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Re: Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window
Roland Christen
I have exactly the same problem with MaximDL. It started doing this about 3 - 4 months ago and now I cannot get it to recognize the tracking mode after the first slew. Before this, I never had any problem with MaximDL slewing or centering a star on the crosshairs.
Rolando
-----Original Message-----
From: M Hambrick <mhambrick563@...> To: main@ap-gto.groups.io Sent: Mon, Nov 8, 2021 11:07 pm Subject: [ap-gto] Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window I am not sure if this is an APCC or MaxIm DL problem so I am putting this in both forums.
I have just started running my Astro-Physics 1100 GTO mount through Astro-Physics Command Center (APCC Pro Version 1.9.0.11) and the Observatory control window in MaxIm DL Pro (currently on V 6.29), and until tonight there have been no issues other than the normal learning curve.
I am using the AP ASCOM V2 Telescope Driver (version 5.30.10)
Tonight, after connecting my cameras and mount to MaxIm I gave the first GoTo command to the mount from MaxIm and it executed it correctly, but afterwards the mount would accept no more GoTo or any other commands through the MaxIm observatory control window. Note that when I gave the mount commands through APCC it behaved normally.
What I have observed is that after the mount finished slewing to the GoTo object, The mount status in MaxIm thought the mount was still slewing. Clicking the Abort button made no difference.
I shut down and restarted the mount, MaxIm, and APCC several times but always got the same result after the first GoTo command was executed.
Until tonight I had been using a Cat 5e .ethernet cable to connect from the mount controller to my computer. Tonight I started out with a new Cat 6a cable, but switching back to the original Cat 5e cable made no difference.
Mike
 -- Roland Christen Astro-Physics
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Re: Mach2 with CP five jiggling while tracking
Roland Christen
Please send me any information about your mount to chris1011@.... That way it won't get lost on this user group. Also include George@...
Roland Christen
Astro-Physics Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffc <jeffcrilly@...> To: main@ap-gto.groups.io Sent: Mon, Nov 8, 2021 10:46 pm Subject: Re: [ap-gto] Mach2 with CP five jiggling while tracking Roland - Earlier (about a month ago) I replied with some output from mount commands you asked for. I’m guessing that thread may have been lost in the noise or spam.
In any event here’s the data I extracted for those terminal commands… let me know if you need additional info.
Thx
Here's the output of the terminal commands:
$RS# = 10#
$RA# = 40#
$RN# = 8#
$RZ# = 0#
Also copied as a screenshot attached.
-jeff
 -- Roland Christen Astro-Physics
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Re: east/west Plate solving with an SCT
Remember that we have a very quick and easy method for measuring orthogonality - the first step in correcting it.
https://astro-physics.info/tech_support/mounts/keypad/keypad-manual.pdf Go to page 52. These instructions, of course, are for the keypad, but the concept applies easily to computers and plate solves as well. By doing a little high-school trigonometry (remember to cut the measured error in half), you can get a precise measurement for shim thickness. Trial and error is trivial on a 130, and usually unnecessary anyway. On a big Cassegrain, trial and error is a major pain in the butt, so getting it real close to begin with is a good plan. Understand as well that the error you measure will probably include some portion from shift/flop/movement. Still, I think that fixing the orthogonality with this method will help, and it will mechanically reduce one important error source. HH
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Re: Clean out your old APCC Logs
For this kind of thing, I use Tree Size - a simple free utility that does a great job of showing your usage by directory, so I can easily find and delete unneeded logs, etc.
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free It's not just APCC that generates tons of logs: ASCOM can do this, and Windows has its fair share of disk clogging files as well. This utility starts by listing the directories by storage used, and you can drill down from there. One time we found 250 gigs of Windows search index files Brian Brian
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Re: Clean out your old APCC Logs
Ben Koltenbah
I would prefer that these log files not be deleted as they serve as excellent diagnostics for when things go wrong, and I may not be able to get to them for quite some time, often more than 30 days later. I try to make it a point to move the log files to the folders associated with their respective imaging sessions. If after some time I decide I don't need them after all, then I delete them. I also save my guiding logs and other log files in the same spot.
Ben
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Re: Clean out your old APCC Logs
Worsel
Mike
C:/ProgramData is, by Windows default, a hidden folder. It will appear in Windows Explorer, if you check the Hidden Folders box in the View tab Bryan
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Re: Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window
Actually Ray, I think that maybe these are the logs you are looking for: There are three different instances because I started and stopped APCC several times trying to figure out what was going on.
Mike
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Re: Clean out your old APCC Logs
That's a great question Chris. As a follow-up how do you find these logs using Windows Explorer ? I can't seem to find the APCC folder anywhere unless I open the Log Directory from APCC. When I do this it takes me to the logs via the following path:
 However, the folder ProgramData does not show up in my Windows Exlporer. Mike
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Clean out your old APCC Logs
Chris White
I use a minix computer from a few years ago and it's got a small hard drive on it with an M2 add on for my image download. The main hard drive has been getting closer and closer to full and I couldnt figure out why. A couple of nights ago I lost an imaging session because it finally got too full. All the normal tricks with disk cleanup and windows search deletion couldnt get me more than a couple hundred megabytes. I was blaming it on Windows update and was basically ready to toss the thing out and get a new PC.
