I have an annoying issue (which I am almost certain is a settings problem and not a bug) with regards to the home and park positions on my Sirius Pro mount. Basically, I want the home and park positions to be with the counterweights down and the OTA pointed straight to the north. I connect to my Sirius Pro with the EQMOD adapter and drivers in Ekos. When I first start up, it seems like the mount is showing random coordinates. It could be the last object I slewed to, but I am not 100% certain there. It's probably because I don't currently park the mount before turning it off. My guess is that the mount uses it's last known coordinates as the coordinates it starts up with. Currently, if I park the mount, it ends up 'pretzeling' itself around the OTA. Fortunately it is not crashing the OTA or anything, but it's definitely doing wonky things when I park it.

My question is two fold
1 - How do I set the Home/Park position in the EQMOD options to counterweights down and OTQ pointing north?
2 - If I lose power or have to restart the mount, is there an easy way to tell the mount what it's approximate coordinates are when turning it back on so I don't have to do a bunch of work to get it back on track?

I suspect this is an easy problem to solve and I just haven't looked into the EQMOD options in Ekos enough to figure out what to set yet. Any ideas would be appreciated.

1. Set the mount to your preferred parking position manually by loosing RA/DEC clutches.
2. Just after connecting EQMod driver go to Site Management tab, click Current in Park Options and then Write Data. You need to do it just once.
3. Unpark and play with your mount
4. Always park your mount at the end of your session. It will return to the position saved in point 2

If you loose power or need to restart your mount just repeat point 1 above.

Thanks for the quick reply. My Sirius Pro mount has encoders that increment the DEC and RA values when you loosen the clutches and manually move the mount. I suspect that will skew things. I agree fully with always parking the mount as long as it doesn't 'pretzel' itself like it does currently. I am not sure if I saw the Park Options you mentioned in the tabs but there were quite a few EQMOD tabs. I will power the mount up later today and see if I can find that option.

I have just bought a Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ5, the SW version of the Orion Sirius Pro. This replaced an SW EQ5 Pro which worked well with my Raspberry Pi ‘Astroberry’ installation of EKOS. I am finding that the new mount is performing Pretzels like you did, and I wonder if you ever solved your issues? I followed Radek’s solution, but I am still finding strange defects both in pointing and parking. I realise this is an old thread, but you didn’t close it off with a final ‘eureka’! so did you solve your problems?

myxlflik wrote: Thanks for the quick reply. My Sirius Pro mount has encoders that increment the DEC and RA values when you loosen the clutches and manually move the mount. I suspect that will skew things. I agree fully with always parking the mount as long as it doesn't 'pretzel' itself like it does currently. I am not sure if I saw the Park Options you mentioned in the tabs but there were quite a few EQMOD tabs. I will power the mount up later today and see if I can find that option.

This is what to do
1. Power up your mount and click park in EQMOD, when the mount stops moving, turn the encoders off and loosen clutches and Put your mount in the preferred position, with weights down and scope up, then turn back on.
2. In Kstars right click on Polaris and and then click mount and then syc, the crosshairs should go to that position.
3. Then right click again and click “use current position as park” or as said above go to the INdI driver and write dats there, it does not matter which way you do it, but this first option is easiest...

Hi there,

I haven't had this problem in quite some time actually. If I remember correctly, I reset the mount to defaults and removed the mount config from kstars and re-added it. I think in my case something in the saved config file was horked.

I’ve tried your method as far as I understand it but am still getting spurious results. Do you mind explaining what you mean by ‘turn the encoders off’?
Thanks.

Avocette wrote: I’ve tried your method as far as I understand it but am still getting spurious results. Do you mind explaining what you mean by ‘turn the encoders off’?
Thanks.

Does your mount have encoders, ?? if so they will mess up the adjustments, so best turned off
My mount has encoders and I had no issues with park position, but when I set my mount to home with the handset, it goes to weights down and scope up anyway, which is what it should do, so what does yours do when you park it with the mount handset and not with software...??

Avocette wrote: I’ve tried your method as far as I understand it but am still getting spurious results. Do you mind explaining what you mean by ‘turn the encoders off’?
Thanks.

Ok, so,you have the EQ5, so you don’t have encoders, my mistake, I mixed up the posts..in that case

1. Put your mount in the preferred park position with no power on and release clutches to do it,
2. Power up Kstars and your mount, does the crosshairs in Kstars sit on Polaris, if yes great, if not then unpark the mount in the mount tab, and then right click on Polaris and click mount and sync, the crosshairs should jump to Polaris, the Mount won’t move, then right click again, and click “set as park position” then go back to mount tab and click park, the mount won’t move as it’s already there....

So that park position set.

3. Now when out with scope and software all set up and looking at the night sky each time you slew to an object and centre it, make sure you hit “sync” as this will then build an alignment profile and make goto’s much more accurate, the more you sync on the better the profile..

Hope that helps..

The Orion Sirius Pro does have encoders. I am making an assumption that the Skywatcher AZ-EQ5 also has them as it is nothing more than the Skywatcher version of the Orion Sirius Pro.

I've switched off the Auxilliary Encoders in the SynScan v4 Handset, but does this 'switched off state' then apply to the Motor Control itself once the Handset is replaced by the EQDirect cable? My mount is the AZ-EQ5 GT = Orion Sirius Pro model.