THANKS - I'm a PLUS 1 on this. I hate the HC and would prefer not even plugging it in, but it needs it as a interface for the usb port. = ( My mach1 is erroring at handshake in Ekos with experimental driver as well. Wondering it it too needs more time for the mount to respond. IT connected fine last night. But errors today and (the day before yesterday). Without changes... buggy? or maybe a weak USB connection. I'll trace it and see if I can bypass hubs and go direct to PC if I can.

I've found is that it's possible to hibernate and wake up including a power cycle. It seems to work well. and I've managed to implement this in the Celestron GPS driver.

But starting from cold, with no previous alignment is more difficult.
There is a Last Align command which will restore a previous alignment. That works well but relies on the mount being at the align position. The CGX and CGX-L mounts have home switches that allow the mount to be returned to the home position and there are commands that I think will do that. But I don't have one of those mounts so can't test.

I know that people would like to do an alignment with a mount which doesn't have home switches but I'm unhappy about that. If people don't understand the problems and expect that a mount will be aligned from where ever it is then it could easily be damaged by running into an unexpected hard stop such as a camera. I don't want people complaining about broken hardware. They already make enough fuss if they loose a few hours of imaging time because of what they perceive as software issues.

What I'd like to do is implement remote alignment only for mounts with home switches. I believe it's possible to be safe with those. I don't think it's practical with a mount without home switches.

What I really need is someone with a CGX or CGX-L mount who could test some of this.

Chris

Wow Chris, a lot of folks would love that! Maybe (just a thought) this could be enabled for non-home-switch mounts if the user explicitly consents to this feature while getting hearty long warning message? But I'll ask around as well if there are users willing to test this.

Thanks Jasem,
I realised this is Linux so if a user wants to bypass the check they can edit the code - simply comment out the check and rebuild.

How would I get a dire warning message to the user and get a confirmation back? Strictly speaking the driver has no UI, it's delegated to the application.

For testing what is needed is a user with a CGM or CGM-L mount and a willingness to send me debug logs.

Chris,

I have a CGX. Not sure how much help I could be, but I would like to see a more automated initial setup. Let me know.

It would be great if you can test.
This is what I need:

• Install the latest version of indi. The new version should be built now.
  
• Enable driver debug and save to file.
  
• Connect to the scope
  
• Check the Celestron driver has a Hibernate option and ensure this is enabled.
  This is where you need to be careful because I expect that your mount will move.
  
• Click on the Align button in the main control tab. The mount should move to the index switch positions.
  It should then report that it is aligned. The declination will be 90 deg and the Ra depend on the hour angle. Slews to objects should be close to where they should be.
  
• Obviously keep an eye on it to ensure that it isn't going to run into anything hard. I test with a naked mount, no OTA or counterweights so it can run freely in both axes but I'm not sure if the CGX will do that.

This should work with a mount that is running and already aligned or after the mount has been powered on from cold regardless of where it is pointed.

In all cases PLEASE send me the log files. There should be useful ones in ~/.indi/logs/<date>/indi_celestron_gps as well as the usual ones. I would far rather have too many logs, they compress well.

Park and Unpark should also work and you should be able to cycle the power between them.

The attached log files are from a couple of short test. I made sure that the Hibernate option was enabled, but was not able to locate an Align option. The set up was the latest nightly builds, Celestron CGX selected as the driver, and standard logging. To verify, the Align button will be located on the INDI Control panel under Celestron GPS - Main Control?

Also, I was not able to generate log files at ~/.indi/logs/<date>/indi_celestron_gps. I will need more instructions for how to do that.

Regarding the logs, I think once you enable logs in Ekos (with mount checked) then those are all that is required.

Sorry but this was done before the hibernate/wake up code was implemented. I may have misunderstood when the nightly build was done. It's also before I had updated park/unpark.

I think by now there should be a new daily build with this code there. Once it is present you should see the align button on the main control tab, near the bottom.

I just started using the AVX as temps have warmed to above freezing. I have placed it - (not leveled it yet) just testing... I polar align using the pole scope. (fairly accurate - but not precise). I did no star alignment because (I'm in the woods and can never find what it wants). I have some N ward - sky for testing. I slewed off a bit (I could reach the Heart neb at around 8pm. I did a plate solve and that synced me. For the AVX I'm using ASIair - I solve and it asks sync mount? I click yes. I then can go into sky safari pro and connect and it shows where It things the mount is pointing. (if it points at the heart - I'm good). After that night I homed to park3 best I could see (not accurately again). But best I could align the white marker lines in the dark. I did a hibernate.

powered down, left it in the garage. Next night (clear too for a while) I bought it out - (on slanted driveway) and polar aligned through polar scope again. I powered up and it asked for time/date/etc. (I hate that how can we put a clock in the HC?) There is also a "sync" from ipad/phone but I've heard that it sketchy. Anyway I did this last night and it seemed fairly accurate. Again I pointed at the heart (about the only thing I can see in this test spot) and did a place solve and sync. I guess I dunno if it stayed aligned... as I plate solved each time. At any rate it seemed to work fine. I did some guiding and test imaging. Now I've been TRYING to get the dang files off the PI and onto my PC (with Linux being new to me). I can see the ipad, but it shows me some apps doc files and NOT PHOTOS? Connecting to windows, shows photos only.
Maybe it's a open inside the ipad, I'll go look in settings. Then I can pull in the subs and do a astrometry test to see where I was REALLY POINTING.

Stellarvue/kstars may be in my future - Should I get it working in my dome. It would then be best to have it on my portable system too. But at this point. The ASIair - works and works well, so far Kstars/Ekos doesn't. But I'm not giving up yet.

Align button was a success! After pressing it, the mount would respond with "Align Success" displayed on the HC. The mount returned to the switch position each time it was requested. No manual interaction was performed during the testing.

During the first test, the mount seemed to point in the direction requested, but on the 2nd and 3rd tests the alignment was off enough for the mount to not execute a east to west meridian flip. The mount ended up on the safety stop switches, which is fine, because I was closely monitoring it.

I did test to see if the align button would perform both with Hibernate enabled and disabled. It would return to the switch position either way.

The logs are attached, but I am not sure if the first logs contain tests 1 and 2, or is somehow the first test was overwritten.

This looks very promising. Thanks.

Hibernate/wakeup assumes that the mount is not moved so putting it in the garage and taking it out the next day won't help. Your alignment will be no better than the reproducibility with which you restore it.

You aren't doing an alignment, just park/unpark I guess because the AVX doesn't have switches.