PHD2 loosing 'control authority' of mount with Stellarium and Sharpcap

[Michael Bibby]

I've got guiding working very well with my Heq5 pro, but when I pause guiding and switch between Stellarium (i.e., for slewing to targets), or Sharpcap (i.e., for platesolving and syncing), and then back to PHD2, its like PHD2 has lost authority/permission (?) to control my mount and wont guide until I close all the programs and restart them.

When the fault occurs its not just that PHD2 can't guide, it also won't calibrate, and when I go to the manual mount controls in PHD2 they won't move my mount. So its pretty obvious that either Stellarium or Sharpcap or both are preventing PHD2 from controlling my mount.

This is driving me nuts and causing me to waist a lot of imaging time. I looked online and found that some others have reported a similar problem: PHD2 and Stellarium clashing causing PHD2 to loose its ability to control the mount. I recently upgraded Stellarium, and that didn't solve the problem. I'm about to uninstall and reinstall PHD2, but does anyone have any other suggestions? I'm running Windows 10 and all three programs are set up as 'run as administrator'.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

[Brian Valente]

Hi Michael

without any logs there's not much specifics we can tell. Please upload them using the built-in log uploader

From your description it sounds like you may be using non-ascom connections in one or both of those applications. You need to use an ascom connection that supports multiple connections at the same time, and all apps need to be using it

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[Michael Bibby]

Here is my log file for anyone else coming to this thread: https://openphdguiding.org/logs/dl/PHD2_logs_dSes.zip

[bw_m...@earthlink.net]

Even with the logs, it’s very hard to track what’s going.  PHD2 isn’t ever getting errors from the guide commands and as far as it knows, things are fine.  I agree with Brian, you need to make sure that every app is using the same EQMOD driver – not one of its own proprietary mount connections and not one running with a different permission level.  Then you should work through a testing process very systematically.  Get to a point where PHD2 is guiding fine with all of the other apps disconnected from the mount.  Without pausing or stopping guiding, connect each of the other apps ONE AT A TIME and see how it affects PHD2 – I would start with SharpCap.  There are literally thousands of people who guide using PHD2 and EQMOD so you should assume PHD2 isn’t your problem.  EQMOD is able to handle multiple client applications talking to the mount at the same time so there is no reason this can’t work.  Please don’t start un-installing and re-installing PHD2 – that won’t help and you will lose all your PHD2 profiles.  When that happens, you will have to rebuild them, adding yet another variable and possible source of mistakes into the equation.  It is somewhat regrettable if you have to run everything as Administrator but that is a secondary issue I would say – unless, of course, one them really isn’t being run as administrator despite what you think. 

 

Good luck,

Bruce

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/open-phd-guiding/CAJa45i6JUeOiSeTdAHuUXz8dSWhSOVCEyz5B-n4h3g5C03i8rA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Michael Bibby]

Well, thats frustrating. How do I tell whether "every app is using the same EQMOD driver" or "one of its own proprietary mount connections"? As far as I know, Stellarium, Sharpcap, and PHD2 are all connected to EQMOD (they all work fine independently). As for the process of elimination, the fault never seems to actually occur when PHD2 is guiding properly, it only occurs after I have stopped guiding, moved my mount (i.e., with Stellarium), platesolved (i.e., with Sharpcap), and then, and only when, I attempt to restart guiding. So, from a users point of view, its like either Stellarium or Sharpcap's connection to the mount has taken away PHD2's ability to command the mount.

[Michael Bibby]

Update: I opened up all three programs to see which version of EQMOD they were all on (upon opening each program EQMOD is launched) and they all said V2.0W.
So I guess that means that all three programs are using the same EQMOD driver?

If that helps diagnose the problem or eliminate a possible cause.