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[SOLVED] Celestron AVX park stopped working.

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Hi.

I have been busy building my observatory lately, and have not don any tests on my AVX for about a month and a half. I just finished wiring up my observatory and tested that the mount works, but found that parking was not working any more. I tried to park at alt 1, az 181. When I issued the command the counterweight was on the east side, and would have to move all the way to the west side to get the scope pointed at 181, but just as it passed the index marker the ra motar stopped moving. The Dec motor continued, pointing the mount downward.

I repeated this five times, resetting the mount to 'quick align' each time. Just to check I released the ra clutch and moved it to approx 181, and the scope pointed to the correct position, so looks like the dec motor moved as it should.

After resetting again I tried to slew the mount to a star close to alt 1, az 181, and the scope had no issue slewing there.
Also worth noting that when I tried to wake the mount from hibernation after the failed parking, I got 'Failed to sync to RA / DEC', and unpark failed.

I have my scope and servers at my remote location, so I wont be able to gather any more info until Friday, most likely. But I'm not quite sure what I should look for anyway.

Any help or debug tips appreciated.

/ Magnus
Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
Website: Observatory 17b
Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
7 years 7 months ago #9607

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Nothing was changed as far as I know on the celestron driver side. As always, can't comment much without driver logs.
7 years 7 months ago #9610

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Good to know nothing has changed in the driver.

I will do some more tests next time I'm on the observatory location, and enable full logging. Possible by Wednesday, or Friday.
Most likely just something I did wrong.
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7 years 7 months ago #9611

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HI.

Yesterday I got to collect a log.
The log is connecting to the mount after resetting and quick align. Slew to a target almost directly east. Park mount. Unpark and slew to a target.
After The first slew due east, it looked like it slewed to the correct spot.
When parking to 181, 1 it was pointing more or less to alt 1, but SW instead of S
Disconnected and cycled mount power then slew to a target. After first slew scope is pointing downwards.

File Attachment:

File Name: indi_celes..._gps.txt
File Size:7 KB


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Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
7 years 7 months ago #9641
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If you ask it to slew to (Az: 181, Alt: 1) I take it you get same results?
7 years 7 months ago #9642

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No, if I slew to (Az: 181, Alt: 1) by klicking on it in KStars and selecting slew. It works as expected.

I noticed in my handcontroller that in the "Meridian" setting it had a value of "disabled". I changed it to "prefer west", and everything got more predictable, but it still does not park to 181, 1. Instead it seems to be parking to 194, 0.5. It is at the moment parking to the same spot every time, but when I unpark the scope syncs to 192, 0.5 in KStars, witch looks correct by looking at the scope.

I tried "prefer current" in the "Meridian menu" and it went past the meridian and was stopped by the built in limits in the AVX.

I logged everything, so I'll add it, in case it makes sense.

File Attachment:

File Name: indi_celes...3:30.txt
File Size:101 KB
Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
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Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
7 years 7 months ago #9645
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At the moment i have "Prefer west" in the meridian setting, and -02 in the Ra-East and Ra-West limits.
The RA limits was set to -10 i.e continue tracking 10 degrees past the meridian.

Not sure if this is what fixed it, but now I have slewed to random location, parked (hibernated), powered off - on, slewed to random location, and repeated 5-6 times in a row. Looks like everything is working, but have no idea why it was not working earlier.

Just some paneling, a lick of paint, a outdoors install and i have a OBSERVATORY :)


Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
Website: Observatory 17b
Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
7 years 7 months ago #9648
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Great, let us know how it goes. Post a video for the complete action!
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7 years 7 months ago #9649

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Sure thing. :)

Actually made a video a couple days ago of newly wired observatory. Parking was not working, but I "faked it" and slewed to 181, 1.
The linear actuators is controlled by my USBRelat2 Roof driver. It also powers everything on and off in the obsy. The actuator on the left is slightly faster, but I have adjusted the travel limits, so they both close

Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
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Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
Last edit: 7 years 7 months ago by Magnus.
7 years 7 months ago #9652

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So, I have to reopen this topic as I'm having issues (the same) again.
Just to start out, does system time on the server matter? I was testing on a LAN without internet and my odroid thinks is 2035... However, the timesite is correct.

To sum it up.
Slewing to any position by 'klicking' slew in KStars works, and slews to correct position.
When park fails, it is pointing downvards, but it still works when unparking. Meaning I can slew from the point underneath the horizon to a point above, and it works.
When parking it looks like (by guessing) that the Az is not calculated correctly. It looks like it slews to 3 deg past the index point, and not 183.5. (Would that be 183.5 if it was a Alt, Az mount?)

I reset everything and slewed to the zenit, and enabled logging.
Then i used manually enter position in Kstars and entered 183.5, 1 and slewed to that point. This point was JNOW RA 18:19:41 - DEC -29:35:15
I then issued park command.
The dec motor did not move, staying at the correct alt, but the ra motor moved so the scope was pointing downvards.
The calculated RA, DEC from 183.5,1 was.
Parking to Az (183:49:59) Alt ( 1:00:00)...
Parking to RA (11:44:16) DEC (-29:10:34)...
so about 7.5 hours different then the 'manual' slew in KStars.

I'll add the log, so it's clearer.
All help much appreciated. (I wont have the possibility to test more today, but can test tomorrow, if more logs, etc is needed)

/Edit: Both my laptop, KStars and the celestron was showing correct local time.
Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
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Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
Last edit: 7 years 6 months ago by Magnus.
7 years 6 months ago #10085
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Some more testing from friday.

Just to see what happened, I slewed to the park position (183.5, 1) and selected 'current', and then 'write data' in parking, in the site tab.
What was written was 356, -59? So then I tried several times parking (hibernating) and unparking + slewing to different objects, and now everything was working, despite the wrong alt az for the parkposition. I did try to set the time and date on the odroid to (now), restart indiserver, and redo the current parkdata, but still with the same wrong alt az.

So then I was doing something else for a while on the servers. Mostly updating, but no libindi was updated as I'm compiling it from source. Tried waking my mount from hibernation (again) and slew to position, but now it was not synced correctly. So redo the Quick align, slewed to a couple of targets, and then to 183.5, 1. Used the current switch in parkdata, and now it was ~183.5, 1, and everything have been working since then.

Like the last time, it started working again without me doing anything that should change how the alt az is calculated. So still no idea what made it work, or why it was not working initially.

The screen shot of the 'current' parkdata, after slewing to 183.5, 1

Proud owner of Observatory 17b - A remote Linux observatory.
Website: Observatory 17b
Build thread @ SGL: Starting summers observatory project
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7 years 6 months ago #10123
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Yes the system time on the server matters still. Some functions do not use the time sent by KStars and instead use the system time (especially for coordinate conversion stuff). Maybe use NTP to make sure time is synced properly? Or go full GPS sync if you have a GPS module handy.
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7 years 6 months ago #10151

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