Avocette, You are lucky.
I see that you are running Windows and I am running macOS.
May be the macOS version of KStars is the problem ?

Hi Avo,

I've messed around quite a lot with this and it's all a tad confusing - for something so apparently simple it's bizarre ! I now strongly suspect that in this case it is a buggy driver implementation. I don't know which piece has the dodgy implementation, whether it be Astroberry/Debian/INDI et al or a straight defect in this particular driver.

I've used FTDI, Prolific, and the bargain bucket jobs for MANY years. I've never had a problem like this.
I'm pretty sure it's not the prolific hardware per se. If it was, they'd be out of business

Looks like my options are buy or make something.

I have the bits to make something, just can't locate a verified pin-out diagram. Looks like FLO will be getting an order

Oh, thanks for taking the time to make the screen shot.

Best

c

@ Avo

forgot to say that this looks like a Prolific pl2303 driver problem specifically

And that's a bad one and they are bad quality. I stopped using profilic (that exact model) once it burned my HEQ5 MCU!!!
Almost had a fire because of it. Very dangerous. Profilic no more... at least for me

Hi nMac,

the range of experiences with all this stuff is really quite odd. Makes you wonder if it just all depends on which side of the bed you got out of

Best,

c

Hi Collin, yes it seems so I had it working for more than a year until disaster arrived.
But I had more experiences with profilic chipsets and in general they dont play well with other chipsets.

Of course it’s only the Windows implementation of VNC Viewer that’s showing what’s going on in my RPi. The KStars/Ekos/Indi is all running under the Raspberry Pi OS version of Debian.

I don’t know where I read it, but it seems there are some genuine Prolific PL2303s out there but a lot of fake ones….

Hi Avo,

Yep, I guessed it was vnc or similar

I'm just saying is there APPEARS to be something flakey going on in relationship to the pl2303 driver.

Do you know if your Pegasus is using the "standard" Prolific pl2303 driver ? It would just be interesting to know

Best,

c

@Avo

Yes, there are many reports of cloned/fake so-called prolific chips.

However, do bear in mind that in this instance (Eq6-r Pro) Well, I'd like (Hope) to think Skywatcher buys direct from Prolific ?

Best,

c

My guess is that Pegasus Astro would also be keen to buy direct from Prolific. 
By the way my other mount ( SW AZ/EQ5) has a built-in Prolific chip, and I can swap over the direct USB cable link to a Hitecastro USB to Serial cable. It turns out this cable also has a Prolific chip in it, and the only software change I need to make is to go from 115200 baud to 9600.

I have a Pegasus Ultimate V2 box and that gives me NO problems at all. (not on raspberry PI or on Intel Linux machines)
As I said in a previous reply, most of the problems with the PL203 come from the GPSD service (Which in Astroberry is installed by default, even if you have no GPS)

GPSD uses a rules file: (think it is in /lib/udev/rules/d and is called 40-gpsd.rules (or something similar)

somewhere around line 25 are these statements # Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2303 Serial Port [linux module: pl2303]
ATTRS{idVendor}=="067b", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2303", SYMLINK+="gps%n", @UDEVCOMMAND@

So the minute you plugin a PL203 serial2usb, it gets a /dev/ttygps0 (or 1, 2 ...) and it is mistakenly taken by the GPSD as a GPS device

When the Indi driver then connect, nothing but trouble ....


Can be solving by removing GPSD (don't think it is possible on astroberry due to dependencies)

comment that line in the rules file
#ATTRS{idVendor}=="067b", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2303", SYMLINK+="gps%n", @UDEVCOMMAND@

and restart the system. Then test again.

Also disable autosearch function in Indi drivers. (Never worked correct for me). Use the new serialbyId devices to connect.

Regards,

Paul