SharpCap Forums

Hi all,
some nights ago I was trying to get started with the new sequencing tool in v4. Mount (iOptron CEM-60), Cam, Focuser, all is connecting flawless through ASCOM. But when I try to plan a session with the Sequence Planner the comment behind the object of desire is indicating that it is below horizon (while it definitely is close to Zenith). Because of this mismatch I have no chance to point to an object and at that point I had to stop my first tries.

I am using other sequencing tools like SGP and NINA without any issues on a regular basis – never experienced this problem before. And I checked all settings in SC, I found nothing to fix this issue by myself.

Currently I have no screenshot nor the exact SC version I was using (should be .7906) since I am not in my observatory and have access to that computer. But I assume that my issue is well known and easy to fix. In case it is not a super-obvious noob mistake of course I can hand missing information in later.

Can anyone point me to the error I do with these information already?


Clear skies,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,

the most obvious thing that I can think of that could cause this is if your latitude and longitude are not set up correctly in your ASCOM mount configuration - that's where SharpCap gets the lat/long co-ordinates to use to convert RA/Dec to AltAz. If your mount doesn't report a lat/long (or it reports 0,0) then SharpCap assumes they are unset and will not add the altitude to the dropdown.

I just had a test here and the altitudes shown in SharpCap match the actual altitudes of the objects shown in a planetarium app (I use SkytechX).

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,
Thank you for this beautiful piece of software – I love to use it and the way it is continuously developing over that past years.

But my problem still persists. I checked all mount settings and Timezone, Latitude, Longitude etc. all are perfectly fine. GPS is activated.

I made a screenshot now where you can see my mounts settings and that M 13 is below horizon in SC’s opinion. What I found out is that SC is indicating that for example NGC 4833 in Musca is close to the Zenith. I assume that SC think that I am observing from the southern hemisphere. But as you can see in my mount correctly northern hemisphere is set. And normal GoTo is working flawless, this is why I don’t think that the mount itself is causing this issue.


When I hit “Test” for the GOTO-function SC is throwing this error message:


Clear skies,
Daniel


P.S Was using .7944 but updated now to .8264 – problem still is there.

Hi Daniel,

weirder and weirder.

Can you please collect a log for me - first go to the settings and turn on extra logging for mount hardware communication (see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Logging%20Tab) then fire up the sequence planner again and get it to show you the incorrect list of altitudes (note: don't connect to the mount or open the camera until after adjusting the logging settings).

Then, when you have seen the problem, goto Help->Show Log, click 'Locate on Disk', close SharpCap and send me the log file that was highlighted in Windows Explorer when you clicked 'locate on disk'. That log should contain all the communication back/forward between your mount and SharpCap, which should hopefully help narrow down the possibilities about what is going wrong.

thanks,

Robin

Hi Robin,
I just sent you the requested log via PM.

It is really weird, when I started this thread I was sure that it was a simple user-error. And it is weird that it is only me who seem to have this problem. My mount is nothing special and there's nothing special on how I installed and use all this software.

Additional note: what I did after my last post is, that I installed the latest Firmware for my mount and now I am using latest Software Version for it in my Computer too. There was no change, the problem still persits.

P.S I use ASCOM v6.4 SP1 if that is of interest...

All the best,
Daniel