Using Plate Solve 2 with a Paramount MX +. Most of the time, we can slew to an object and then click Center Now and it works perfectly. Our tolerance is typically 5-10 pixels (10-20").
We have a large TPoint model so the slew usually gets us within 30 pixels and then the first iteration during Center Now gets within 2 pixels total.
However, sometimes, about 5% of the time, the slew gets us to 30 pixels, the first Center Now iteration gets to 10-12 pixels, just outside of the tolerance and then Center Now iterates and never gets closer than the 10-12 pixels. It plate solves fine and shows the position error fine, but it seems like the mount is not at all responding to the correction. It will finally abort at the appropriate number of tries.
What is weird is that this is so intermittent. Last night it happened on an object after it had worked flawlessly on the same object the evening before.
We can certainly adjust our tolerance to 20 or 30 pixels, but won’t the same problem occur if the first iteration does not get us within the tolerance? It is pretty likely that at a larger tolerance the initial slew will be good enough, but we do wonder what is going on and why this only happens once in a while.
I have had the exact same issue with my Paramount MXII. Usually the second iteration gets me to 1 or 2 pixels. But sometimes it is more than my 30 pixel requirement and then it will do several tries without actually moving any closer. I gave up trying to fix it. I just set max tries to 2 to minimize wasted time. When it starts over again after 1 minute it always gets there on the first try, so has not been a significant issue for me.
With Skywatcher\EQMod systems this issue is usually caused by having alignment points, which cause the mount\plate-solve system to ‘fight’ each other, resulting in the system unable to centre properly…
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