wrong DEC value with Starbook Ten Vixen

[eisenopferd]

Hello OpenPHD Team,

I have an issue with the values for RA and DEC supmittet from the Mount (Starbook Ten)
The value is alwasy around 8 characters long.

The guiding itself seems to be ok, but I allways get the message "calibration too far from equator..."

(the full log seems to prevent the message to be send, so I cut the debug log)

thanks

cheers /Hendrik/

[mj.w...@gmail.com]

Hi Hendrik

Just to save time:

You don't seem to have Calibrated since July 2022, I expect the Experts would like to see one.

The instructions for uploading both files is on the home page "How to ask for help with PHD2"

Michael

[Bruce Waddington]

Thanks, Hendrik.  The mount driver is returning garbage data for the position information.  Assuming that the driver is fit for use at all, you may be getting communication problems between the PC and the mount.  You may want to investigate whatever link you’re using for that, probably a USB-serial device of some kind.  If you can connect to the mount with another app – like a planetarium app – you should be able to test this stuff during the daytime.  In its present state, this mount/mount driver isn’t usable by PHD2 so you would have to revert to ST-4 only guiding.

 

Hope you can get it sorted out quickly,

Bruce

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[eisenopferd]

Hi Bruce, the Guiding is working, only the positiondata ist bad.
I am connecting to the mount via Ascom driver with NINA an all is working fine. Only PHD is displaying the bad data...

Nina is displaying the correct position of the mount.

/Hendrik/

[eisenopferd]

perhaps I the website has some problems with a .zip file. I tryed to upload both log files inside a zip because the debug log is 30mb...

[Bryan]

Hendrik

if you follow the directions on How to Get Help with PHD that Michael mentioned, then you can upload the files to the PHD2 server...no issues with file size

Bryan

[Bruce Waddington]

This isn’t a PHD2 problem.  Let me give you some context here.  PHD2 is actively used by over 10,000 users every month.  Conservatively, over 8000 of them are on Windows and conservatively, over 6000 of them are using an ASCOM mount connection.  All ASCOM mounts are treated the same in PHD2, that’s the point of using an industry-standard interface.  The ASCOM mount interface code in PHD2 has been in place for over 10 years and hasn’t been changed in nearly that long.  This stuff works, none of us would have tolerated these kinds of problems if they were being reported.  And they aren’t being reported by anyone but you.  So I think you should assume the problem is on your end and do some trouble-shooting.  Here’s the single line of PHD2 debug output that is simply dumping the value of declination as reported by your mount driver:

 

19:05:35.919 00.016 10344 ScopeASCOM::GetDeclination() returns 76638975.0

 

In the first few calls to this function, the returned value was zero.  Then it changed to the value above and stayed that way.  If NINA is reporting sensible values, that implies that the mount controller is working and knows where the scope is pointing.  The software in the middle is the ASCOM mount driver.  One thing you could try is to connect only PHD2 to the mount and run some manual guide sessions to see what happens.  You can use the Statistics tool in PHD2 to show the reported Dec position once guiding is active.  You could also try connecting all the client applications to the ASCOM device hub which is then connected as a single user of the ASCOM driver for the mount.  Either of those tests will sidestep problems the mount driver might have with concurrent access and re-entrancy issues.

 

Good luck,

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/aaaaae83-b422-4d28-86fd-7e42fe04e3cbn%40googlegroups.com.

[eisenopferd]

ok, thanks a lot for your advise. I will try to get closer to the problem. There must be some difference because NINA is pointing correctly...

Ascom device hub sounds probising too...

I will report when I have new findings...

cheers /Hendrik/

(by the way: The starbook-driver perhaps is not the best stuff. I had another problem while switching from nina 1 to nina 2 because in nina 2 the communication between the driver and nina, regarding the time when the mount is ready with movement, was wrong. So the driver was corrected for me by Vixen Japan... So there might be some other issues with the driver...)

[eisenopferd]

Hello Bryan

yes the ASCOM Driver from Vixen is not very good...
When I connect the ASCOM device hub inbetween even the device hub is not able to display the values.

With the divice hub inbetween NINA is showing the wrong values also. But connecting directly to the mount NINA is able to display the correct values.

PHD is showing the wrong values also.

Even when the mount ist powered off the device hub is able to connect to the telescope and is displaying zero values.

I will contact Vixen once again to explant the bugs.

Fortunately there is another driver for the starbook available. It is from Lung-Kai Cheng (Github) and seems to work much better then the Vixen one...

Thanks for your advise.

/Hendrik/

[eisenopferd]

hey folks, we have a workaround for the bad dec values in phd with vixen ascom driver.
In european windows versions it seems to be standard that the decimal separator is set as ","
Just changing the windows settings to "." and all the programs are able to display correct values.

Nina, Ascom device Hub and PHD are displaying correct values.

I hope vixen will fix there driver...

cheers /Hendrik/

[eisenopferd]

nina and starbook with windows decimal separator ","

phd and ascom device hub with windows decimal separator ","

[eisenopferd]

and now with the changed separator to "."