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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Alt-Az mode for EQmod

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@geehalel thank you SO MUCH for your work. Indeed, having a driver available to track correctly to be able to plate solve as a quick sync technique would be amazing. Let me know whenever there is something to test. All my very best and again, thank you. Federico
3 years 6 months ago #60194

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

@geehalel: you are amazing ! Many thanks, I remain excited to test !
3 years 6 months ago #60198

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

@geehalel: regarding your question of the field rotation axis: I guess as long as the axis of the mount and the guide scope are parallel, the center of the rotation axis should be the center of the sensor, i.e. the distance between mount axis and guide scope axis is far too small to cause any parallax as the points projected on the sensor are at infinity. Things should become more complicated, once both axes are not (perfectly) aligned: in the extreme case of the guide scope axis being perpendicular to the mount axis, there is no more rotation, only translation. In between there should be a mix between rotation and translation, i.e. the center of rotation is moved away from the center of the sensor. My understanding is, that the deviation introduced by such misalignment is what is coined "cone error". Maybe you find some hints in the logic regarding cone error correction to model this; there should also be some literature where this is being described / worked out.
Does this makes sense ?
3 years 6 months ago #60204

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

on second thought: as long as both axes are not perfectly aligned, the center of rotation moves rapidly away from the center of the sensor: let´s assume we have a 1.5 degree fov with our guide scope. If the alignment error between mount and guide scope axis is more than 0.75 degrees, the center of rotation is already off the sensor. I think you can calculate the center of rotation by calculating the fov of your guide scope / sensor combination and substract the deviation angle of the scope axis and mount axis in degrees. How many pixels this equates to, you can derive from the fov calculation. The direction of the deviation should be the opposite of the axis deviation in relation to the sensor orientation.
This is without guarantee. Just my understanding.
3 years 6 months ago #60205

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

on a third thought: I probably should have rather asked you, what you are aiming at. With my hints above, I was in "equatorial mode". In Alt-Az there is no rotational axis of the rig itself. If you want to derotate the exposures made on an alt-az mount, I think the way to go is by star pattern alignment, i.e. agnostic of any mechanical rotation calculation.
3 years 6 months ago #60208

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Dear @geehalel, @knro et all,
Here's a picture I did yesterday using Stellarmate with my AZ-GTI working in ALT-AZ, Nikon D5100, and SkyWatcher 127 MAK, just one exposure of 30 seconds:

I used Synscan driver - just launched Synscan Pro app, did a one-star alignment with a star nearby the Orion nebulae, then goto Orion nebulae and alignment using Stellarmate astrometry.
Look how well defined the stars are, given that this is a somewhat long exposure and that it was in ALT-AZ, and that I only have done a one-star alignment.
I think if I repeat and align over 3 or 4 nearby stars before goto Orion, I could probably get even more dot-like stars and definition at even longer exposure times.
Of course, this opens the door wide-open to shorter exposure astrophotography, I did 10-second exposures, and then the stars were perfect dots.
This speaks volumes about how awesome the AZ-GTI is (especially given its price). This quality might not be enough for professional astrophotography (I think it might, if perfected a little) but it definitely is enough for EAA!
If only the AZ-GTI driver could do the same the Synscan Pro app do, then we would not need that app as an intermediary and we could start even faster: just turn on AZ-GTI, do alignment-sync using astrometry, boom, ready to start working.
Let me know your thoughts,
All best,
Federico
Last edit: 3 years 4 months ago by Federico Parra.
3 years 4 months ago #62893
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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

Only wanted to reiterate my continued interest in this topic...
@geehalel: I guess I owe you an apology regarding my newbee comments concerning the field rotation: I was actually not aware that you are Jean-Luc, the creator of the EQmod driver. If I would have known, I would have spared you these trvialities...
Anyway, I hope you are making progress regarding the Alt-Az driver ?
Cheers
Dirk
3 years 4 months ago #62918

