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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

INDI and EQ8.

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INDI and EQ8. was created by Markku

Hello everybody!

I've been sniffing traffic between the handcontroller and a EQ8 and tought that the function "Autohome" would be nice to have included in INDI and also would be recogniced as an EQ8, so I attached my logfile if someone could take a look at it and hopefully understand what it does ?? well.. I don't.. :(
I also noticed that if I use Autohome from parked position the mount can go wild and it would hit the observatory floor if not stopped by powering off or pressing Esc, but if I use Autohome from any other position the mount will work correct and find it's home position.

Br
/Markku
10 years 1 day ago #879
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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic INDI and EQ8.

Are you using synscan driver with EQ8 or EQMod?
10 years 1 day ago #880

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Replied by Markku on topic INDI and EQ8.

When running remote I use EQMod..

Br
/Markku
10 years 23 hours ago #881

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Replied by Jean-Luc on topic INDI and EQ8.

Hi,


I think that recognising EQ8 should be easy as the mountcode seems to be 04. Autohome looks like to be related with the :q command (loop until <> FFFFFF, then stop motor) which should give the home position sensor status. Then there are some movements and the final commands set the steppers in default home position. Unfortunately there are also some undocumented commands (S, :W, ..). Does anybody know the motor controller type used in EQ8 (these are PIC18 series regarding the firmware format, celestron uses PIC18F8520 in their CGEM for instance) ?
which parked position do you mean? If you park with EQMOD, then you **should not** use your hand controller and/or moves the mount between power-ups. When EQMOD unparks the mount it sets the encoder position to the park position it has saved on its own (in .indi/ParkData.xml) and that supposes that he mount has not been moved since the previous power-down. Park position is not stored in the motor controllers themselves as it is not possible to write to the EEPROM using the known skywatcher protocol commands so there can not be any mix with hand-controller park/autohome feature (parking with the HC should store park positions on the HC itself). Now I wonder if Autohome and Park features are actually not redundant or exclusive?

Jean-Luc.
9 years 11 months ago #922

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Replied by Markku on topic INDI and EQ8.

Hi Jean-Luc

Hopefully Skywatcher will publish information about the commands.

I'm aware of the park positions and did run some testing, the EQ8 does not seem to have absolute encoders so there is no difference if I moved the mount and parked with the handcontroller, after switching Off and On again EQMOD works as it should.

Br
/Markku
9 years 11 months ago #925

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Replied by Markku on topic INDI and EQ8.

It's time to wake up this old thread thanks to Skywatcher :)
A couple of days ago Skywatcher released EQ8tools as sourceode (VB) to share with developers so here it is..
It includes code how to disable external encoders and also how to do the Autohome.

File Attachment:

File Name: fEQ8Tools.txt
File Size:32 KB
Last edit: 9 years 3 months ago by Markku. Reason: Missing file..
9 years 3 months ago #2382
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Replied by Markku on topic INDI and EQ8.

I should also tell where the info comes from.. it is from the SkywatcherEQ8 yahoo group.
By Frank :
"Just thought I would share and email and attachments from Frank Liu of Skywatcher.
many thanks to him for spending time to work on this small code tool to turn off the secondary encoders."
9 years 3 months ago #2385

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