I’ve had successful synchs the last couple of outings and I use JNow in Per’s driver as this is the native epoch for the 10 Micron mounts
I did originally set the mount ascom driver to J2000 thinking it needed to be set to this epoch as it is the default epoch for SGP. It was set to J2000 when I had the failed auto-centre.
I changed to JNow latterly (not sure exactly when) and I have had successful auto-centring.
Whilst my experience above isn’t accurately noted analysis of my experience . . . . it may well be worth switching epoch in Per’s driver and experimenting.
Yeah, I tried that but still no joy. For now, I’ve given up, and don’t auto center after the flip. The 10u vendor here in the states has been no help at all. So I’m waiting to see if SGP or 10 Micron in Italy are able to come up with a solution.
Still, I’m getting some great images, but I hate having to baby sit the flips so I have resorted to some cleaver suggestions to bypass the auto center after the flip.
Thanks for the logs.[quote=“Gunny01, post:18, topic:4246”]
It seems related to a situation where two commands arrive in a very short amount of time, one for synchronizing the position and another for adjusting the mount clock.
[/quote]
I am not 100% sure what “adjusting the mount clock” means? Are you?
Here we can see that SGPro issues a command to move to a legal RA / Dec:
[10/6/2016 8:48:58 PM] [DEBUG] [Telescope Thread] Telescope: Syncing to J2000 RA: 20.9850143660608 Dec: 78.6509055920081
[10/6/2016 8:48:58 PM] [DEBUG] [Telescope Thread] Telescope: Sync Passed in J2000 but mount requires JNOW, converting…
[10/6/2016 8:48:58 PM] [DEBUG] [Telescope Thread] Telescope: Syncing to JNOW RA: 20.9786944269546 Dec: 78.7226742445278
Then on the scope, we see receipt of this request, but the mount never starts moving and never returns control of the sequence to SGPro (specifically from Telescope.SlewToCoordinates()). I wish there was more I could tell you…
Gunny - I’ve not had any clear weather here for days now to carry out another auto-centre and record mount logs for 10 Micron. I will do so though when it clears. 10 Micron have asked for logs using their new firmware.
Ken - I’m sure you know that for accurate unguided exposures time is regularly synched between PC and the mount control box, using the Meinberg utility for example (I use this). The time synch option in Per’s driver is to synch on slew, ie not when capturing a sub, but when the mount is instructed to slew as it would do in the auto-centre process. Time synching can also be used from a GPS. From time-to-time the mount control box firmware has to be updated with Earth Rotation data too.
I am sorry but I do not know how the time synching happens at a coding/scripting level: apologies if I’m not using the correct programming terminology.
I appreciate the work you guys are doing on this. If it’s ok with you Ken, I’m going to copy this post and send it to Ivan at 10 Micron. He has been very helpful and it may give them some additional information, along with the SGP log. The fact of the slew registering “false” during the telescope centering routine should help narrow the list of suspects. The snippet you have show is the time when the mount freezes in tracking. It appears to be occuring during to conversion from J2000 to JNOW coordinates. Your eye balls must be crossed looking at all of this stuff. I have changed Per’s ascom driver to Jnow, but that has not helped.
Probably a dumb question, but here goes: is it possible to avoid the coordinate conversion and see what happens?
Thanks again for the help Ken and Barry.................Jerald
Any update to this? I have once again been trying out SGP and ran into a problem with centering after a flip.
10micron 1000HPS. Celestron 8" EdgeHD with mirrors unlocked. Using Starizona MicroTouch motor on Feathertouch focuser focusing the primary mirror. I have a 70 point model in the mount. I have sync behavior under “telescope” set to “none”. I am connected using Per’s driver as JNOW letting SGP do the epoch conversion.
Attached is the entire log from last night.
I also noticed that it said in several places that it was sending a sync even though I have sync behavior set to “none” or is that something else?sg_logfile_20161129225900.txt (752.9 KB)
The flip and center seems to have executed nicely. The problem is that “None” does not use any sort of convergent behavior so you will not see any sort of correction no matter how many times you run the centering routine.
Thank you for the response. I changed it to “sync” and tried it again tonight. This time it started at about 170px of error and corrected it by 5-10px per attempt. I had it bumped up to 10 attempts and it ran out before dropping below 50.
I am updating my model in case I had a bad sync but I don’t think that is the problem. Slewing to a star by name puts it right on the cross hairs.
I am also going to try and change the epoch selection and see if that helps. Everyone says to use Jnow in Per’s driver but that doesn’t seem to be working out. I’ll try J2000 and see if I have better luck (I shouldn’t. It should be worse)
Keeping in mind that I will have mirror flop with a SCT and no mirror locked (I am focusing with the primary focuser) it could double the error.
Update: as I was typing this it finished updating the model. Ended up with an RMS of 48". That is bad! So my model must be fubar. But why? What could have changed? would a sync from SGP corrupted the model?
If the sync commands are only correcting a fraction of the offset that seems to imply that on this mount sync just adds or replaces a reference position to the mount model rather than the expected behaviour of making the current position be the same as the position specified in the sync.
In any case the sync could easily have changed the mount model.
I suggest not trying to mix a mount model with SGPs solve and sync. Use one or the other.
You may want to check that “syncs align” is checked in Per’s driver and not “syncs refine”. That will screw up the model and might explain the odd behavior. You may also want to check the 10U forum where I and others talk about this extensively. What settings do you have in Per’s driver? You may want to show screen shots of the driver and SGP settings.
I also suspect your time source. Are you using an NTP time source to sync with the computer clock? Make damn sure you aren’t using two or more time sources to confuse the mount. I also strongly suggest gathering logs from the 10U mount, SGP, and Per’s mount log. Send those into 10U tech support. It took over a month to track down the flip problem, but those guys fixed it. They also noticed that I had three time sources going to the mount. What a mess, but that is how you learn what works and what don’t.
I’m sure at this point, that SGP is not the source of the problem. You may want to see if the HC is showing any error messages while slewing or during a flip…Gunny
I can recommend that you follow Gunny01’s suggestions, especially avoiding the multiple time synch sources.
I have in the past simply changed Per’s driver to Synchs Align and forgot to change the HC to switch off Synchs Refine and ended up significantly increasing the RMS of my model. Doh!
Like Gunny01 I am running the latest SGP beta with 10Micron’s latest beta and have no issue, synching to align my model and centering. I am sure it’s just a setting for you and you’ll get things running smoothly.
Please feel free to post up screenshots and we’ll do our best to help (either on this forum or 10Micron’s).
I am using 2.14.16 10U beta firmware. I’ll post SGP logs tomorrow.