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FS-2 won't slew [SOLVED]

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FS-2 won't slew was created by Alfred

Hi, I'm currently re-activating equipment that was stowed away for a couple of years. Got a FS-2 (V1.21) control box and an Alt AD-5 mount. Kstars and Stellarium both have the same problem, SLEW doesn't work. Crosshairs move along nicely when I move the mount using the FS-2 handbox though. As soon as I try to SLEW in KStars or Stellarium, the FS-2 displays "schwenke" (=slew) for maybe 1/10th of a second and then nothing happens. I can repeat that as often as I want. All conncections are OK, INDI says everything was OK, too.

I remember the same problem had occurred many years ago when I first tried INDI. At the time I made a slight modification to the source code after which INDI worked perfectly. I had forwarded my modification to the maintainer but somehow the old version must have made its way back. Unfortunately I can't remember as to what the modification was.

Are there any other FS-2 users out there who can confirm my problem? Many thanks for replies.

CS
Alfred
Last edit: 8 years 7 months ago by Alfred.
8 years 7 months ago #4684

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Replied by Hellriegel on topic FS-2 won't slew

Alfred,
I got a similar situation here (Mount controller FS-2, Version 1.26, mounts ALT 7AD and "ALT 3" - trying to move from MS Windows to Linux Kubuntu).

After connecting to the FS-2 controller via /dev/ttyS0 the FS-2 Indi control tab shows the correct RA/Dec values and i
- can sync to the mount,
- slew once only!
After that slew will not work again unless I do a new sync to the current position. After that slew will work once again - and so on.
BTW syncing does update the RA/Dec values in the FS-2 handbox - so there is still some bi-directional connection working.

Any idea how we can get to the bottom of this problem? I really would like to switch to Kstars/Ekos.

CS
Michael
Last edit: 8 years 7 months ago by Hellriegel.
8 years 7 months ago #4735

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Replied by Alfred on topic FS-2 won't slew

Michael,

many thanks for your message. Knowing I'm not the only one experiencing problems eases my pain. I almost came to the conclusion that I'm just too stupid to make it work.. Up until now I am still unable to get it working correctly. Michael Koch has agreed to test my equipment since he was unable to confirm the problem using the same setup. I'll keep you informed of his findings.

Funnily, I found a very old laptop that I haven't been using for many years. This laptop (running Suse 10.2!) has the modified indi version installed that DOES slew and sync.. Same FS-2, same cables, same mount. So the old laptop does the job flawlessly, 4 other computers running newer software (including several versions of Windows, Linux, KStars and Stellarium) do not.

I'll keep you updated.

Best wishes
Alfred
The following user(s) said Thank You: Hellriegel
8 years 7 months ago #4736

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic FS-2 won't slew

Do you have the source code in the old laptop for the FS-2 driver? I just checked the INDI FS-2 driver and it is the only remaining driver that is using the older LX200 Legacy driver. It seems there are hardly any differences between it and LX200Basic driver. Can you try LX200Basic and see if that works? If you have firmware version >= 1.9 then it should be OK.
8 years 7 months ago #4740

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Replied by Alfred on topic FS-2 won't slew


Many thanks for your reply. I was searching like mad but unfortunately it turned out there is no source code on the laptop anymore.

Both FS-2 and Basic don't work here. My firmware is 1.21. Are there any FS-2 users whose setup actually DOES work? I'll do a few more tests later this week and will report my findings. I tried to send commands by hand using Minicom (9600 8N1) but that didn't work either.
8 years 7 months ago #4745

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic FS-2 won't slew

If Minicom is not working, this could indicate another issue. Check if it could be permission problem, or simply physical cable/USB cable issue. Try changing the physical USB ports. Make sure your user is part of the "dialout" group.

I checked FS-2 documentation and they support all commands in LX200Basic (and even more). You can also enable DEBUG in the driver and check the output.
8 years 7 months ago #4748

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Replied by Alfred on topic FS-2 won't slew


Jasem,

/dev/ttyUSB0 was manually set to 777, my user was member of dialout, connection was reported as OK. Same with another computer that I connected the FS-2 to via RS-232. Crosshairs did move but SYNC and SLEW would not work. The cable did work on my laptop so it should be OK.