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Once again, the power of AZ-GTI in Alt-Az mode. I just walked out around 11PM in Poitiers, France (urban area, clean sky though), installed the mount on a Gitzmo lightweight photo tripod, launched the Synscan Pro app, did one star alignment to Rigel, connected Stellarmate with Synscan driver, did one Sync with astrometry, then goto M42. Then 100x10sec frames at 800ISO with my D5100 hacked DSLR through a 127" sky-watcher MAK, plus some dark and bias, then stack, boom.
Having a driver that can do this without having to bother about connection issues in the background to the Synscan app would be tremendous!
3 years 4 months ago #63031
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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

@geehalel: I finally succeeded in building your modification of the skywatcherAPI into my system (don´t ask why it took so long...). Surprisingly, my mount still refuses to connect. The handshake still seems to fail at or after the "isDCMotor" routine. Here is the output of the logfile:
[2021-01-28T15:15:10.954 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] Toggle Debug Level -- Scope Verbose "
[2021-01-28T15:15:22.107 W. Europe Standard Time INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[INFO] Scan complete. Found 1 port(s). "
[2021-01-28T15:15:26.432 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] ProcessTextProperties - name(DEVICE_PORT) "
[2021-01-28T15:15:27.616 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] ProcessTextProperties - name(DEVICE_PORT) "
[2021-01-28T15:15:34.933 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] Connecting to /dev/ttyUSB0 @ 115200 "
[2021-01-28T15:15:34.985 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] Port FD 3 "
[2021-01-28T15:15:34.997 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] Connection successful, attempting handshake... "
[2021-01-28T15:15:35.008 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[SCOPE] SkywatcherAPIMount::Handshake "
[2021-01-28T15:15:35.019 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[SCOPE] InitMount "
[2021-01-28T15:15:35.030 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[SCOPE] CheckIfDCMotor "
[2021-01-28T15:15:36.948 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[SCOPE] SkywatcherAPIMount::Handshake - Result: 0 "
[2021-01-28T15:15:37.000 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - Skywatcher Alt-Az : "[DEBUG] Handshake failed. "
[2021-01-28T15:15:37.054 W. Europe Standard Time DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos] - "Skywatcher Alt-Az" is disconnected.
[2021-01-28T15:15:37.066 W. Europe Standard Time INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos] - "Skywatcher Alt-Az is disconnected."
3 years 1 month ago #66603

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

may it be, that there is some other routine after the "CheckIfDCMotor" which causes the handshake to fail ? Pls. let me know, whether you need more log-output.
Many thanks & kind regards
Dirk
3 years 1 month ago #66604

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Replied by Dirk Tetzlaff on topic Alt-Az mode for EQmod

@Jean-Luc: I got the driver working with my AZ-EQ6, meanwhile. The problem was that my MC board (the one with the built-in USB) has a different mount code. It responds "0x22". Once I changed this in your code, It connected and I can now control my mount with the skywatcher_AltAZ driver. Unfortunately, no live testing yet due to weather restrictions.
I did also "switch on" the guiding by un-commenting the respective lines in the skywatcherAPIMount.cpp. Quite excited to see how well this works. My plan is to have my guide scope set exactly parallel to my primary scope. I will than choose a guiding star as close as possible to the middle of the field. The center of field rotation should than be the guiding star. But I guess astrophotography in AltAz makes only sense at or near the celestial equator or with very large fov (to have low arcsec resolution per pixel). I will test it with my C11&Hyperstar, though. Probably this combination works ok, with reasonably short exposures.
Primarily I wanted to have the AltAz option for visual observation and planetary photography. I am very much looking forward to test this out. Thank you very much for your support !

P.S.: is there any backlash programmed when slewing ? my mount always backtracks a bit after slew commands. Could not see any options, though.
Last edit: 3 years 1 month ago by Dirk Tetzlaff.
3 years 1 month ago #66755

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