I have this same setup. AVX + SSAG + DSLR + RPI3. I'm using a Nikon D5100 :-/ I have had my share of troubles, but mostly it's working, though weather is really hampering my efforts. The biggest problem is I fight with my mount alignment, but I think I'm just trying to skip too far ahead versus my skill level. It should all be doable in theory right?

My SSAG also works in PHD2. You can run PHD2 as a server and connect to the PHD2 server via Ekos. That at least gets you AG status in Ekos and it will work as an integrated solution as intended. PHD2 can be run directly on the RPI with a remote window over X11 forwarding.

I haven't been successful with the autoguiding yet in Ekos, but the SSAG does connect and it does take exposures. The first time I tried it could not calibrate, but I think some settings were off, since it was calibrating in PHD2.

For me PHD2 is the gold standard. If it works there it should work everywhere else, but there may be some difference between your model SSAG and mine (I bought mine used). I'll post the stats I have on mine to this thread next time I'm sitting in front of the setup.

Update.

So I tried with my Canon 650D and INDI woudln't connect to that either (gphoto2 command line can see it). I wasn't sure what else to try so I downloaded the Ekos VM to try a pre-made environment.

With the Ekos VM, INDI connects to both my SSAG and my 650D. I haven't tried anything beyond connecting yet but since I couldn't even do that before I'm guessing the problem has to do with the driver versions in the mutlaqja/ppa repo and the libraries in ubuntu 16.10 ( libgphoto2-6 is 2.5.10-3 and libqhy is 0.1.8+r2746)

So I'm back from Windows to Linux again, as Windows was just... well... Windows. Indi and Linux are so much better suited for remote work. I can now confirm binning is finally working again (huge thanx Jasem!), but I also had this white-image all of a sudden. Didn't turn gain down yet, but it used to be fine setting the gain at 60 and getting a well exposed image. I also wouldn't expect a 100% white image even at high gains. I'll give it a dry test later today.

I finally had some initial success with my SSAG using INDI at least partially. I have only been able to reliably use the QHY5 native drivers for the PHD2 guiding so far. Using the INDI drivers for the camera itself seems flaky and slow to respond. I may experiment with that more though. For some reason, the on camera setting for guiding does not work for me with my iOptron mounts. That could be something to do with my iOptron mounts. I know this has worked in the past and I tried a second SSAG and confirmed it was not the SSAG or ST-4 cable that was bad. The likelihood of both mounts having bad guide ports is also unlikely. If I set the mount to INDI and select the SmartEQ or ZEG25GT drivers for my mount it is able to control the mount with guide pulses. My chart was all over the place because I didn't even bother to do an alignment for this test, but I did see the correction pulses being sent.

My next questions is does anyone have any recommended settings for PHD2 they would recommend as a good starter set? I am talking about all of the widget settings (i.e. gain, max pulese length, agressiveness, etc). I know most of these will end up needing to be tweaked for individual mounts, but wanted to see if anyone had any ideas there.

Good News!

After the last couple of updates from the PPA both my SSAG and my Canon T4i are detected and connect from INDI, great work devs!

I did notice that the '/lib/udev/rules.d/85-qhy.rules' does have some 'SYSFS' attributes in it which cause udev some errors unless they are replaced with 'ATTRS'

Thanks for the awesome work!

The SSAG does seem able to more reliably connect for me via INDI now as well. Perhaps I will give the built in guiding a shot again once I have some decent weather to try.

Hi myxlflik(?)

Just want to share that I'm using the Orion SSAG successfully with boult in ekos guider.

That's a truth with some modifications. It does work with Celestron AVX with 'Guiding Via' set to celestron gps, and use pulse cmd set in the celestron driver.
I have also one or two times managed to calibrate with 'Guiding via' QHY5, but it seams more likely to fail.

I would like to add that i have never had any issues connecting the SSAG and getting images from it. It's always the calibration that is the tricky part.

Just an half hour ago or something I had ha patch of clear skies, opened up my roof calibrated and started guiding. (Then as always a lot of clouds! [damit!])

Some notes about maximizing the chance of success. Polar aligning is a lot more important than PHD2 on Windows. When I was using windows I could point my scope to north with a Android compass and set the mount to 59deg and PHD2 would calibrate. This does not work with the built in ekos guider (atleast not with SSAG).

By using the Polar alignment tool in Alignment module I now have ~35 sec error in Az error and ~15 sec error in Alt. The one thing that makes the PA tool difficult to use is that it uses 'Capture and Slew'. This does not work with a poor PA. As the images are downloaded and the solver solves, then the scope has drifted away from the solution in time for it to solve. I always ended up getting closer and closer until the solver error was more or less the same every time.

My fix to this was to set to 'Capture and Sync' Every time the solver syncs then slew to the middle of the solution back to the intended target, and the PA tool continues. Not sure but I suspect the tool might be less accurate this way?, however you will get close enough to eventually re run the tool with 'Capture and Slew' and so complete a good PA. Not sure that my PA with 35 sec and ~15sec is the best, but it's all that i had (time) for in the cold weather.

I'm not sure what the Celestron driver's 'Pulse CMD' does and why th SSAG is more likely to complete calibration when it's done. The 'Guide Via' option does make Ekos send guide signals directly to the mount, so the guiding part of the SSAG is not used, and the ST-4 port is bypassed. (at this point I think the SSAG is reduced to a camera, and non of the guiding capabilities of the device is used).

Figured this could be useful info for some people with the SSAG.

Picture of todays guiding. (not very good seeing, so the guide graph is a little wobbly)

Magnus_e,

Thanks for your input. I will see if I can make it work properly with the settings you used. I don't have a Celestron GPS mount, but I generally have not had any problems moving my mount around other than with the guiding setup. Do you normally do 3 second exposures?

The 3sec exposures was a little out of the ordenary. I usually try 0.5 first and then work my way up. When seeing is bad I start to get white streaks all over the image, and the stars are gone. It usally happens when I do not realize I'm imaging clouds I need a sky meter in my observatory!

Ok. That makes more sense to me. I usually start about 1 second. You must have been imaging a darker area when you snapped those snippets.

So this is something that must be investigated!

I have a perfectly clear night, witch is not usual. It's a lot of moon, but I'm imaging my first nb session

So today I did not manage to calibrate the qhy at all. No matter what I did it would not reach start point after 30 iterations.
So what I noticed, was that it never complained about ra, only dec.
So I turned off calibration of dec. At this point the guider did not know that I have to swap dec, so I enabled that manually.

What happened then? First the dec axis was dropping all the way to -20 or something, in the passing of a minute or so, but then it gradually got back on track!
It's like guiding is a self calibrating effort
Just look at the guide graph after it settled, and notice it's qhy5 via qhy5.
Not sure, but I'm thinking the calibration algorithm is not agreeing with the qhy5.

First picture is guiding started with uncalibrated dec, second is after it had settled. Looks like it's working just fine to me.

How did you disable calibration? I don't see where that can be disabled.