Sharpcap interfering with EQMOD PEC

[cuivenion]

Hi Robin, this is the response from the EQMOD group:

Only if sharcap issues a command that requires a change in mount position or tracking rate will there be any additional comms to the mount. If sharpcap is simply polling for driver capabilities, status and position then this adds no overhead at all to the mount Comms that EQMOD performs.

It's interesting that sharpcap is polling as to whether the tracking rate can be changed. Under what circumstances would it change the rate ? As PEC works by changing the tracking rate it wouldn't be good to have some other application also setting the rate directly (other than by pulse guiding commands).

[admin]

Hi,

SharpCap needs to know whether the tracking rate can be changed because it shows any drop-down in the UI that lets you switch between solar/lunar/sidereal rates. I have now changed the code so that it will only ask that question once on connecting to the mount rather than multiple times (I'm assuming here that the answer isn't going to change!).

In addition to that change I have reduced the frequency at which SharpCap requests updated data from the Ascom driver from once a second to once every two seconds, and also made it so that the different requests (for RA, declination, altitude, azimuth etc) are spread out a little rather than all being asked one after the other.

I hope to be able to release a new update with these changes in sometime in the next few days.

Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

Cheers Robin. I'll test it when it comes out.

[admin]

Hi,

I actually uploaded that new build last night, so it's ready to test whenever you have a chance.

Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

Cheers Robin, I'll give it a look.

[cuivenion]

Hi, Sorry the fault is still occurring. Here's the log:

Log_2020-06-05T21_59_28-5692.log

(75.44 KiB) Downloaded 106 times

I'm afraid I didn't get the time of failure but it was running for less than 2 minutes.

[cuivenion]

One thing I've noticed is that while PEC is running the tracking rate in Sharpcap is shown as off with a ? where the tracking symbol is, but when PEC isn't issueing a correction the star symbol for sidereal appears and tracking turns on. The ? symbol reappears and the tracking button turns off(EQMOD keeps tracking) when PEC issues corrections again. Thought I'd mention it.

I did another test where the PEC tracking stays on a lot longer, It's too large too attach so I'll send a dropbox link via PM. The tracking fails around 22:49:28. I've noticed in this log that the last time Sharpcap requests the RA rate is 22:49:25 so it seems that Sharpcap stops requesting the RA rate at about the time PEC tracking stops in EQMOD.

Not sure if any of this is helpful. Hopefully it is.

[admin]

Hi,


Thanks for the logs – I think I have a fix for this now, but would appreciate further testing as I don't use PEC so wouldn't see the issue myself.


Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

No problem Robin, will do, thanks.

[cuivenion]

Thanks for the quick upload! I'll check it out tommorrow.