Nitecrawler rotator stopped working in 4.1.0.886

Sequence Generator Auto Focus
1

I recently upgraded to version 4.1.0.886, and the NiteCrawler rotator stopped working properly, when SGP rotates it, the rotation is always done with the wrong angle and sometimes the wrong direction.
I previously used versions 4.0.0.700 64 bit and 3.2.0.660, the rotator worked without problem under both versions.

The NiteCrawler driver version is driver 6.2.6939

Here is the SGP log file when attempting to rotate one degree under SGP 4.1.0.886 (it rotated to the wrong direction and much more than one degree):

For comparison, here is the log file when SGP version 3.2.0.660 performed a similar one degree rotation successfully:

I also checked the trace log of NiteCrawler driver,
when the rotation was successful the log looks like this:

08:04:19.502 TargetTurns               target 0.685250049167209, current -0.309194402719583, newTarget -0.314749950832791, delta -0.00555554811320819
08:04:19.502 MoveAbsolute              Set 246.69, targetTurns -0.314749950832791, steps 159250

And when it failed under SGP 4.1.0.886, the driver log looks like this:

08:02:03.507 TargetTurns               target 0.994444444444444, current -0.310048225156139, newTarget -0.00555555555555554, delta 0.304492669600583
08:02:03.507 MoveAbsolute              Set 358, targetTurns -0.00555555555555554, steps 2810

P.S. everything else seemingly works well though, including the NiteCrawler focuser, so I just have to use it as a manual rotator for now.

2

The ASCOM group released the V3 version of the rotator interface a while ago and SGPro 4.1 is the first version in SGPro that implements against it. I can’t be sure because we don’t log enough information about it currently (the next release will), but right now it seems like the focuser is reporting itself as a V3 focuser, but, internal to the driver, it does not meet the requirements to actually be a V3 driver. Using the ASCOM Diagnostics tool, can you connect to the rotator and see what interface version it reports?

image

3

Thanks Ken, ASCOM Diag says the interface version is 2:

Create              Creating device
Connected           Connecting to device
                    
Name                NiteCrawler Rotator
Description         ASCOM NiteCrawler Rotator
DriverInfo          ASCOM NiteCrawler Rotator
version: 6.2.6939
Type 3.5 NC
Firmware version 1.6
Serial Number 25704
User ID -------- UNREGISTERED --------
DriverVersion       6.2
InterfaceVersion    2
IsMoving            False
Position            194.4353
                    
Connected           Disconnecting from device
Dispose             Disposing of device
Dispose             Completed disposal
ReleaseComObject    Releasing COM instance
ReleaseComObject    Completed release. Count: 0
GC Collect          Starting garbage collection
GC Collect          Completed garbage collection
4

hmm… ok, well, there seems to be an issue in SGPro where the driver is (mistakenly) identified as a v3 interface and it’s not clear how at the moment. This, of course, causes SGPro to call upon the driver in a way that breaks. I might need to collect logs from a test build to troubleshoot here…

5

Can you try to connect to the rotator with this version and then share the SGPro logs?

6

OK, here you go:

7

Actually… this is the second time this issue has bitten us. The version of ASCOM you are using is no longer fully compatible with SGPro. We need to update the minimum version required… I’ll do that now. SGPro now requires at least version 6.5 to work with all rotators. Version 6.6 SP1 would be ideal.

8

I updated to ASCOM 6.6 SP1 and the rotator does work better now. It will be some days before I can test it fully with real sequence and syncing though, will post here if there is more info.