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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Astrotrac 360 support

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Dear Peter,
Have been testing the driver with Jasem. Have had similar issues to yours. I was out of town for a few days and got to test the Nearest Math plug in only once for a few minutes before clouds came in.

Jasem,
It works on the first slew but then same issues as before - iteration gets stuck or it goes off. If I use differential solving, it works perfectly every time (centers target) but shows large error (which is not true) and doesn’t sync even if I try to sync manually in Kstars.

Let me get a good dark night for some extensive testing and I will report back.

Sameer
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2 years 7 months ago #74528

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Hi Sameer and Jasem,

Great you guys are working on this. Would be an awesome addition to this mount. I changed to 'the nearest plugin" , so I will hopefully be able to try that out tonight.
Still have a few questions though. When I look at my Astrotrac driver, it shows me version 1.0 and interface 5.  Is that correct? I tried updating both stable and beta and I seem to remember I saw interface 8 in there before. Not even sure if the Stellarmate stays in beta when I switch channels, because when going back to device is often shows stable again regardless of the fact that I switched.
Anyway I hope to be able to give it a shot again tonight and be able to report back here.

cheers,

Peter
2 years 7 months ago #74530

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Allright guys, I just came in from a few hours of testing. My connection seems more stable than before now, allthough occasionaly I still loose my connection to Stellarmate and I was sitting right next to it with my Ipad, but most the time it was just slight inconvenience.
I started with autofocus, which did not work to well as it made the application crash several times, but that was maybe because I was not on the stable version now. Polar alignment worked really well.
After the polar alignment I made the mount perform a goto to Altair, which was sitting low in and some degrees east of the meridian. The goto worked surprisingly well and when it was done I'd say it was about 1 degree of Altair. I tried solving and syncing but while the solving did work, it did not sync the mount because it still thought is was looking at Altair. Also the Indi panel said the scope was east pointing west while it was the other way around. I than did a goto to Deneb, also still east of the meridian and it pointed to it with about the same offset. Again Solving and Syncing did not work. I then did a goto to Mizar, which was in the west, because I wanted to see if it would do a meridian flip, and it did not, it ran the scope far below the counterweight. I stopped it and did a goto to Polaris which worked great. From there to Mizar did work fine even though again the driver said it was west pointing east, which was not correct. From there on out all goto's worked fine and it did perform the meridian flips correctly after that, which was a bit puzzling.
So goto's seem to work and generally in the right direction. I am not 100% sure about the meridian crossings. And Solving/ syncing did not seem to work. I also manually pointed to the correct position once and tried to manually sync and that did not work either. A subsequent goto would end with the same offset as before.
Hope that helps!

Peter
2 years 7 months ago #74538

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Replied by Abdi on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Hi

I thought plate solving was working, for me, but when I was using the polar alignment routine, after the first of 3 images used in the process, the mount slews to the next area based on target rotation (30 degrees to the west as set in the alignment panel) however it seems to continue slewing beyond 30 degrees and wont stop and I had to unplug the mount to get it to stop. Restart everything works ok until I try the alignment again. I didn’t check whether the plate-solve showed correct coordinates but I did note that the polar alignment error was huge despite being roughly aligned. I wonder if it was not correctly registering the solve. But that wouldn’t explain why it was slewing essentially non stop.

Anyone else have the problem 
2 years 7 months ago #74539

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Replied by Jasem Mutlaq on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Alright, I need to check this. I verified nearest algorithm actually works, so this is perhaps an issue with the mount driver itself.
2 years 7 months ago #74541

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Hi Abdi,

I have had maybe one or two occasions where the mount continued to slew in RA when it was given a command and one time that was during polar alignment, but yesterday no such thing happened to me. Just no syncing the mount to a platesolve is all.

Cheers,

Peter
2 years 7 months ago #74542

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Hi Sameer,

Reading back I saw you were able to center all your targets. Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by differential solving?
I had good working goto’s last night but they were constantly off by almost a degree. At least that offset was constant;)
2 years 7 months ago #74543

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In the Astrotrac driver settings, go to Options (the area where u choose plate solving settings)

There is an option there to choose “differential solving”. I think it’s mainly for Paramounts where you don’t sync but use a differential offset so that the t-point model is not affected.

In any case, with that checked, it perfectly plate solves every time. However, the final centered image doesn’t show in the plate solved window and it still shows a huge error. But if u go to camera and take a shot, you will did that it’s centered on the object you wanted. You can also select capture and solve (and do nothing option) in the PS window in the end, and then you will see the object.
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2 years 7 months ago #74545

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Ok, got it, will try that next, will be a while because of work.
When you say ‘it perfectly solves every time”, is that an automatic process or do you select a solving option?
In ASIAIR, when performing a goto, it automatically solves and then corrects its position. Is that what is supposed to happen here as well?

Thanks,

Peter
2 years 7 months ago #74552

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Replied by Peter on topic Astrotrac 360 support

Hi Sameer,

I am looking at the driver right now, but under options I don’t see anything about platesolving. Any idea why?
Am I using a non-updated driver. Under connection it tells me I have version 1 interface 5.
2 years 7 months ago #74570

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It should be in the plate solving options. It’s the options button on the bottom right of the screen with tabs for all the devices.
2 years 7 months ago #74578

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Peter,
You can also email me offline at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We can share numbers and talk if u like. 

What time zone are u in?

Sameer
2 years 7 months ago #74579

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