I just got a new Moonlight Nightcrawler (combined focuser and rotator) and can't get the rotator to work properly. It rotates fine, but I can not make it sync properly to my solved images. EKOS solves the loaded image, and then tells the rotator to adjust to the new calculated angle - but it's always way off. And worse, it often starts moving way too far and wraps my cables up!

I used the Esatto and Pegasus Falcon rotators well over the last two years. No issues. But this new Moonlight Nighcrawler is driving me nuts. It rotates past 180 degrees which should never happen with rotators. They are supposed to only move 180 degrees either clockwise or counterclockwise, which the Esatto and Falcon did. If you have a Moonlite Nightcrawler (or Litecrawler) please help!

Is there some initial setup steps I need to perform? If so, please list the step by step process.

I have it here and IIRC, I recently pushed a fix to it. Can you pull from latest nightly code? On initial setup, what's the raw angle reported by the rotator?

On initial startup I had it homed, so it reads zero.
I am using Mac OSX so I will check to see if there's a new Nightly there.

Peter

If you control it direct in Ekos --> Capture --> Rotator, it rotates fine manually? For rotation to work automatically, a successful solve must be done first, then it can be rotated to a specific position angle in the sky.

Yes, it rotates fine if I set the values myself - and I did have successful solves before.
But when I load up a saved file to slew to, even one that I just took at the same location, it rotates to the wrong orientation.
It stops, and thinks all is fine. But when I compare the two images, they are way off. Clearly the rotation angle is not correct, but EKOS says the camera is correctly aligned with the saved image.

Repeat it with logs on (make sure to check Rotator logs as well). Use the latest MacOS nightly: binary-factory.kde.org/job/KStars_Nightly_macos/

Ok, I am downloading the latest version (1583) now.
I will do this..

1. Slew to a popular target.
2. Solve and slew to center it.
3. Take a picture and save it.
4. Rotate the camera manually 30 degrees.
5. Solve that new rotated position
6. Load the previously saved image in the alignment tab to see if EKOS rotates the Moonlight properly.
7. Take another picture for comparison.

Peter

Ok, I will send logs soon,

Here's what I observed with the new nightly build,
1- My AAG Cloudwatcher no longer loads, It crashes every time I try to connect. I went back to a previous version, and it works fine. Went back to this latest build and it crashes.
2. Every other device loaded fine. For some odd reason though, my dome slewed away from the correct position and then slewed back.
3. I slewed to the Eagle Nebula.
4. I solved the image.
5. I took a 30 second image and saved it.
6. I then rotated the camera manually using the Rotator Settings box to a raw angle of 30 degrees.
7. The camera rotated +30 degrees as directed.
8. I did another plate solve. I saw the position angle change in the Rotator dialog box.
9. I noted the nebula had rotated +30 degrees.
all fine so far!
10. I then loaded up the previous saved file.
11. EKOS then rotated the camera +30 degrees again - instead of going BACK -30 degrees!
12. Now my raw rotation setting was +60 degrees.
13. I reloaded the original image and tried again. Again, EKOS added more rotation to the rotator, instead of going back.
14. I aborted the rotation to keep my cables from getting all wound up.
15. I pressed the HOME button, but the Moonlight did not go BACK to zero, instead it moved FORWARD to zero, past the 180 degree angle!!!

Logs shortly...

Here's the LOG.

PS: I couldn't find any separate Rotator logs. I do not know where they are saved on a Mac. I did have Rotator logging turned on and messages do show up in the regular error log file above, but I am not sure about separate rotator logs that Jasem mentioned above.

Could it be as simple as a sign error? If you start only say 2° off (so no worry about wrapping the cable), will it rotate the wrong way to 4°, then 8°, etc?

You may be right. The Moonlite instructions said that if the direction is reversed to press the “reverse direction” button in the ASCOM driver, but the INDI driver has no such button. Also it mentions that there is a safety switch in the ASCOM driver to protect against moving over 190 degrees. INDI doesn’t have that option either.