Automated unattended meridian flip

Ekos can now perform a completely automated meridian flip in the middle of a capture session! There are a lot of things involved in this operation and It is still in BETA pending more testing from users. Use at your own risk! The mount might end up in a dangerous position during and/or after the flip!

After the flip is complete, it will capture and solve current location slew to target, performs guiding calibration, start autoguiding, performs dithering and focusing, then resumes capture process. I have to work on improving automatic star selection algorithms because they are key to the success of unattended operation.

Is there a way to trigger a meridian flip to test it please?

With EQMod, you can slew to the south, but before azimuth 180 degrees, track an object there, perform guiding calibration and start the autoguiding process. Then start a capture sequence, and set > HA to something short like 0.1, after the scope crosses the meridian and reaches 0.1 of an hour angle, a command will be sent to EQMod and it should flip by itself. Then Ekos will attempt to solve after the flip, slew to target if necessary, recalibrate the guiding, start the autoguiding, and resumes capture.

One point to note is guiding calibration procedure. If you want it completely automated, make sure to check "Automatic calibration" and TEST it . The automatic calibration procedure will select a star and resize the guiding square box as well... I didn't test it here much but will test it again over the weekend. This is why more tests are necessary.

Cool thanks for the explanation, very useful.
My remote observatory is still in development, as in being in my room at home about 500 miles from the final destination while I debug all potential issues.
I was looking into a method to trigger the meridian flip without having to a guiding calibration etc...

This is to see if the scope / mount will move without hitting anything and or catching any cables.

It can be done without guiding calibration as well, I just mentioned it there because this what you would do in a session. For what you want, i.e. a test, you just need to start to the INDI driver (no need for Ekos), and again slew to some object SE (near azimuth 180) then slew slightly to something just over 180 (SW) or any where SW for that matter and it will flip.

knro wrote: It can be done without guiding calibration as well, I just mentioned it there because this what you would do in a session. For what you want, i.e. a test, you just need to start to the INDI driver (no need for Ekos), and again slew to some object SE (near azimuth 180) to slew slightly to something just over 180 (SW) and it will flip.

cool, I shall try and report of any issues if any.

Video demo of meridian flip in Ekos!

Thanks for taking the time to do this video, very informative.