I have a WO110 on a Losmandy G11G. It’s been working fine until recently (last clear period, I’m in Western WA, USA). Running SGP on a mini-pc mounted to top of scope, Win11. I’m currently imaging NGC5457 (M101). When I set the target to slew and center, it performs the slew, auto-focuses, then tries to center. It successfully slews to near target, get image and solves using ASTAP (also tried ANSVR). Successful solve. Moves scope and re-solves. Dec gets closer, but RA never gets closer than 1200 pixels (.64”/pix) regardless of the number of attempts. It has worked in the past, usually taking 2-3 tries (5 try max). Note that I usually just cold-start the Gemini and don’t sync, so it takes an extra try or two. Doesn’t matter if I DO a proper sync. If I switch to TheSkyX and do the same center (closed loop slew in X-speak), it works just fine. In order to image, I have to switch to “do not move…” and manually center first.
Does anyone have a clue what might be going on here? Note it worked fine up until recent update (different targets, though). I am building a completely fresh profile / sequence to see if the old one got corrupted, but can’t test that until tomorrow night.
Thanks IA.
This sounds like possibly a failure to sync the mount’s position somehow, but I’m not certain. If you’d like to post logs showing the failed centering we can take a look.
Additional guidance here:
I am having the same issue (centering does not get closer than 700 pixels in RA) on a GM8. As it use$ to work, I am puzzled about what to do. Have you fo7nd a solution?
I haven’t yet found a solution. I did find out, though, that N.I.N.A. does the same thing (won’t converge). I’ve just been starting to experiment with using TheSkyX as the telescope controller (ASCOM Telescope Driver for TheSkyX), but last night was partly cloudy (and very hazy) and I couldn’t get a reasonable test.
I have previously tested all the options for sync behavior (Sync, Offset and None) with the telescope driver being ASCOM Gemini Telescope .NET, but they >all< led to the same behavior of not converging in either Dec or RA - although they all converged on one of them.
I have tested with the “Sync performs additional align” in the Gemini advanced options both on and off with no apparent difference either.
One note: I just noticed the checkbox on the bottom of the advanced options dialog for “Send Advanced Settings to Gemini on Connect” and it’s always been unchecked. So maybe I’ve never actually transferred those settings? Currently, the telescope (Gemini) is unpowered, so it’ can’t possibly be getting (or retrieving) any settings, so I’m not sure when / if any of the settings get sent to the Gemini. There IS an Apply button, which I’m sure I’ve hit while the telescope is powered, but… I’ll experiment more as soon as I can see enough stars. Tonight doesn’t look great…
I’ve collected logs, but have been lazy and haven’t correlated them yet. Or rather, I did once, but found the SGP log saying it’s sending Sync and wasn’t absolutely sure I’d set “Offset” in the sync behavior for that night.
Interesting - having similar problems on my Orion Atlas Pro mount with EQMOD running it. Logs showed various errors depending on the plate solver. Target was T CrB and time of day was around midnight.
Astrometry.net remote logs:
[08/01/24 00:38:01.254][DEBUG][Unknown][PS;] Caught exception while Checking Astrometry.NET solve - CheckSubmission: Error converting value {null} to type ‘System.Int32’. Path ‘jobs[0]’, line 1, position 181.
PlateSolve2 logs:
[08/01/24 00:32:02.552][DEBUG][Telescope Thread][PS;] ASCOM Telescope: Invalid Operation Exception in Sync : SyncToTarget() RaDec sync was rejected. (System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. —> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: SyncToTarget() RaDec sync was rejected.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t having any issue with the solver - that was working just fine.
Thanks. I switched mounts to an EQ5r and PS2 is working now.