In our astronomy club, Southern Hemisphere, Santiago, Chile, several of our members including me are using SGP with no problems on meridian flip except one member with an iOptron 45 Pro that had to install a different driver to make it work.
Mounts been used in this combination Southern Hemisphere-Meridian flip-SGP: AP Mach1, iOptron CEM60, Celestron AVX, iOptron 45Pro (only one of several had problems with meridian flip), Atlas, AP 1100.
Hope you can solve your problema to enjoy northern Chile skies, probably something with the driver…
Thank you Renan. I’ll try a different driver and see what happens. I have a 10Micron GM2000HPS mount and I only have 2 or 3 options for the driver. I’ll try them and see what happens.
Okay, tried the other drivers with the same result. This is SGP related I’m positive.
I also have an observatory back home in Canada with a 10Micron mount in there as well. I just connected to it and tried it, same mount, same SGP version, same 10Micron driver, and it works just fine in the Norther Hemisphere.
Here in Chile, Southern Hemisphere with the same config/setup as back home, with the “Set Auto Flip” uncheck SGP clearly states “Time to Meridian” accurately - which is what is expected.
But as soon and I check the “Set Auto Meridian Flip” SGP changes the text to “Time to Pier Flip” - which is also expected, but the value goes to N/A.
SGP is certainly capable of calculating the time to meridian since it is properly calculated and displayed when the box is uncheck… but as soon as it is checked it displays N/A and because of that it make no attempt to flip because as far as it knows it does not need to flip.
Just out of curiosity, given your Target RA and DEC are empty can we assume that you haven’t specified a target for this sequence yet? Wonder if that makes any difference to the calculations SGP is making…?
No I have not, but I have never done so, so I doubt that it is related… but any suggestion is fair game and I welcome all of them. I’ll assign the coord. and see if it makes a difference.
I am also in Santiago using SGP with a Mach1, the only times I had problems with an automatic meridian flip was because of PHD2.
Of course I have never tried it in another hemisphere and I don’t know if SGP can have some bug when changing it. I would try creating a completely new profile and see what happens and nothing is lost by asking in Cloudy Nights (SGP is one of the most used programs for image capture).
I also noticed that you’re trying to do it during the day. Did you try a real auto meridian flip, during the night? I think one of SGP’s requirements to perform this function is the use of plate solve.
Have you updated to the latest 10 Micron firmware beta? Also which ascom driver are you using?
I am typing quickly before work, but I recall that a bug was introduced in one of the recent firmware updates (cannot recall which) that incorrectly reported side of pier in the Southern Hemisphere. It was solved by the very latest beta update.
One possibility is that the driver is reporting side of pier incorrectly in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s something that can often go wrong because some of the parameters used to determine side of pier are reversed and it’s difficult to test in the Southern hemisphere if you are in the north.
Try running the ASCOM Conform application, this tests that pier flip will work if a mount is allowed to track across the meridian and does a series of slews to check pointing state (aka side of pier) for a number of positions.
Thank you Barry/Crhis. I’m running the 10Micron Firmare 2.15.14 BETA.
I’ll read the release notes leading to to the latest BETA release 2.15.38 BETA and see if there is a mention about pier side.
EDIT: I just read the 10Micron release notes and it appears a bug was fixed in 2.15.14 re: side of pier so it looks like the driver I have should work… but I’ll the ASCOM conform tool as Chris mentioned and see what the driver is reporting.
Upgrade notes for 10micron QCI and HPS series mounts software version 2.15.14
Bugs *
A bug that prevented the persistence of the meridian side setting has been
corrected.
I am having problems with syncing my dome to telescope> I use an EQ8 mount via EQMOD / SGP and the Lesvedome ASCOM driver. I think this may be related to the EQMOD side of pier reporting. Can you tell me where to find the ASCOM conformance checker so I can investigate further?