Bill Long told me to take a look at my APCC Pro Log folder and I was shocked to find that I had almost a year of logs totaling 5GB! I deleted these and it's like my PC has a new lease on life To Ray: Would it be possible to have these auto-delete after say 30 days? I assume that there is not much use for logs unless you encounter a current issue and need to access. Something that was working fine 30 days ago shouldn't be much use, no?
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Re: Auto meridian flips with SGP
On Tue, Nov 9, 2021 at 07:51 AM, Ray Gralak wrote:
OK, I misunderstood the UI. I saw the checkbox for "Limit to Meridian" above the "Flip Offset" and "Flip Offset Padding" and assumed it needed to be checked for those values to take effect. But then it would not have achieved what I wanted, so I didn't adjust the values. I now see they are disconnected and just happen to be (nearly) lined up vertically. Good grief, sorry!
Ah, this language would be very helpful in the help file! I read the help file a dozen times, but had a hard time understanding what it was trying to say for "Flip Offset" and "Send Limit to SGPro". Perhaps also something to the effect of "Minutes Past Meridian to Flip will be adjusted in SGPro Meridian Flip Options" might also help in the wording for "Send Limits to SGPro". After I finally figured out that was the value being adjusted, it all made much more sense.
Believe me, I did, but somehow it did not make sense to me. Probably something to do with "The Fog of Astrophotography" and not enough sleep and a frozen brain. It makes sense to me now, thanks for the help! Tom
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Re: Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window
HI Ray
Is this what you are looking for ?? These are the zipped files from the last 5 days. Everything prior to November 8 worked fine. Mike
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Ray Gralak
Hi Terri,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Do you recall if APCC was minimized when this happens? If so, try : 1. Close the Errror Log window from the Windows taskbar 2. Unminimize APCC 3. Reopen the Error Log window via APCC's Tools menu. -Ray
-----Original Message-----
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Re: Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window
Ray Gralak
Tonight, after connecting my cameras and mount to MaxIm I gave the first GoTo command to the mount fromWe're going to need to see your APCC logs to understand what happened. -Ray -----Original Message-----
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Re: Auto meridian flips with SGP
Ray Gralak
Hi Tom,
You wrote: > 1. APCC adjusts the Meridian Flip settings in SGPRo erasing any delay or fudge factor that might have > been in the SGPro settings before. See Showing-SGPro-Adjusted-Meridian-Flip-Options.png for details. > 2. If Guiding is still going on, APCC halts Tracking before SGPro gets a chance to flip, so PHD2 throws > an error, the sequence stops, and end of sequence steps are initiated before SGPro gets a chance to flip.
Of course, APCC will do that using the settings shown in your screenshots. You have not set non-zero values for "Flip Offset" and "Flip Offset Padding".
Flip Offset essentially moves the flip point sent to SGPro, so that SGPro has time to complete an image before the mount reaches the actual meridian limit. Typically you want to set the Flip Offset to the maximum duration of the image, plus a couple of extra minutes.
Flip Offset Padding is a new control added in the beta. It adds or subtracts a little extra time to account for any time discrepancy between SGPro and the mount. Note the value is in minutes and can be positive or negative.
> Ray, have you tried this with the latest Beta and SGPro and gotten it to work? If so, I'd love to see your > settings so I could give it a try. :-)
Maybe it would help if you took a look at the help page for Meridian Limits. You can click the "?" icon in the upper right corner of the "Operations" group box, as shown in this screenshot (info has not been added for “Flip Padding” yet):
-Ray
> -----Original Message----- > From: main@ap-gto.groups.io [mailto:main@ap-gto.groups.io] On Behalf Of Tom Zepf > Sent: Monday, November 8, 2021 7:53 PM > To: main@ap-gto.groups.io > Subject: Re: [ap-gto] Auto meridian flips with SGP > > On Mon, Nov 8, 2021 at 08:46 AM, Ray Gralak wrote: > > > Hi Tom, > > > > I tried the latest Beta and I still had the same race condition issues, but there's a good chance I > just didn't > configure things. correctly. > > Exactly, what configuration settings did you use? I can't correct or promote the software to a release > version without logs and settings information. Just saying it didn't work is not going to help! :-) > > Thanks, > > -Ray > > I've zipped up log files and screen shots showing the configuration settings. You can find them here: > https://drive.google.com/file/d/11LqdWemaDSeLpSZoXX9wO3QtOzNQLTcY/view?usp=sharing > > From what I can tell, if you have APCC send the limits to SGPro, it basically runs things right up to the wire, > and SGPro shows a flip time that is within seconds of what APCC thinks is the limit where it will stop tracking. > I made these logs with Simulation gear (bad weather for a few days ahead), but with real gear, what seems to > happen is something like this: > > > 1. APCC adjusts the Meridian Flip settings in SGPRo erasing any delay or fudge factor that might have > been in the SGPro settings before. See Showing-SGPro-Adjusted-Meridian-Flip-Options.png for details. > 2. If Guiding is still going on, APCC halts Tracking before SGPro gets a chance to flip, so PHD2 throws > an error, the sequence stops, and end of sequence steps are initiated before SGPro gets a chance to flip. > > What I have, is a way to make this work with "shallow" hard-wired "flip within a degree or two of the meridian at > all declinations". See the settings earlier in the thread for that. But I don't get the "deep" counterweight up flips > that would be nice. > > What I think I need, is a configuration that allows for the travel into the counterweight up position if declination > and meridian limits allow it, but I cannot figure out how to do that with the knobs I've tried turning. > > Ray, have you tried this with the latest Beta and SGPro and gotten it to work? If so, I'd love to see your > settings so I could give it a try. :-) > > Thanks, > > Tom
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Re: Time change today...
