Sharpcap interfering with EQMOD PEC

[cuivenion]

Hi, When using PEC with EQMOD the tracking stops when used with Sharpcap. I'm fairly sure Sharpcap is at least part of the problem as PEC worked fine for about an hour when just using EQMOD, and the same when using EQMOD with Stellarium.

When I opened Sharpcap and the mount connected, PEC ran for a few minutes and then failed. In EQMOD I just get the Tracking Stopped message. Normal tracking (sidereal etc) is not effected.

The log is attached hope thats helpful.

Log_2020-05-29T22_36_29-2584.log

(46.52 KiB) Downloaded 98 times

[admin]

Hi,

Do you actually do anything with the mount controls in SharpCap in this period or is it enough that SharpCap is connected and querying the mount for its position every now and then to bring on the problem?

Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

Hi, I don't use the mount controls in Sharpcap apart from the Plate solving button. When I was testing indoors I didn't press that. I'm not sure if it helps but the tracking fails in EQMOD when the PEC tracking rate is the same as the default RA rate (15.041067).

It doesn't fail everytime the PEC rate hits that speed, but when it does fail that is the speed it fails at.

[cuivenion]

Hi, It's a repeatable bug by the way. It happens everytime I try to use PEC with the mount connected to Sharpcap. Chris Shillito at EQMOD has had a look at the PEC file and can't find anything wrong with it.

[admin]

Hi,

I must admit that I don't use PEC myself, so have limited knowledge in this area. In the latest versions of SharpCap there is an option in the plates solving settings to change the behaviour when you do a plate solve - previously the only options involved resynchronisation. Now you can choose to do an offset go to to re-centre the target. I do wonder whether this might be more friendly to the EQMOD Ascom driver maybe? Not that that really helps explain how things could go wrong when you are testing indoors.

If you turn on the verbose logging option in the settings before opening your camera then SharpCap should record pretty much all the communication not only between the application and the camera but also with the Ascom connected hardware. A combination of this log and the time that it went wrong might help identify any commands SharpCap is sending that are causing the problem (although I thought that if you were not using the mount controls then SharpCap will really only request the updated position every second or so). Please make sure you have the latest version of SharpCap

Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

Cheers Robin, like you said I don't think the plate solving is the problem because I didn't use that during testing. I'll do some more testing and get back to you. As the pec is varying the ra rate could it be a case of Sharpcap not recognising the tracking speed?

[cuivenion]

Hi Robin, just finished another bit of testing. I was running just Sharpcap and EQMOD with verbose logging switched on. The PEC tracking failed within a minute of me starting it. The time of failure was 18.06, sorry i couldn't get it more precise. I can test it a bit more if you need me too. I didn't do any slewing, just unparked and enabled PEC tracking. Here's the log:

Log_2020-06-03T18_04_50-10732.log

(217.71 KiB) Downloaded 91 times

[admin]

Hi,

Thanks for the log – I can see that from 18:05:41 when the setup of the camera and mount are completed until you close down at 18:06:44 there are no commands being sent by SharpCap – all this is happening is that it is repeatedly querying for the current status of the mount – asking questions like

Is it tracking
is it parked
what are the current altitude, azimuth, RA and declination
is it possible to set the tracking rate

The only thing I can think of is that the repeated queries are upsetting either the software of the EQMOD driver or the hardware of the mount if each is causing a message to be sent to the mount.

I think it be possible to reduce the number of queries sent slightly (some of them seem to be repeated) – I don't know whether this will be enough to resolve the problem though.

Cheers, Robin

[cuivenion]

Hi, thanks Robin. Let me know when you want me to test with the reduced commands. Do you mind if I quote your reply over at the EQMOD group?

[admin]

Hi,

No problem passing on the interpretation to the EQMOD group.

Cheers, Robin