Paul, I'm not completely sure how to explain the entirety of my situation, but I do need to express that you were on the right track.

For now, I have my mount limits (per HC) set to 113:48 E, 111:20 W, and a GoTo limit of 4:15. My fix to slewing being allowed over EKOS was to select and unselect HA> and choose either 5 or 0 as the entry. These values are one I'm assuming are outside or inside of the 4:15 set on the HC. So what might I be missing? Having the HA> MF setting deselected on startup causes the slew to fail if a MF is required to slew in the first place.

Losmandy has always seemed like a tinkerer's dream, but that's not always great news when I'm not in the mood to tinker. Further, I was unable to practice before prime sky conditions because of the months of clouds, rain, and even cyclones this season has brought to my area. A perfect situation for things to go awry.


May I ask what limit settings you have on your HC and in EKOS, Paul?

Other issues were caused by Optical Train settings, mount settings in INDI control panel, and how the two interact with eachother. I'd prefer to get to the bottom of the limit settings first.

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Using Astroberry, Gemini2, ASI EFW, ASI1600MM. I set up sequence to take flats, use calibration tool to specify 1000 +/- 100 ADU, check Park Mount. Start the sequence (or Capture a Preview), and the sequence stalls at Changing Filter with yellow light. Uncheck the Park Mount in the tool, the sequence takes off as expected. Mount was parked to begin with. Parking mount even though it's parked normally gives same message elsewhere, but won't cause issues.

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Go to KStars->Configure KStars (Ctrl+Shift+,)-> Go to INDI tab-> Is the "Telescope Crosshair" box checked under Display?

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From 1930-2355, all spent at the whims of either the solver not solving or the Losmandy mount refusing to slew to the opposite pierside (or changing pier side for glob only knows what!). Seems almost appropriate to lug the laptop outside and hookup PHD2 and the old Canon DSLR. I took great sequences last night and even caught E2 for 40min+, but tonight without any update KStars and EKOS have led me (or I've led it) to absolute frustration. It's heaven when EKOS does everything right, but absolute hell when it does everything except one specific thing. I feel like it's guaranteed to be not even on the radar of issues tomorrow, and instead guiding will all of a sudden be out of whack HAH!

Anybody else have recurring issues with Losmandy mounts? They're so solid, I just feel sometimes maybe we need a Gemini 3 already...

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Greetings!

I have to framing cameras on one mount, both 1600MM. One is on the main scope- the scope is guided with an OAG/174MM. The other 1600 is on a camera lens which rests on top of the main OTA. Both 1600MMs have their own EFW wheel and focusers.

I realize I can't capture from both simultaneously, but everything loads fine in a server instance.

My question is- If you (you!) want to use the primary scope as a piggy back, and trigger the secondary scope (not guide optics) to take an image of the same target, at a different exposure time, how would you go about doing it? I don't want to run multiple KStars instances on my local machine (using Astroberry for the time being), I would like the camera to take care of itself, and this also includes focusing and filter changes.

Essentially I want to run the scheduler for the main OTA, and run a scheduler for the secondary camer that is secondary to- and dependent upon the main schduler.

Rough example: I'm at Messier1 with a 1110mm fl OTA and I schedule a session for it. The secondary camera at 85mm focal length would say, "Hey main OTA, you're capturing a 300sec luminance on an subject, allow me to capture the field we're both pointing at, but with different exposures times, mu own focusing algorithm, and also through my own filters. I will terminate anything I'm currently on if you switch positions, but you will never need to terminate your activity based on my activity.

Can this be scripted? Where do I go to learn how? I think I may have seen something similar to this years ago, but I can no longer find it.


CS, Jacob

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Haven't used EKOS (or a scope) in too long due to a plethora of reasons. Came back to find some changes. Though they don't cover 100% of functionality, I wanted to sincerely thank the devs specifically for all of the descriptive tool tips. They've likely saved me hours over the past couple nights alone.

One place in particular that did not have tooltips, that would've saved me saved me about 4hrs of confusion alone, was the Optical Train equipment entry form. I'm still not entirely sure I have everything in correctly, but I am confident (screen snippet attached). What led me to goof was the "Guider" column; I mistakenly assumed that Guider meant what's responsible for sending guide frames to the mount, but instead I had to enter the mount itself. It's very obvious in hindsight, but I spent quite the time trying to figure out why my RA axis would never return.

