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[SOLVED] Ekos plate solver woes

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Having a lot of trouble with the plate solver, both online and offline.

Trying "Capture and Solve" in Alignment module using a 200 mm scope with a full-frame color CCD. FOV is 400'x600' and I have all the index files loaded from 4206 through 4219.

The online solver immediately throws an error that 'protocol "" is unknown'

The offline solver times out more than 90% of the time (180 sec) .

Verbose logs are attached.

Thanks for any suggestions!

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File Name: kstars.log...6.tar.gz
File Size:16 KB
Last edit: 5 years 5 months ago by Scott Denning.
5 years 5 months ago #30496
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Replied by Eric on topic Re:Ekos plate solver woes

Check the configuration of your field of view for the offline solver. If it can't find where the scope is, either the image is far from the expected location and the spiraling algorithm takes too long to search, or more likely, the algorithm is not looking at the relevant catalog files because the field of view given as input is incorrect.

-Eric
5 years 5 months ago #30500

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Odd that the solver times out immediately. I found some issue that could lead to this and fixed it in GIT, so you'd have to try nightly later on to see if it fixes your issue.
5 years 5 months ago #30501

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@Eric: Thank you for your help. I was able to solve using TheSkyX and actual position was only about 1 FOV to the east of where the FITS header thought. Image scale was off, but only by about 2%. I will try again tonight with precise coords and image scale (from a plate solve in TheSkyX) as input to the solver in Ekos, but since the solver inputs were very close to correct last night I am not optimistic.

@Jasem: Thank you for your help. I would be very happy if updating fixed the issue! To get the nightly build on ubuntu would I jneed to update or upgrade kstars-bleeding? Or INDI? Or both?

I really need to get the solver to work. It does solve occasionally (maybe 1/10), but even then takes a long time. I'm running ubuntu mate on an Intel Compute Stick with just 2 GB of RAM. Do I need a better machine for solving? Perhaps it's something in my settings as Eric suggested, but as I wrote the image scale and initial position provided are quite close to the actual values.

Also, does anybody have any suggestions for trying the online solver? I get the error 'protocol "" is unknown' immediately, every single time. I've poked around in the options but don't see where the problem is with the online solver.

Until I fix this, I can slew and solve and align in TheSkyX and then switch to Ekos for guiding and image capture, but this seems kind of crazy.
5 years 5 months ago #30513

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Replied by Eric on topic Re:Ekos plate solver woes

I had a look at the log, and except for a huuuge amount of warnings related to QCustomPlot, I couldn't find your attempts to align. Is there something I missed?

-Eric
5 years 5 months ago #30514

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I used to have a time out problem too. I solved it by decreasing the search radius. If you know that the scope is close to the target, decreasing the search radius can help.
Just a thought.

Wim
Last edit: 5 years 5 months ago by Wim van Berlo.
5 years 5 months ago #30518

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@Eric, thank you very much! As a newbie, I inadvertently posted a whole folder of logs.

Here's just the last session (much smaller file!), which includes a bunch fo alignment failures.

I've never heard of QCustomPlot. Is there something I need to turn off so I don't get all these errors?

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File Name: log_20-55-15.txt.zip
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Last edit: 5 years 5 months ago by Scott Denning.
5 years 5 months ago #30519
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@Wim, thank you -- I will give that a try tonight.
5 years 5 months ago #30522

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Replied by Eric on topic Re:Ekos plate solver woes

No problem, thanks for updating. You have a 174MM Mini as guide CCD and a 094MC Pro as main CCD. What the log shows is that the first capture leads to a successful solution in 115 seconds, and that solving further captures fail.
The first capture at 20:57:48 is sent to the solver, which returns a solution at 20:59:58. A sync point is created, and the mount slews to the corrected coordinates. There seems to be a settle time of 15 seconds after slewing.
The second capture at 21:02:06 is also sent to the solver at 21:02:20, but there the solver is somehow failing at 21:05:20, after 3 minutes, and requests a new capture. That new capture fails because another capture - invisible in the log - is in progress, but is retried. An additional capture is requested at 21:05:21, sent to the solver, but there you apparently stopped the solver after less than one minute.
Next captures are producing essentially the same sequence of events, but I assume you tried with the online solver. What I find weird in the first attempt is that a new capture is requested before the solver times out, but that might only be messages ordered in a strange way in the code. The fact the second capture fails because of a capture already running is strange too. I'd suggest trying with a single CCD connected, just for testing.
For the online solver, no idea right now, could you provide your Ekos settings?

-Eric
5 years 5 months ago #30526

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Replied by Tarun on topic Re:Ekos plate solver woes

Can you also install index-4215.fits ? I have almost same scale as yours 400x 600 (135mm on zwo 1600) and I do not have any issues plate solving with ekos.
Takes about 4-8sec on Tinker board for offline solving.
5 years 5 months ago #30527

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@Eric, I've attached screenshots of the settings panels for the Ekos Align module below. I notice that on my mac I also have a 4th panel that allows me to directly edit a conjuration file for this, but there's no such 4th panel on my ubuntu machine. Also, thanks for the suggestion to try disconnecting the guide camera in case the image scale is being taken from the wrong place. I will try that tonight.

@tkottary, I have index-4215.fits installed. As you can see in the attached screenshot, I have all the indexes from 4206 through 4219, so it should solve quickly and easily.

I must have something wrong in a setting someplace, but I don't know how to find the problem.

I am trying to test this during daylight by solving images from .fits files, and I have the same problem.
5 years 5 months ago #30535
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Following Eric's suggestion, I disconnected my guide camera so that I only have one camera active in INDI.

Then I fired up Ekos and connected the camera and mount. In Kstars I selected the Veil Nebula in Cygnus, which I've been imaging.

Then in the Align module in Ekos I clicked "Load and Slew" and selected a .fits image of the Veil from last night. As far as I can see, both the initial guess of the coordinates and the field width passed to the local solver are very close to the correct values.

Brief but verbose log is attached below.

The solver is called and does a bunch of things, some of which I don't understand. It finds 2258 light sources. In my previous post, I included screenshots of all the Options panels from the Ekos Alignment module.

After a long time (several minutes), Ekos reports it's taking an image, which I didn't ask for. Then it reports the image has been aborted (again, not my doing).

Finally I tried the whole thing again. No solve, no error.

Thanks very very much for your help!

Scott

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5 years 5 months ago #30536
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