testing.