I believe I have tried it both ways. Sync, then GOTO, Plate solve then GOTO. And no plate solve nor sync, then GOTO. The result seems to be the same. I tried with the Wifi dongle alone inside today, and at least this is stable, no wandering off. I'm about to take my mount outside.
Mike

That was a very informative evening. The Celestron Wifi wedge AUX driver performed quite well when the Nexstar+HC was removed and control was done just using the SkyPortal Wifi module. The system was stable and the RA and Dec errors while still on the large side were as low as 160 arcsec for a while. That is until my AZ clutch failed! I conclude I had two issues, the AUX driver is incompatible with the HC and I had a failing clutch and/or gearbox. Now I get to take it apart and see what the damage is. The mount is 16 years old.
Mike

Gene,
The set screw on the pinion gear for the AZ/RA drive no longer fits the hole and the epoxy holding the gear in fractured allowing the pinion to slip. One two many stalls of the motor I guess. Celestron does not appear to sell these gears separately. The pinion for the ALT/DEC drive seems to be identical and the motor assembly with the gear is available. Note sure I want to pay $159 for a gear that may not come off without damage. Any ideas on sourcing of the pinion? Or are the astronomy gods telling me to buy a new mount?
Mike

I able to attach the pinion by tapping a new set screw hole. So my mount is reassembled and seems no worse for wear. I took the opportunity to clean and relube both the RA and DEC drives. The gears all look in fine shape, no excessive wear. No new mount just yet!
Mike

Hi Mike,

I was not aware of a clutch on an SE mount for AZ? Sounds like you came through ok, get a chance to take it for a test drive, regardless of of which driver or visual?

Gene

Gene, Yes, it seems to be OK! I got a pretty good image of M43 last night and M77 was steady enough to show my son. He was disappointed that he couldn’t see the neutrino flux (just kidding). I misspoke about the clutch. If there is one if must be integrated into the motor assembly. I was just experimenting with the CCD simulator and the guiding simulator. The pointing error is around 30 arcsec with no bias in either axis and the guiding is within 2 arcsec.

I do not observe a conflict between the Nexstar+HC when run in parallel with the wifi dongle (each one plugged into an aux port in an aux port splitter). This is nice because it’s convenient to have the HC for initial positioning and for polar alignment.

I’m looking forward to the next clear night! Thanks for checking in.

Mike

The presence of HC does cause problems and eventually hangs the mount when using the Celestron Evolution Wifi driver. I just takes a while to see it. After using the HC to set up the initial scope position and polar alignment I disconnect the HC. I ended up building a computer interface a la John Schnupp to avoid any issues with wifi that might occur. Pointing, alignment and tracking all work fine with this new interface or with the wifi Skyportal dongle without the HC.

Now I'm on to autoguiding using PHD2. When I was using the INDI Nexstar driver, I could autoguide through the mount on my wedge mounted 6SE rather than having to use an ST-4 cable. Can someone confirm that the Celestron Evolution Wifi AUX driver supports PHD2 autoguiding through the mount on the 6SE? I'm having trouble getting it to work with the simulators (it's cloudy) but I don't know where the issue lies, with the guider simulator, or the AUX driver. I can get it to guide when simulating connection via an ST-4 cable, but I would rather do it through the mount. I have upgraded to Stellarmate 1.7.4.

Mike

The AUX driver provides guider interface, so it's *guidable* from any INDI client. This includes PHD2.

Thanks, Jasem. I have read some confusing posts about the 6SE not being able to do guiding through the mount, rather only through the ST-4 cable. Do you know if this is true?

Mike

Jasem, Mike,

The bug report on SE mounts and the AUX commands for GUIDE
github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty/issues/685

And my pleas for alpha testers on non-SE mounts
indilib.org/forum/mounts/12675-celestron...for-new-updates.html

Gene

That's consistent with what I see here. When using PHD2 with the AUX driver, the SE mount does not move or barely so in response to the guiding commands. In addition, the manual guiding does not work and PHD2 appears only to displays the commands intermittently. With the hard-wired serial adapter I do see a series of timeout error messages.

I could guide using PHD2 through the SS HC and the Nexstar driver, but the strange DST issue is preventing me from doing the Quick Align and testing autoguiding again. I can try doing a "Fake One star Align" with the Nexstar+ HC and see where that gets me.

Mike

So I connected the RPi to the 6SE mount through the NexStar+ HC USB port. My Fake One star Align isn't all that simple since the +HC forces me to do a Fake Three Star alignment first. After that fails, I can do a Fake One Star alignment. But the upshot is that the autoguiding works through the mount in this configuration. You can do PHD2 guiding through the 6SE mount if you get by the alignment nonsense on the HC. Clearly the driver is translating the PHD2 pulse guiding commands into something the motor driver understands with the HC as an intermediary.

Mike