As I was testing the meridian flip capabilities of my ZWO AM5, I realised that instead of performing a flip when slightly past the meridian, the mount would just stop tracking. In EKOS mount tab, I have the default (ticked) flip if HA > 5 degrees and the countdown timer decreases until the mount is supposed to flip but no flip occurs, the mount tab in indi tells me that the mount has stopped tracking.

Is there a way to activate or force a flip to occur once the mount has passed the meridian? I haven't seen anything obvious.

TIA

Hi,

Do you have HA Limits switched on? This acts as a safety feature by knocking tracking off when the mount reaches the specified HA.

If you haven't enabled HA Limits in Ekos then does the mount itself have a similar feature enabled (sorry but I'm not familiar with your mount)?

To force a flip you could issue a goto to your current position. The mount will know its passed the meridian and should do the flip for you. If that doesn't work then it would be because the mount doesn't think its past the meridian so you'd have to look at settings in the mount like datetime and location.

Hope this helps!

Hi John, thanks for the info.

HA limits are switched off, and time and location are correctly set for my position. I did an indoor test where I pointed the mount/scope toward Mars which was close to the Meridian, on the East side. Flip if HA > 5 degrees was checked and the Meridian flip countdown timer was running toward 0 but stopped about 16 minutes short of the flip time. Checking the mount tab in Indi, I can confirm that tracking had stopped. I waited for Mars to cross the Meridian and then told the mount to slew to Mars. It indeed did a flip to point to Mars so the logic and mechanics of doing a flip is working. It's just not happening when tracking an object getting close to the Meridian.

Haven't checked yet if the mount has a specific flip feature but I will dig a little further, hoping I find something. Any further hints are welcome though.

Thanks.

Hi Gilles,

I did a bit of googling of the AM5 mount and I think I see the issue. Seems like the AM5 stops when it reaches the meridian and I can't see how to change that (you could ask ZWO). This behaviour is what you've observed.

So the issue is Ekos won't allow a flip ahead of the Meridian so the earliest HA you can set is zero which is the point at which the AM5 will stop. So you can do the flip manually... wait for the mount to reach the Meridian and stop... wait a couple of minutes then do a goto to the same target and it should flip.

As to doing this automatically the best I think you can do is set the HA to zero and see what happens. If you're lucky Ekos will flip, if not the mount will stop and you'll have to flip manually. I'll ask around and see if anyone has any bright ideas. Maybe there's another AM5 user on here who has a better idea?

Hi Gilles,

The key thing here seems to be whether its possible to adjust the point at which the AM5 stops tracking. This is a question for ZWO. If it can be adjusted to say 5 degrees past the Meridian then the flip can be configured in Ekos before "Meridian + 5 deg" is reached and all should be fine.

Hi John,

I had an idea from what you mentioned and tried it but no luck. Instead of flipping if HA > 5 degrees, I thought that I could try flipping the mount if HA > <strong>-1</strong> degree, i.e 1 degree before it gets to the Meridian but the wise person who wrote the EKOS Meridian flip trigger did not allow small negative numbers to be used.

My logic behind that was that if one an wait 5 degrees past the Meridian to flip, it should be possible to do a preemptive flip a few degrees before getting to the Meridian with similar results. I could try modifying EKOS to do that but I don't know the code enough to play with it with confidence. I'll look anyway, just in case.

Anyway, I still have to try flipping with the 0 degree condition and see if it works. I will let you know.

OK, I just changed the flip condition to Flip if HA > 0 degree and that seems to be the only condition where the mount will flip, fair enough, at least the AM5 will flip automatically.

Thanks again for all your help.

Gilles

Hi Gilles,

The reason that Ekos prevents a negative Ha for the flip is that for the majority of mounts it wouldn't work. The way a "typical" mount performs a MF is very simple... it knows where it is and whenever it receives a goto command it determines if it has to move from 1 side of the meridian to the other. If so, it performs the flip.

So all Ekos does for a MF is to issue a goto for the current object being tracked. The mount receives the goto, determines that the object is on the other side of the Meridian and does the flip.

If Ekos issues a MF goto before the mount has reached the Meridian the mount will determine that its already pointing at the location it is being asked to goto, and do nothing.

Some more sophisticated mounts offer more functionality around the flip and may have configuration to allow a flip ahead of the Meridian but that isn't currently supported in Ekos. I don't know whether there is config on the AM5 to allow this. This is probably another question for ZWO.

Hi John,

As I mentioned in my (edited) previous post, I have just tested with "if HA > 0.0" and things worked, the mount flipped. I would have thought that most, if not all, mounts can go slightly past the Meridian before having to flip but I was wrong with the AM5. It has to be no greater that 0 degree past but exactly 0.

Another lesson learned.

A demo using the ASIAir

Hi Giles,

That's good to know. Hopefully it will work consistently for you.