So that's just where I'd like to see tooltips, but generally speaking the tool tips throughout EKOS have led me to better guiding, better mount calibration, and several cups of pure dopamine. I appreciate those very much and had to say thank you- and unashamedly request more!

CS, Jacob

Do find me on Twitter? I see NINA after NINA, but apparently EKOS users don't use the platform, or just don't share as much as NINA users.

My apologies to resurrect a very aged post, but 1) I couldn't find Christian's contact anywhere else and 2) my experience is similar to Ezra's.

I have an Astromechanics Focuser and a Rokinon AF 85mm (for Canon EF) and I'm using the latest KStars with Astroberry server.

What I've noticed is that the Index range is 0-22 and that seems to be underlying one or two issues I'm having:
1) I have 22 possible apertures on this 85mm lens, where Index of 0 would map to f/1.4 and Index of 21 would map to f/16. To be clear, the available apertures for this 85mm lens I'm using are: 1)1.4, 2)1.6, 3)1.8, 4)2, 5)2.2, 6)2.5, 7)2.8, 8)3.2, 9)3.5, 10)4, 11)4.5, 12)5, 13)5.6, 14)6.3, 15)7.1, 16)8, 17)9, 18)10, 19)11, 20)13, 21)14, 22)16. If the Index Range was 0-21, I could rule out the lack of a 23rd aperture setting being the problem.

and/or

2) I've stepped from 0-22 at the INDI control panel while watching the iris in the lens. 0 is always wide open at 1.4. Moving to 1, the iris closes somewhat. Moving to 2, the iris opens wide then close further than 1. All seems fine until about 15. At 15-22, the iris opens wide and closes to the same tight aperture- what I can only assume is minimum aperture of the 85mm at f/16. That is to say, my apparent Index range for this lens is 0-15 whereas my technical range should be 0-21, and I certainly am missing many aperture settings by using astromech_foc as is.

I'll say bluntly that I will probably be able to find a sweet spot with the current 0-22 Index, but if this problem with my 85mm lens can be solved, what could the issue be? My coding experience is in statistical programming, so reading the .h and .cpp driver files is no use to me- I can't even fathom how the Index maps to another integer to be sent over USB to trigger the iris movement. Maybe I could change <code>IUFillNumber(&AppertureN[0], "LENS_APP", "Index", "%.f", 0, 22, 1, 0)</code>; to 21 just for my own use, but that does nothing for others who might experience my issue. I thought maybe <code>IUFillNumber(&MinAppertureN[0], "MIN_APP", "Min", "%.1f", 1, 64, 0.1, 16); IUFillNumber(&MaxAppertureN[0], "MAX_APP", "Max", "%.1f", 1, 64, 0.1, 64)</code> and from a list of common aperture setting for lenses (1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.5 2.8 3.2 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.6 6.3 7.1 8 9 10 11 13 14 16 18 20 22 25 28 32 36 40 45 51 57 64) determine the number of values in the range of Min and Max aperture and use it to replace the "22", while also displaying the current aperture for the user. Of course I see many problems with this, the least of which not being that not every lens will fall on this range of apertures, and I honestly don't even know if decreasing or increasing the 0-22 range will work at all, let alone improve anything.

I'll stop there! It's a great driver that let's me control a camera lens without a camera- I'm very happy to have it over a manual focus 85mm without a doubt! Just wanted to share my experience in case there was an easy solution, but hopefully to also learn a thing or two about the driver itself. C++ doesn't look to intimidating, I just don't know where to start.

Thanks for the driver, and I was glad to find one instance where somebody else also had a similar confusion regarding the driver.

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Here's some logs showing that Gemini doesn't know how to slew.

I started off prior to logging by unparking the mount and attempting to slew to Cygnus. Failed.
Slew to Vega. Failed.
Slew towards Ursa Major. Worked.... Okay?
Slew to Hercules. Worked... Okay?
Slew to Cygnus. Failed.
Slew to Draco (looking for C/2017 K2). Failed.
Started Scheduler with C/2017 K2 as my target. Fails to slew, but starts focusing. Gets to Solver, fails to slew but completes solver anyways, apparently accepting some random spot in Hercules that I'd previously slewed to (above).


This is all East (pointing West), so why can't the mount figure out how to flip to the other side?


Also, woke up this morning to the mount parked facing the east horizon. What gives?

