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.

Yes. My goal is to one day mount on a pier, so I will be able to park it in a known position and later get it operating without manual interaction, possibly completely automated, with the appropriate monitoring. This is a huge step in that direction.

Thanks for the logs, they show that the align process is working correctly, that the commands to move to the index switches are doing what I would expect and that the align arrives at a very similar position each time. In fact the first two aligns report the same position to the second.

The first two aligns seem OK but there's something else going on during the third align, it looks as if something is moving both mount axes at the same time, at rate 5 from what I can see. This is happening exactly as the mount reaches the index and it seems to affect the alignment. Could the motion control buttons have been pressed at this time?

One thing I don't understand is the mount running into a stop. I don't see how there can be a stop anywhere near the index position because for both axes the index position is in the middle of the required movement range.

We need to work out and document a process to get a reliable, alignment. I would think that starting at the index position and doing a normal multi star alignment would be a good start. This will generate a good mount model. Doing plate solves and sync isn't really the same, AIUI this simply forces the mount position to be the same as the sync position. This is done in the HC and I'm not sure how.

One thing to check is the time as reported by the HC. I am assuming that the RTC will be used to set a good time but I've noticed that it don't give a good time before the alignment.

The mount always moved to the indexes without any issues when the command was sent.

The movement to the stop happened during a test slew to a selected object. The mount was pier-west pointing east. The scope was misaligned at this point, but still indicating east. I then selected an object to the west. The mount then slewed westward without performing a meridian flip, this kept the OTA continuing under the counterweight bar until the stop was reached.

During the tests, the HC was not used for any commands to the mount.

The configuration for the time settings was "KStars Updates All Devices". I will need to check the time indicated on the HC in future tests.

Thanks. Hope this helps.


PS - I would be interested in hearing more of you thoughts on how to perform a remote alignment. I may get a chance to field test this weekend. I now have my Raspberry Pi camera driver ported over to Mate, and want to field test it as well.

Thanks for that.

One thing that would help is to report the time when something strange happens. This would help me to find the correct place in the log.

The thing to remember is that this align process does not do an alignment. It recovers the last alignment done assuming that the mount is at the align switch position. This is useful for a permamently mounted mount but less so if you are portable.

I've not thought this through but something that could be worth trying is to do this align then slew to a bright star and use the mount's manual altitude and azimuth controls to centre the star. It may also be worth using the HC to do an undo sync command first. I'm not sure if a sync offset is saved with the alignment.
This process may also work with the Park/unpark process for mounts without switches.
It will be worth levelling the tripod both when doing the real alignment using the HC and when trying to recover this alignment.

I wouldn't expect a precise align, getting within a few tens of arc minutes would be good.

I managed to to some more indoor testing tonight. I spent some time trying to reproduce a misalignment situation, but all 'align's were successful, with the exception of one which was not really driver related.

At 21:24, I intentionally launched KStars and aligned before the time updated on the RasPi. This caused KStars to indicate the correct time, but a date of 2/11/16, and the HC retained the pre-updated time and date. At 21:25, I powered down to avoid hitting the limit on the mount. At 21:32, I re-powered the mount from the position near the limit switch, performed the 'align', and the alignment was restored. This time issue was possibly the cause of the issue that I had a couple of days ago. I was testing hibernate and power cycling and not really paying attention to whether the time updated before launching KStars/EKOS.

One thing to note is that it did not matter whether Hibernate was enabled or not when performing the align.

Attached are the logs.

PS - I had the mount cable disconnect at 21:58. At 22:54, connection to the mount was re-established and then a successful align.

Thanks for the feedback, from what I can see this is working. Exactly how good a realignment is will depend on how accurately the index position is reached and the time is set.

The 17-53-02 log shows that the initial time read from the HC was 2016-02-11T11:45:49, offset -5. This could have come from a start up before the Pi time was correct
The time and location are both set from the Pi a little after the initial update is done.

From what I can see the 21:24 log shows the correct times in the log and the time seems to be set correctly but certainly if the Pi has the wrong date or time then these will be sent to the HC.

Changing the time will affect the alignment because for an equatorial mount the mount axis operates in hour angle and it uses the local sidereal time - computed from the longitude and time - to convert from that to right ascension.

The StarSense HC won't accept changes to the time or location after it is aligned because of this, if you force it then it requires a new alignment.

The mount can do an alignment regardless if hibernate is called or not, with hibernate the current position of the mount axes is remembered and restored, with align the mount axes are assumed to be at the index position. What I do is check that the HC version supports the align command and that the mount is a CGX or CGX-L

What I'd like is to have the ability to do an align for mounts without switches by prompting the user to move the mount to the index position. I can do this with the ASCOM driver by showing a message box asking the user to do this but there doesn't seem to be any comparable way to do this in INDI.

Allow me to resurrect this old thread.
What the current situation and best practices are relative to the use of AVX without initial manual interaction ?
There is something new ?
In a SM fbook post someone remembered reading Celestron was going to allow direct control of the mount (no HC) at some future point. Is there something going on ?