However, I've got excellent news. I just installed INDI V1.0 and the latest version of KStars (which was a bit of a hassle). To my utter astonishment everything did work right away! I have no clue as to why because the whole setup is 100% the same and as far as I know no changes had been made between 0.98 and 1.0 with regard to FS-2. Nevertheless, my FS-2 will now SYNC, SLEW, and work perfectly. BTW, LX-200 Basic and Astro-Electronic FS-2 both do the job just fine. I'll do some more testing later tonight in order to confirm that everything is fine, indeed.

Michael, the only thing that I can suggest is installing the very latest versions of INDI and KStars if you haven't done so already. In my case that's INDI V1.0.0-2.1 and KStars 15.04.3-1.1. I truly hope this will solve your problem as it did solve mine.
8 years 7 months ago #4752

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Replied by Hellriegel on topic FS-2 won't slew

Alfred,
Happy to hear that FS-2 should work correctly. However, I seem to have trouble getting the correct kstars version to work:

After a standard apt-get update and the following apt-get upgrade (repositories ppa:mutlaqja/.. had been added before) nothing really had changed. Then I uninstalled kstars and libindi* und did a complete reinstall. Still no change in the FS-2 behaviour (no further slewing after the first slew).

A closer look at the software version using apt-cache show xxx reveals the following situation:
libindi0 Version: 0.9.9+r664.187~ubuntu15.04.1
libindi1 Version: 1.1.0+r812.221~ubuntu15.04.1
kstars Version: 4:14.12.3-0ubuntu2
kstars-bleeding: Version: 5:15.04+r5236.221~ubuntu15.04.1 Replaces: kstars
(BTW: neither kstars -v nor kstars --version show version information but start the program. The version-information at the Help tab says "KStars Version 2.3.0 Unter KDE Frameworks 5.9.0" ?!)

At this point I'm lost!. Starting kstars from the comand line gives no clues which version is being started. How can I make sure kstars-bleeding is the program at work?

CS
Michael
8 years 7 months ago #4804

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic FS-2 won't slew

installing kstars-bleeding should overwrite regular kstars. If you have teamviewer, I can login remotely and check the problem out.
Last edit: 8 years 7 months ago by Jasem Mutlaq.
8 years 7 months ago #4806

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Replied by Hellriegel on topic FS-2 won't slew

Jasem,

just got to read Your reply and immediately installed teamviewer.
If You find the time please please contact me at
mhellriegel (at) t-online.de
for further information.

CS
Michael
Last edit: 8 years 7 months ago by Hellriegel. Reason: spelling
8 years 7 months ago #4810

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Replied by Hellriegel on topic FS-2 won't slew

Just some some information to whoever comes across this thread on how things are going on my side:

My FS-2 controller does connect but is still not responding to slew commands. Jasem did some changes to an alternate FS-2 driver to enhance debug information and gave direct support to me but we did not yet solve the problem.
Currently I have got hold of another FS-2 controller and will install kstars-bleeding on my laptop (Intel core i5) as well as on an older and smaller Intel Core Duo PC (which has two com ports) and do some testing with various combinations of these hardware components. This may take some time (off home vacation waiting for me as well) and I'll report back as soon as I come to new conclusions.

@ Jasem:
I will contact You directly about the results of my testing (might be only by the end of September).

CS
Michael
Last edit: 8 years 6 months ago by Hellriegel.
8 years 6 months ago #4938

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Problems solved!
Jasem did some intensive debugging on my PC and eliminated problems concerning buffer on the serial connection (I wonder who except me is still using RS232 ports) and an issue with the format the FS-2 controller returning RA values in the format hh:mm,m. (The comma is the decimal sign in a German language environment.)

Now, my two FS-2 controllers just work fine and on top of it Jasem added a parking function to EKOS that does not depend on the FS-2 which does not have this feature. Parking position can be entered using Alt/Az coordinates so I finally get to park my scope array due south on the celestial equator - something I have been missing all the time.

Thanks again to Jasem and I would like to hear from others using a FS-2 controller.
CS
Michael

PS: How can I set this thread to being solved? I didn't start it, however.
Last edit: 8 years 6 months ago by Hellriegel.
8 years 6 months ago #4965

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