Eric replied to the topic 'Chrony and Stellarmate' in the forum. 1 year ago

Hi,

I forgot to mention.

When I type > chronyc sources -v I can see that NMEA is at the top of the list, thus suggesting the time and date is refreshed by the GPS dongle.

ment]

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Eric replied to the topic 'Chrony and Stellarmate' in the forum. 1 year ago

Hello Jasem,

Thanks for your quick reply!

In fact, I do have the /dev/gps and when I execute xgps it seems to work fine.

I cannot tell, however, if the local Pi time clock was adjusted by my Wifi network or by my GPS dongle.

In order to find out I could connect using hot spot instead of logging the PI on my home network.

So the next time I leave town and start a session in the countryside I might be able to avoid entering the local date and time manually.

(My PI-4 doesn't have a real time clock on board).

Thanks again!

Regards,

EL

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Eric created a new topic ' Chrony and Stellarmate' in the forum. 1 year ago

Hi,

Has anyone been able to make chrony work with Stellarmate 64 bits on a Pi-4?

I am trying to syhcronise my PI clock with a GPS USB dongle using this procedure: www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0ETj3i0EtE

Everything works fine until I restart the PI.

Then I always get a dead chrony and I have to restart the service manually.

Any clue?

Regards,

EL

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Eric replied to the topic 'Polar align inconsistencies in ekos' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hi there,

Yesterday evening was quite clear and I could at last test the recommendations discussed herein.

I first tried to mount my iFinder scope only to find out I had no camera to use with it.

I know the scope came with a specific camera made by iOptron, but I just couldn’t find it.

I then tried to fit an ASI290MM mini into it (which I no longer used) but it didn’t work.

Therefore I abandoned the idea of using a small scope for polar alignment.

However, after locking the az and lat screws as much as I could,

I managed to get a repeatability of about 30’’ for the PA, which I thought was well enough for PHD.

And in fact it did seem to improve my guiding since the average went from about 1.5’’ to 0.7’’, as you can see on the attached figure.

There are still some dirty spikes up to 2.2’’ on RA, but the average is not so bad, and I thought the result was acceptable, as you can see on the last figure.

So it looks like tightening the hex screws was a very good idea.

Thanks all for your help!

EL

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Eric replied to the topic 'Polar align inconsistencies in ekos' in the forum. 2 years ago

HI Spartacus,

Thanks for the tips.

I will try them this evening.

I will let you know about the results.

EL

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Eric replied to the topic 'Polar align inconsistencies in ekos' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your reply.

My load is about 30 pounds and the CEM40 can tolerate up to 40 pounds.

My balancing is alright in RA, but I must say I have trouble balancing in DEC, as there appears to be a third axis for the center of gravity.

As for polar aligning with a guide scope, I could in fact use the small iguider which came with my CEM40 mount. Its focal length is too small to guide a C9.25 - and anyway I am using OAG -, but it should be sufficient for PA.

I am also going to lock the az and lat hex screws.

As far as guiding efficiency is concerned, these are certainly very good leads.

Thanks for the tips!

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Eric created a new topic ' Polar align inconsistencies in ekos' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hello,

I have been enjoying astrophotography for nearly a year now, but I am still trying to improve my guiding in PHD2, which is often above 1.5 arcsec for both RA and DEC (rms).

One of the factors might have something to do with poor polar alignment in Ekos*.

I polar align with my main scope, which is a C9.25, equipped with a QHY168C camera. My mount is an iOptron CEM40. I use OAG with an ASI 174mm mini.

I noticed there is almost always an inconsistency with my alignment. After the second or third iteration of PA following the installation of my mount in my backyard (on concrete stables) I usually manage to bring down the error to nearly 0.

However, if I start another alignment cycle, I usually get around 30", and sometimes nearly a minute, of error.

If I bring down this number again to 0 it will most likely swing back to 30" after the next iteration.

Therefore, I usually don't bother, but since I would like my guiding to improve, I thought this could be a good place to start, even though there are probably a thousand factors influencing the guiding process.

One possible culprit is that I do not lock the azimuth and the latitude screws after alignment.

As anyone encountered this inconsistency before?

Thanks!


* Even though PHD2 guiding assistant usually does not indicate a poor polar alignement.

EL

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Hi again,

I just found out, after thorough research, that this is not an INDI problem per say, but rather an Ubuntu problem.

The problem was introduced by the version 21.10.

It has to do with the way serial ports are managed by the OS on a Raspberry Pi.

For more details and for the fix, see askubuntu.com/questions/1371150/usb-seri...update-from-21-04-to

EL

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Hello,

Since I switched from Astroberry (Raspbian 32 bits) to Ubuntu 21.10 64 bits, in order to solve an issue with my Canon RP eos, INDI can no longer control my Celestron SCT focuser.

Now I just confirmed the focuser is all right using my Windows 10 laptop.

I can see my device in the lusb list but I cannot see any trace of it in the /dev directory or subdirectories.

(I can see for instance my mount at /dev/serial/by-id/usb-FTDI_FT230X_Basic_UART_D3090IHN-if00-port0)

My focuser is connected to the hub of my CEM40.

I also connected it directly to the PI without any success.

Regards,

EL

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Hi Thomas,

My Astroberry installation was based on Raspbian 32 bits, whereas my actual Ubuntu 21.10 installation is 64 bits.

Could this be the reason why I had 8 bit depth instead of 14 bits for my Canon RP?

Could be...

Rergards,

EL

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Hello everyone,

Being absolutely unable to solve this issue on my PI-4, I decided to roll-up my sleeves and start all over again.

This time, instead of using Astroberry, I started from scratch using the Ubuntu 21.10 desktop.

I installed all the necessary packages (Indi, Ekos, VNC, etc).

Also, I opted for an external drive (in this case an SSD) instead of an SDCARD (Ubunru 20.04 does not allow that but 21.10 does).

This way I have better perfomances and a lot more space on the drive (at least with the material I had in hand).

After installing everything and swearing from time to time I managed to make almost everything work again.

And guess what: my problem dissapeared. Moreover, my colors are now 14 bits as they should have been, instead of only 8 bits as they were in my previous setup.

I cannot tell which of the modifications hit the nail but one of them did.

However, I am now stuck with a problem I didn't have before and that I will talk about in another post.

Regards,

EL

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Hi Jasem,

Thanks a lot for your quick response!

I tried the Canon DSLR driver and I have exactly the same problem.

Also, the BULB option is ON, and my Canon is also set to BULB. Beyond 2 seconds everything works fine with the exposure. Bellow 2 seconds I use M instead of B and it works all right too (with Bulb option OFF in INDI).

What is really weird is the problem does not appear when controling my PI in remote.

Rergards,

EL

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Hello,

I am using Ekos on a Pi 4, and most everything works fine except I cannot take raw pictures on my Canon RP eos.

I always get the following error in INdi control pannel:

[ERROR] Exposure failed to parse raw image.
[ERROR] cannot open /tmp/indi_7suady: Unsupported file format or not RAW file.

As for the Ekos message I get : CCD capture aborted. Capture failed. Check Indi Control Panel for details.

If I use JPEG everything works fine.

Fits works fine as well except it is always in B&W.

My rig is :
Ioptron CEM40
Pi-4 with 4G ram
Celestron C9.25
Askar M54 OAG
ZWO ASI290MM mini
Canon RP

Also: RAW works fine when using INDI in remote.

Has anyone run into this problem before?

Thanks!

EL

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