failure to goto location
failure to goto location
Last night on multiple tries the software returned the following statement after I asked it to go to a accurate location and after it platesolved the scopes active location: unable go to as scope is pointing greater than 10 degrees from target. This made no sense as it is capable of starting from its resting,initial position, and going to a requested target. What's wrong. thanks
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Re: failure to goto location
Hi,
it would be good to have the exact wording of the message you saw - or the SharpCap log from the session which will record what SharpCap was doing.
SharpCap itself doesn't contain a message with the text 'Unable to go to' (or 'Unable to GOTO'), so I suspect that message was coming from the ASCOM driver for your mount rather than directly from SharpCap.
I'm not sure I've ever encountered a message like that regarding goto, but there are limits in some ASCOM drivers on the 'sync' operation - how far it can be from the current position. SharpCap itself will show you a yes/no confirmation if the movement required for a sync is more than 5 degrees. If you confirm that with yes then SharpCap sends the request to the ASCOM driver, but if it has its own checks/limits you might get a failure/error message at that point.
As to why a mount can be out from the expected position, I've seen this on several occasions, particularly if the previous session didn't end with a clean shutdown (ie if software crashed or something). The mount might physically be at the home position, but the handset or the PC software might think it is somewhere else, leading to all sorts of problems. The quick check is that when you first connect to the mount in the home position, the Altitude should show as matching your latitude and the azimuth should be zero (or 360.0, or very close). Additionally, the declination should show as +90 (northern hemisphere).
cheers,
Robin
it would be good to have the exact wording of the message you saw - or the SharpCap log from the session which will record what SharpCap was doing.
SharpCap itself doesn't contain a message with the text 'Unable to go to' (or 'Unable to GOTO'), so I suspect that message was coming from the ASCOM driver for your mount rather than directly from SharpCap.
I'm not sure I've ever encountered a message like that regarding goto, but there are limits in some ASCOM drivers on the 'sync' operation - how far it can be from the current position. SharpCap itself will show you a yes/no confirmation if the movement required for a sync is more than 5 degrees. If you confirm that with yes then SharpCap sends the request to the ASCOM driver, but if it has its own checks/limits you might get a failure/error message at that point.
As to why a mount can be out from the expected position, I've seen this on several occasions, particularly if the previous session didn't end with a clean shutdown (ie if software crashed or something). The mount might physically be at the home position, but the handset or the PC software might think it is somewhere else, leading to all sorts of problems. The quick check is that when you first connect to the mount in the home position, the Altitude should show as matching your latitude and the azimuth should be zero (or 360.0, or very close). Additionally, the declination should show as +90 (northern hemisphere).
cheers,
Robin