Are Optec Pyxis rotators incompatible with SGP?

Just got a 2" Pyxis, and while it works fine with its own software it won’t work with SGP (I tried 2.5.1.17, 2.5.2.5, and 2.6.0.8 and got the same results). I tried to get it to rotate both by right clicking on the target and selecting rotate camera, and by going into the control panel and trying to set a new position there. When I click on the target and try to rotate, nothing happens - the screen flashes a bit, but shows no change, and the wheel doesn’t move. When I go into control panel>other, Pyxis Commander is listed but the rotator position shows as “NA” and when I try to enter a position and set it, the wheel just makes a click, but nothing happens. If I then click settings and look at Pyxis Commander, it shows the wheel is disconnected. A log is here

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/58468743/sg_logfile_20170120222449.txt

but I doubt it’s going to show you much, as it seems to think the rotator moved successfully to the new position. I see there was a thread on this from last October:

Does anyone know if that got resolved? Thanks for any help.

Kevin

I tried Andy’s Pyxis driver from this thread:

and got “error connecting to Pyxis AG.” I tried both the 0.4 and the 0.2 versions.

Kevin

My 2" Pyxis does “work” with sgp but not very well. The new setup with the Pyxis Commander is hard for me to use - and motion commands don’t always work properly. I think that when sgp connects to it it does not display the angle immediately.

I can try it again to get better documentation of what is wrong but I thought it was the way I had things set up.

It’s also hard to interpret things because as soon as sgp does a plate solve, the angles shown correspond to the sky angle - not the actual angle of the pyxis.

For imaging I often use the pyxis control by itself and I leave sgp disconnected from it - which means there is no record of the angle in the fits header.

Frank

I use the 2" Pyxis rotator and it works with sgp. However, I had to dump the Pyxis Commander and went back to the old driver. I could not get the Pyxis Commander 3.0.2 to work so reverted back to 2.1.9 and everything is working as before.

mahaffm

i am using andy’s driver with a 2" pyxis successfully. i don’t know if it matters but it’s one of the older “round disc” types. i see the same behavior as frank - the rotator angles reported by SGP is invalid until a solve/sync has been performed.

rob

Well dang, this is discouraging. For a $1K piece of hardware, I was hoping I wasn’t buying into a weeks-long troubleshooting effort. But it does seem like the rest of you at least have managed to get SGP to rotate the device. For me, the rotator won’t budge with SGP, no matter what drivers I use. So which angle it displays after rotation isn’t really an issue. :slight_smile: I’ll have to talk to the folks at Optec during the week.

This may throw off my plans to upgrade my mount. Once I had the rotator working, I was planning to move to a GEM mount for the first time, with the expectation that I’d be able to use the rotator to stay with the same guide star after a meridian flip. If meridian flips can’t be automated with this rotator, the GEM is a non-starter for me. If a GEM means losing full automation I’ll have to stay with a non-GEM mount like the Avalon M-Uno to avoid meridian flips.

Kevin

With Andy’s help, I got his driver working. Just had to set the COM port the right way. Still no luck with the Optec software, though.

One more question: when I start up SGP and connect the hardware, the SGP control panel shows the rotator’s position as “NA.” Do I need to set the position (and maybe return it to zero) before starting a sequence, or will SGP determine the rotator’s position on its own?

Kevin

An observation about using Optec rotators (probably not unique to Optec, however). I use the Optec Gemini focusing-rotator and it took me a while to understand the interaction between the Gemini Commander software (Optec’s own control software) and SGP.

Here’s what I found to work reliably:

  1. Forget about trying to use the Optec software and SGP simultaneously. Only rely on SGP and the ASCOM interface.

  2. At start-up, I use the Optec control software to home the rotator and force the Sky Position Angle to 0 degrees to match the internal mechanical position of the rotator.

  3. I enable temperature compensation and then close the Optec control software.

  4. Connect to the rotator in SGP. It will show the position angle to be 0 degrees. This represents the physical position of the rotator; not its sky position.

  5. Perform a solve and sync. Now SGP will see the actual sky position angle of the rotator and SGP will understand how to map the physical position of the rotator to its corresponding sky position.

  6. From this point on, only use SGP to move the rotator. It will do so with high rotational accuracy.

PS - I also have the Pyxis LE rotator and have never been able to get the newest Optec software to work. I reverted to the previous release and have no problem with it.

Charlie