I used to think I knew what was going on but I'm seeing the strangest behaviour that I haven't seen before.

When I connect to the mount (in its park position) and then disconnect, the mount now reports (via the hand controller) the RA axis position is off by -6 degrees.

What could be doing this? I'm also see a strange message I haven't seen before:

Attached is the log.

Here's a more verbose log with mount logging turned on:

I just read on the EQMOD wiki that you shouldn't park an unaligned scope. Is that my problem ?

I think I had a very similar experience recently. But in your log, you enabled debug after connecting. Could you enable debug logs, then reconnect the driver, so that the initialization logs are captured? Have a look at github.com/indilib/indi/issues/717 because I think it relates. Complex situation, stupidly simple fix in the end, but it took me some time to understand.

-Eric

Thanks Eric, I'll check it out. I added a more comprehensive log that should have started before connecting, in my followup post.

Yeah that bug looks the same. I’m using StellarMate 1.3 but I think my kstars is the latest for the Mac. I guess the log will say. I’ve been out of commission for two months thanks to the weather and a belt mod. But I fail to see how the belt mod could have this effect. I noted that kstars was controlling the mount oK and parking it properly. But after disconnecting the mount position status was off -6 degrees.

Try the solution at the end of the github thread. That's really simple when you see how it works: you installed the belt mod, therefore you broke the relation between the park position given by gear encoders and the park position as sky coordinates. This means your mount thinks it is starting at the park position, but because the gears were "rotated" during your rework, that position doesn't point to the original coordinates anymore. As it appears, there is now a 6 degrees difference.
All you have to do now is physically direct your scope to the celestial pole, and set and write the Default park position using the INDI panel (not the Current park position). The Default park position for eqmod is the NCP. After reconnecting the driver, gears and park coordinates will be in line, and you may then set a new park position by executing a goto and writing, this time, the Current park position.

-Eric

I think I already tried what you are saying but I'll try again and make sure I don't make any mistakes.

However, having taken apart the mount and putting it back together again, I can assure you there are NO encoders. My understanding is that the controller simply counts steps and provides these values as the encoder value. What you are saying would be true for absolute encoders which this mount (HEQ5 Pro) does not have.

PS: Note also that the DEC axis seems to be fine. No ill effects there.

I tried what you said - didn't work - and after thinking about it, I think you guys are doing something wrong. I see you are setting default encoder settings for the default park position, which is not valid because there are no default encoder settings for a mount with relative encoders. The way I understand it, the controller simply assigns default values on power up unless you tell it that its in the park position, in which case it will assign the saved values.

When Kstars is connected, the encoder values read should be considered either pointing to park, home or unknown and the user has to tell you what it is.

However, even still, it doesn't explain why when I return to the mount hand controller, it now has a -6 degree error. What has been written to tell the mount that? No sync was performed and setting park should not write anything to the mount.

No I agree on what you said: there are no absolute encoders on my mount, only relative encoders. The origin position of those relative encoders is the Default position on eqmod (or Home position), and that Default position is always the NCP. To realign your gear values, you need to make sure that when your mount is pointing at NCP, the gear values equal the Default/Home position (8388608 in the case of the HEQ5-Pro).

-Eric

When I connect with Kstars after the mount has been parked in the home position, my encoder values are 8227137 (RA) 10644627 (DEC), not 8388608...

I appreciate what you are saying but could answer my question about the -6 degree offset... What is kstars writing to the mount that could cause this? How is it that the mounts references have changed?

in fact, each time I connect and disconnect the mount is off by another -6 degrees (if I dont reset the park position)