I just created a PR, it was easier/faster than anticipated. It's not as good as I wanted because it would have made sense to disable either AltAz/EQ track mode depending on the mount type but I have not found an elegant way of doing it since I do not have good enough mastery of the API.

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Ok, will just do this. Please bear with me, I am quite new to this code and I have to understand it, so it may take a little time since I cannot replicate myself :-) and there is still the workaround ...

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Answering to myself ... out of curiosity, after fidgeting with the UI, I found out that you can actually resume tracking by clicking on "EQ" track mode and then on "Tracking On" (set polling frequency to a few seconds, otherwise you'll have to be pretty fast because the driver will read the track mode from the handset and put it back to 0 in the meantime). I find this a bit cumbersome, am I the only one?

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I will give it a try, thanks for the suggestion, however it will have to be ok with my colleagues which this time is my problem to solve :-)

Having said that, I inserted some traces and hacked a couple of lines in synscandriver.cpp and it turns out that the driver sends a T0 (means 'stop tracking') even if I click on "track" either in ekos/indi panel. I suspect it takes the actual value of "track mode", which, since no mode is selected, ends up with no tracking at all (when I actually force the mode in the driver code itself, it works). Now the question is: why, when I select the EQ track mode, the panel will NOT acknowledge it? That's kind of a chicken and egg problem: no tracking if no mode is set and no mode can be set hence tracking will not fire ... Seems like the driver cannot/will not override the handset's track mode. Maybe Jasem can shed some light on this matter.

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Hi Ken

Ok, that makes sense and it explains why tracking is not affected when I use the Synscan driver and why it is when I use EQMod. I reckon I have no other option than to use Synscan or to tell my colleagues to go back to ekos/skysafari to either resume tracking or sync; if we were to use EQMod, that is.

Now that leaves us with the potential bug with Synscan where tracking cannot be resumed after being suspended but that is another story :-)

Thanks everyone!
F

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Hi Jean-Luc,

So if I got it correctly, whether we use EQMod (in PC-Direct mode) or Synscan, corrections made with the handset should not affect tracking, albeit for different reasons (ignored or single tracking status).

That said, it seems we have a problem with EQMod since I performed the very same use case you mentioned: start tracking and use the handset to make corrections. In that case, tracking stops.

Are we on the same page?

Cheers,
F

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Hi Jasem,

Fair enough, however, I tried your synscan driver instead and unless I am mistaken (there is no motor status available), tracking still ran after I played with the handset: same use case, different behaviour (yours makes more sense, if you ask me). I would be quite happy going for the synscan driver except that when I switched tracking off in ekos, it would not switch back on unless I slewed to another target (or the same, I imagine). No indication whatsoever that it even tried to switch tracking on (and failed). I guess I just traded one issue for another ;-)

Cheers,
F

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Hello

We run an observatory with public visits, we have been using the skyfi module with skysafari along with the handset on an EQ8 mount for years now (tablet to goto and handset to make corrections when necessary). I would now like to pilot the EQ8 through the handset in PC-Direct mode, to keep the "correct with handset feature" (some of my "old school" colleagues insist on keeping this). However, when I make small corrections with the handset, tracking stops although ekos says it's still tracking (I checked motor status and the RA steps don't change). However, if I make another correction from ekos this time, tracking resumes ... Any idea whether it is an expected behaviour or not?

Thanks,
F.

Using indiserver head builds and Kstars 3.4.3

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Hello

I unsuccessfully tried to control an HEQ5Pro both from kstars/skysafari/handcontrol for days while using a remote rpi attached to the said handcontrol (although double-checking dozens of time my config), Suddently, inspiration struck me and I decided to start with a fresh config and it worked. The only difference I can think of is that I am now running the indiserver on the 7624 port (instead of 8000). And yes, I aligned ports in the skysafari tab and on the rpi.

I could be wrong but my conclusion is that there is a bug in the skysafari driver which does not take into account the port configured in the tab (however, the IP seems to be correctly updated). Each time I used a different port, it failed ...

Cheers
F

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