Rick Wayne replied to the topic 'monitors' in the forum. 2 months ago

Yeah, anything smaller would be really tight! But I'm actually not planning to use KStars and Ekos from it much, if ever. Just enough to get into the desktop and see that it is in fact booting OK and see what's up with the network.

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Rick Wayne created a new topic ' monitors' in the forum. 2 months ago

Any recommendations on small portable HDMI monitors/ touchscreens for use in the field with Stellarmate? What's the min resolution you'd go for?

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Hey, thanks! That gives me more options. For now I think I'll just use the mount's access point, which works well enough (especially given that my Pi will never be more than six feet from the hand controller). But it's good to know that I could connect it to the Pi's access point instead, which is a bit stronger. I know for sure that I can connect to that from inside a building 10-20 meters away, not sure about the mount's signal.

I have two main use cases: At home, where I have reasonably good WiFi out in the back yard from the router, and at the astro society's site, where no other WiFi is in play. One problem is that if the Pi sees an access point it knows, it automatically connects to it rather than standing up its own hotspot. Or at least it does that sometimes.

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Hahahaha "turn it off and turn it back on again", like! Classic!

Except...that totally worked. I still have an issue with UTC vs. local time but that's easily fixable. Everything connects and Ekos can control the mount. Thanks Jasem, you are the best!

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Interestingly, there are no optical trains available in the dropdown, although I know I had defined at least two. And every time I click the "+" to create one in the optical trains dialog, KStars crashes and restarts. THAT'S weird!

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I just got the eponymous mount, and was delighted when the iOptron HAE29 driver connected to it without a hitch. I was able to use the INDI Control Panel affordances to slew it, ensure that it knew the correct time and location, etc. Likewise in KStars, a point labeled for the mount shows up in the planetarium view, and if I right-click various locations, "iOptron HAE29" is in the context menu, and clicking "Goto" from that slews the mount at them. All great!

However, in Ekos proper, notso-hotso. For example if I go to the Mount panel, everything is blank and greyed out. I can bring up the Mount Control dialog, but all the mount position values are zeroes, the slew pushbuttons don't work, and if I search for a target and then click the "GOTO" button, nothing happens.

This doesn't have anything to do with the Tiime & Location Updates configurations in KStars, right? (As in "Mount updates KStars" or "KStars updates all devices".) What else can I try?

Various points:

  • Same install on same Pi worked great with CEM70 and a similar one did with CEM25P
  • No errors appear in the logs that I can see
  • Behavior is the same whether connecting over USB (SERIAL) or WiFi (NETWORK)
  • Mount firmware is as shipped, 202210something
  • Alignment tab is also present, but equally greyed out/unpopulated

TIA! It's a beautiful little mount, can't wait to actually use it!

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So now that I have the mount, I'll answer my own questions, for the benefit of the next person. Yes, the hand controller's WiFi setup is happy to accommodate other devices. In particular, StellarMate advertises itself as "stellarmate.local" on this network just as it does when using the WiFi hotspot put up by the Pi itself. So that means that I can set up the Pi to join the hand controller's network, and also connect to it with a laptop. Ekos talks to the mount just fine, and I can VNC in to the Pi.

The only downside is that the hand controller's WiFi signal is pretty weak; the Pi couldn't see it from across the house. So that might obviate being able to sit inside with the laptop and control everything from there.

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Excellent, thank you. That brings up another question, though: Can more than one device join the mount's Wifi network, and communicate with things besides the mount? I want my Pi, my laptop, and my (notional) HAE29EC all on the same network, so that I can VNC in to the Pi from the laptop and the Pi can control the mount over Wifi. I assume that "stellarmate.local" would no longer work to access the Pi; hopefully the mount's DHCP would assign the same IP to the Pi every time, so I wouldn't have to hunt for it every single time.

I do not see any option in the manual for setting the mount's Wifi to act like a client instead of like an access point, which was an option with the old StarFi adapter. That would be even better, everybody could just sign on to the Pi's network.

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I am lusting after an HAE29. Big time.

With my CEM70, I mount the Pi on a tripod leg (thanks, Buckeyestargazer!) and plug the mount's two USB cables into it. That gives me control of the mount as well as connection to all the USB ports on the saddle for camera, guide cam, and filter wheel. I didn't even realize how sweet I had it until I had a bit of a failure and can't connect through the mount anymore. Sadness!

Anyway, while you can run your own cables up through the HAE29, it has nothing built in. So I'd almost certainly put the Pi (and maybe a powered USB hub) on the scope instead, and run power to it through the mount...and a USB cable to the hand controller to run the mount itself? That seems dorky. What about the built-in wifi? Is it possible to connect to the mount with INDI over wifi? IOptron's manual refers to their Commander Lite app working over "Wifi version ASCOM", whatever that means in English.

Of course, I have no idea how iOptron runs their WiFi control; perhaps the mount stands up its own hotspot, which would be a nonstarter unless I connected an Ethernet cable to my Pi. Since the whole point is to get by with only one power cable going up through the mount, if I had to run another cable I'd just make it USB (probably put the Pi on the tripod and the powered hub on the scope).

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Rick Wayne replied to the topic 'Params for autofocuser?' in the forum. 7 months ago

Thanks. Onward!

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Rick Wayne created a new topic ' Params for autofocuser?' in the forum. 7 months ago

Hi, I got the Ekos focuser working very well on my refractor but (a) that was a while ago, (b) I upgraded StellarMate and didn't manage to transfer all my settings, and (c) this is a new telescope and focuser setup anyway.

I'm running an AT8RC with a DIY direct-drive motor (PG27). The RC is 1625mm focal length and f/8, so the CFZ works out to about 65 microns. One step on the motor is about 2.2 microns.

From the days when I was trying to build a myFocuserPro, I recall the advice that your motor's step size should be no more than 1/10 of the CFZ if possible. But the step size the focus routine uses is something else again. Messing around pushing the buttons last night, it seemed that to be readily visible in HFR values (which were quite noisy), I needed to use a step size on the order of the entire CFZ!

So an initial step size of maybe 30, focus multiple 5? I'm using SEP detection, 1-Focus-Default profile, Linear 1-Pass, and a hyperbola curve fit per the docs (which are well in advance of the Focus module in StellarMate, but that's perfectly fine). I also poked in an AF Overscan of around 30, since I remember that's about what the old rig had for its backlash param in the driver (same motor, though pulley instead of direct-drive and rack & pinion instead of Crayford).

I suppose I could average one or more frames to get less jumpy HFR values. Would make this manual phase even more tedious, but once the AF is working it would be less of an issue.

Any suggestions gratefully accepted.

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