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Attached is a screenshot of the Solver module showing every time a slew occurs, it's in the opposite direction (missing step 4 because it failed due to search radius being 30deg, for step 4 I increased to 90 and it solved after a few minutes). Really tired of missing nights due to Ekos/INDI, but what other choice do I actually have? Some lame proprietary software? Oh well, going to bed frustrated and dumbfounded. ....

Okay? As I was typing this, trying to figure out how to not sound like a whiny child, the mount "automatically" flipped to west-pointing (which I don't want it to be??). At least now things move properly, but what in the actual hell is the issue, here?

Side note, I'm not posting logs- I waste more time turning logs on and off, and getting stuck in a loop where KStars just crashes all the time, so I'm not the biggest fan of logs. Plus, KStars crashes enough as is, it's basically iOS for the sky. That's a joke, but the three crashes I've had tonight, alone, plus the multiple times the scheduler fails to park my scope and I wake up to servos being burned out while my OTA is being smashed into the tripod isn't. Show me a version of KStars that doesn't crash regularly, and also when I enable logs, and I'll share a log for every issue I encounter- sounds fair, I'd say. (my PC is decent and up to date)

Any thoughts? Anybody have worse problems with Gemini? No problems at all? Same problems? Holler, I just really want to understand what's going on without having to learn how to write a program.

I don't have meridian flip engaged on the mount module, I have imaged several nights (don't get me started on those issues) without moving anything, I see no reason this should be so.... recurrent.


Cheers.


*now the solver is having an extra hard time with overshooting. I'll wake up to 2hrs of data, or none, I guess

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Thanks Chris. Gemini Hand Controller reports target unreachable... But it's plenty reachable. I grabbed the laptop, went out there, got the same error on EKOS and this on controller, reset Gemini, reconnected, slews fine.

Thing is, I'd already tried this and it didn't do the trick. What would force the Gemini to think that the target wasn't reachable if I'd plate solved at that area and it "knew" that it was okay to slew? It wouldn't even slew to a spot close to the pole!

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I can park and unpark the mount all day. Every now and then I get the slew failed error.

I've tried the following:
1) reset Astroberry
2) reset Gemini
3) reset both Astroberry and Gemini
4) reset everything connected (2x ASI CCD, Pegasus UPB, ASI EFW, and of course Astroberry and Gemini)
5) run a scheduler- ran into wild happenings like slew failing seeral times before working.
6) slew with mount control in ekos, start guiding procedure, take frames..... this works. xD hahaha not ideal


I was taking multiple 300sec frames a few nights ago. Given there have been clouds lately, but I could definitely be having much more scope time is EKOS/INDI would stop being so foolish with the Gemini driver.


I'm really not in the mood to reinstall everything because without any updates since, this workflow and INDI profile were working fantastically.


Who enjoys seeing such:

2020-06-05T05:29:29: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:29:29: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:53 - DEC 53:23:39
2020-06-05T05:29:26: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:29:26: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:53 - DEC 53:23:39
2020-06-05T05:29:24: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:29:24: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:53 - DEC 53:23:39
2020-06-05T05:29:21: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:29:21: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:53 - DEC 53:23:39
2020-06-05T05:29:05: [INFO] Synchronization successful.
2020-06-05T05:28:46: [INFO] Slew is complete. Tracking...
2020-06-05T05:28:40: [INFO] Slew is complete. Tracking...
2020-06-05T05:28:14: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:28:14: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:00 - DEC 53:23:37
2020-06-05T05:28:14: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:28:14: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:00 - DEC 53:23:37
2020-06-05T05:28:13: [ERROR] Slew failed.
2020-06-05T05:28:13: [ERROR] Error Slewing to JNow RA 17:52:00 - DEC 53:23:37
2020-06-05T05:28:13: [INFO] Synchronization successful.
2020-06-05T05:27:58: [INFO] Slew is complete. Tracking...
2020-06-05T05:27:41: [INFO] Slew is complete. Tracking...
2020-06-05T05:27:33: [INFO] Slew is complete. Tracking...
2020-06-05T05:26:40: [ERROR] Slew failed.


I've attached logs... can I do better?

KStars 3.4.2 (Build: 2020-04-26T07:39:54Z) on Win10, connected remotely (5GHz WiFi) to RPi4/4GB running Astroberry (Linux astroberry 4.19.118-v7l+ #1311 SMP Mon Apr 27 14:26:42 BST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux)

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