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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Problem with polar alignment in southern hemisphere?

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Oh, La Serena! I visited the place last year for Solar Eclipse. Great place and the sky is just unbelievable! Not mentioning Elqui Valley!
Great move from Spain to Chile!
4 years 2 weeks ago #50568

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Could the reason some, but not all southern observers experience this issue come down to different optics and the orientation they flip the image to?
4 years 2 weeks ago #50569

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Hello Wouter

I wrote a comment to your cloudy nights issue in thread:

ccd_simulator with transformation to telescope's HA system (Polar Alignment)

Kind regards, wildi
4 years 2 weeks ago #50603

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Hi Wildi,

Yes I just saw it. Great stuff! I hope it will help to pin down the source of this issue.

FYI I have cloned the KStars. libgphoto2, indi and indi-3rd party repos and compiled everything. I also modified the align.cpp code in KStars and reverted the fix that Jasem introduced for flipping the pink arrow when in the southern hemisphere. Hopefully I will be able to test it soon.


Wouter
4 years 2 weeks ago #50606

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Jasem,

Tonight finally I was able to test reverting those lines and polar alignment for me went back to normal again. Perhaps a checkbox can be introduced to flip the pink arrow for those having issues until this has been sorted out?


Wouter
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4 years 2 weeks ago #50709

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Hello Wouter and Jasem

Wouter, in the mean time the ccd simulator where you can set the position of the HA axis is available (see ccd_simulator with transformation to telescope's HA system (Polar Alignment) ).

Jasem, I guess I have no commit access any more :-)) How should I proceed? I described everything necessary in the mentioned thread.

Kind regards, wildi
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4 years 2 weeks ago #50718

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Markus, commit access to INDI you mean? You can submit a PR on Github. For KStars, it's via KDE's Phabricator system.

Wouter, I suppose a checkbox can be introduced, but why does this happen? and how can we identify it? If we simply add a checkbox then the user would have to learn first hand the proposed direction is wrong and then flips it. Is there a way to know that ourselves?
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4 years 1 week ago #50739

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So I ended up adding that checkbox after all. It's only a temporary measure though until the root issue is idenfitied.
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4 years 1 week ago #50747

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You ask very valid questions Jasem which unfortunately I cannot answer. I didn't check the code for a potential bug. I merely reverted those two lines to what they were before by looking at the git commit of August 18 2019 IIRC, recompiled and showed that it works for me like that. In any case, thanks for adding the checkbox. I will switch to INDI nightly and test when the weather permits to see if it works for me and stops working as soon as I check that check box.


Wouter
4 years 1 week ago #50757

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Over the past nights I have used KStars nightly and I'd like to report that for me the behavior of the polar alignment has been restored. I noticed the checkbox but I haven't tried it. Thanks a lot for the quick action Jasem!
4 years 5 minutes ago #51339

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Hi - I had the opportunity tonight to capture a log from my rig while performing a polar alignment. Hopefully it has enough details to be useful to someone.
I'm in the southern hemisphere and currently using a canon 650D DSLR on an 8" newtonian with a Skywatcher EQ6-R via EQMOD.

I experience the same issue mentioned in this topic.

I was able to polar align my mount by placing the vector in reverse. IE - not clicking on a bright reference star to place the crosshair over in, but instead clicking in empty space so as to place the end of the vector over the reference star refer to screenshot the subsequent screenshot shows a new iteration of the routine showing an improved alignment from the previous iteration

Log file

File Attachment:

File Name: log_20-12-53.txt
File Size:4,702 KB


Cheers.
3 years 11 months ago #51434
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Thanks for the report. The issue has been fixed and the fix will be available in the next release of KStars. If you are adventurous you might consider switching to the nightly builds and give the fix a try. Do note, however, that the nightly builds are not meant to used for real imaging but only for testing.


Wouter
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3 years 11 months ago #51435

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