Orion Atlas and custom park position

Sequence Generator
1

Hello,

I am planning on building my own observatory this spring. Does anyone know if you set a custom home or park position in eqmod when SGP sends the park command will it go to the custom position. Basically I need scope and counterweights parallel to the floor.

I can’t find any sort of confirmation of this only a few people from a year plus ago saying that it will not and it still parks in the CWD position.

Thanks everyone

2

The way of doing it is:

  • In SGP, connect to the mount and unpark the mount.
  • Drive the mount – using the motors – to the future park position. For this you can use either the nudge function in EQMOD or the one in SGP. Anyway, just use the motors!
  • In EQMOD, stop tracking. Do not touch the Park command in EQMOD.
  • Press the “Set Park Position” button in SGP
  • Confirm the scary message which may show up.

That’s it.

Some caveats:

  1. Do not remove the power from the mount if it is not parked. It will lose its position and you will have to manually correct this. (It is easy, you just have to be there: un-clutch the mount, manually move it to the park position, re-clutch and restart from there)
  2. Always use the “Park” command in SGP or other ASCOM client. Do not park from EQMOD.
  3. Set EQMOD to “unpark from current position”.

Kind regards,
Horia

1 Like
3

The procedure described by Horia will work for you, I use EQMOD and SGP similarly. I would just add that you can also define that same park position in EQMOD, by adding a custom park position. This will allow you to also park the mount to the same position using EQMOD, which I sometimes find useful.

Mikael