Ray Gralak
Hi Tom,
However, the night it happened, I did manually move the mount with the clutches lose to park 3. Today I did aThere has to be something for which you didn't account. If you parked to Park 3 and adjusted the mount to that position, it won't be off by one hour when you resume from park. That assumes time and timezone didn't change. -Ray -----Original Message-----
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Re: east/west Plate solving with an SCT
mjb87@...
I tried plate-solving for a pointing model with my 300mm f/15 Cassegrain. The model to the east worked fine. The model to the west was a disaster and only about 10% of the attempted solutions would "solve." The partial results suggested I had a 7-degree orthogonality error. For the life of me I couldn't see how that resulted given the setup. Everything is tight, mirrors are fixed, setup is balanced, the 1100GTO is barely working up a sweat given the load, etc.
I then ran a careful assessment with ConeSharp which indicated I had a 10 arc-minute orthogonality issue -- not 7 degrees. Just last week I ran a manual TPoint model in TSX which suggested I had a 11 arc-minute orthogonality error. I have never been able to explain the original APPM result and can only conclude it was the result of erroneous plate solutions caused by magnification beyond what the local seeing at the time could support, exacerbated by a moon on the western side of the meridian.
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Re: Mach 1 awesomeness!
Howard Ritter
Well done, Michael! And if your Mach 1 is handling that size scope and the massive counterweight, it’s definitely The Little Mount That Could!
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Nice to see another AP user with his mount on a Berlebach Planet tripod. I have my 155 EDF/600E on one of them and my APM 100mm binoculars on another. I’ll need something a bit more robust, though for the 1600GTO that’s arriving this winter... —howard
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Re: east/west Plate solving with an SCT
Mirror flop. Orthogonality. Loose dovetail bracket. Loose mount DEC axis dovetail locks. Loose auxiliary focuser. Loose camera bits. Loose secondary mirror. Flexing tripod/pier. Loose tripod/pier bits...
On Mon, Nov 8, 2021, 7:05 PM Jeffc <jeffcrilly@...> wrote:
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Re: Guider Settings
Thanks Roland
So, was your original recommendation to never use less than 0.3 seconds intended to be arc-seconds and not time as is given in the MaxIm settings ? If you intended the minimum move to be in arc seconds that would mean that I should change the Minimum move setting in MaxIm to 0.02 seconds of time. When I tried using a 0.3 seconds of time (equivalent to 4.5 arc seconds ??), the guider essentially quit making any corrections. Mike
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Mount Status Not Updating in MaxIm DL Observatory Control Window
I am not sure if this is an APCC or MaxIm DL problem so I am putting this in both forums.
I have just started running my Astro-Physics 1100 GTO mount through Astro-Physics Command Center (APCC Pro Version 1.9.0.11) and the Observatory control window in MaxIm DL Pro (currently on V 6.29), and until tonight there have been no issues other than the normal learning curve.
I am using the AP ASCOM V2 Telescope Driver (version 5.30.10)
Tonight, after connecting my cameras and mount to MaxIm I gave the first GoTo command to the mount from MaxIm and it executed it correctly, but afterwards the mount would accept no more GoTo or any other commands through the MaxIm observatory control window. Note that when I gave the mount commands through APCC it behaved normally.
What I have observed is that after the mount finished slewing to the GoTo object, The mount status in MaxIm thought the mount was still slewing. Clicking the Abort button made no difference.
I shut down and restarted the mount, MaxIm, and APCC several times but always got the same result after the first GoTo command was executed.
Until tonight I had been using a Cat 5e .ethernet cable to connect from the mount controller to my computer. Tonight I started out with a new Cat 6a cable, but switching back to the original Cat 5e cable made no difference.
Mike
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