Hello together,

does anyone else know the problem that in the middle of the session suddenly the profile changes to simulators. I have this problem for a while now and guess that it's related to the app. It usually happens when I start the app during a session and connect to the Stellarmate. The problem does not occur every time, but often enough that it drives me crazy. After all, i have to reconnect everything every time, set the sequences again, get PHD2 running again and so on. Last night I controlled the stellarmate exclusively through the noVNC-connection via the browser and the problem did not occur, on the other hand I use stellarmate just because of the app. I have already reinstalled the OS and reinstalled the App (Android - Google Pixel 6), but the problem still occurs. Now I have no more ideas what to do. Does anyone else have these problems and possibly a solution?

Many greeting
Jonas

This has been reported before. We're looking into it. I suspect App believes it lost connection to KStars and then attempts to restart it.

Hello Jasem,

thanks for the reply. Good to know that the problem is known and is being worked on. I had already thought something along these lines.
Because I am mobile and often leave the radius of my wlan, my phone has to reconnect quite often, which meant that the problem sometimes occurred several times per night.

Best regards
Jonas

Hello, I'm going through the same situation. After months of bad weather, finally, a few nights of good conditions arrive. The outcome?

Night 1: While using version 1.7.6 of the mobile app, it had updated automatically. I'm not sure if that's the reason, but the shots weren't updating for polar alignment. I decide to update to the new version through the app. The update stayed stuck at 90.1% indefinitely. By this point, it was already midnight, so I give up and turn off the device with the fear that the update might render the operating system unusable, as it has happened to many people before.

Night 2: I restart the update, and it stops at the same point again. After leaving it for almost an hour, I access it via VNC, but I don't see any update process. After restarting the OS and the app, it seems to be on the latest version now. It took two hours, a bit late, but I start... I find it impossible to align to the pole. It has never happened to me before. After another hour of repeating the process, I go back to VNC and see messages saying "could not estimate mount movement." I give up again.

Night 3: I try again. I manage to align with great difficulty. I notice that the error and correction results for alignment using plate solving are very inconsistent, It goes from 0.0.20 to 1.40.0 at times, and it even asks for absurd corrections on some occasions, so I leave it as it is. Once again, I have lost half of the night, so I just want to try the rest of the things. I assume it's due to the poor resulting alignment that even the guiding is unable to calibrate the tracking.
So I think, let's try in Andromeda with short subs and no guiding. I start the sequence, lock the tablet to turn off the screen, and when I check later, I encounter the same problem with the simulator profiles, it's impossible to do anything except disconnect the profile and start over again . I just simply laughed hard, turned off everything and went to bed frustrated after three nights of struggle and 0 photos.

1. The issue with "Simulator Profile" is not resolved, we'll try to back-port to 2.6.4 App.
2. Update issue for Stellarmate X only is fixed, but requires a manual update (sudo apt-get -y install stellarmateupdater). The SMX 1.7.7 updated image already include this fix if you want to download and reflash.
3. Polar alignment is not strictly necessary for GOTO or Guiding (it's useful for guiding, but not a show stopper unless you're doing really long exposures). I think folks are putting a lot of emphasis on polar alignment more than they should. If you are roughly aligned, you should be OK for up to 90-240 second of guiding without major issues. At any rate, the actual reason why plate solving didn't work in your case is not known exactly, it could be due to many reasons outlined in the documented.