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yeah, i guess pointing accuracy isn't that big of a deal. i wasn't aware that hysteresis only effected pointing. so could you explain more about how you got your flex time down to less than 2 arcsecs?? that's sounds really awesome.

so the other night i ran a hysteresis test using sequence 0.2.0.3 and found what i suspected - my setup is not the most stable. flexure error: 33.3 arcseconds hysteresis error: 52.9 arcseconds these seem kind of bad. mounting my gear onto my permanent observatory is a step in the right direction, but in the interim i have to deal with a tripod resting on a rolling platform (with wheel locks.) just curious what other people are getting for their measurements, how they are mounted and what solutions people have used.

okay, so i think i figured this out. i wasn't properly synched with theskyx. i was about half a degree off, and so of course, almost nothing was getting solved. i re-synched, and made a 3 star pointing file by hand, configured with that, and then did an autopoint with a handful of stars, and they all solved, no problem. steep learning curve (really, me just being dumb about things) but worth it and a lot of fun.

so i'm not having very good luck with this. it'll solve maybe 1 out of 10 plates, and sometimes 0. :-( here's what i've tried: - i uploaded several of them to nova.astrometry.com and they solve, no problem. - i tried using pinpoint within maxim DL, and it solves them. - i've tried switching to the USNO A2 catalog i confirmed my arcsec/pixel resolution as well, so i know my binning and resolution settings in sequence are correct. i'm using exposing for 20 seconds, and my settle time is 3 seconds. not really sure what the 'secret' is. is there a logfile in sequence for this? does anyone else have trouble with this?

i'm curious why you have an auto guider for a ddm85. i'm a new owner, but my hope (and the promise of ASA) is that these mounts don't need an autoguider!

SOLVED! so after many hours of trial and error i finally determined what the problem was. my gamepad controller is a bit screwy and not calibrated correctly. when it was "at rest" it would actually be sending a signal to the mount - about .01" every second. when i did a reboot or installed a new driver for a camera, or whatever - sometimes it would settle down and stop sending signals, but then after another reboot it would decide to send signals again. a very subtle screwy thing in that controller. i was almost ready to give up - i hadn't heard anything back from ASA on the logs i sent them, and i stripped my system of all non-standard windows drivers and still, no permanent success. just occasional functionality, followed by bad behavior. so on a whim, i just clicked the gamepad off on autoslew and tried to slew the mount, and it worked! no freeze ups or delays or weird things. after more testing, i concluded that this was indeed the problem. anyway, i'm just posting this to share my trials and tribulations, and also in case anyone else runs into a similar problem!!

i updated the ptgrey driver for the USB card, and reinstalled the ptgrey camera driver and it started working for a bit - i got about 4000 images of mars, but the seeing wasn't red hot. anyway, it's the first time i've imaged mars, so i'm excited to see how it worked out. but then the problems came back - when i tried to slew, it would get about halfway there and then it would slow down and appear to stop or go into a crawl where the completion of the slew would likely take hours. no errors, no freeze ups - it was weird. i'm going to send in detailed logs to ASA and see if they can tell me what's going on and confirm a driver conflict.

thanks for the insights lukas. so, i think i found the problem. the ptgrey driver doesn't get along with the ASA driver. the problem was fixed when i did a restore back to before i installed the ptgrey driver, and when i had everything working perfectly, i tried to install the ptgrey driver again. it installed, the camera ran, everything was okay, but then when i tried to slew the mount, it got stuck in DE and started acting crazy. in my experience, drivers with ptgrey cameras are a nightmare - and this problem shouldn't be a surprise i guess. blech.

so i switched back to my atik camera, and everything is working normally now. ugh. so i think this mount is just crazy sensitive to weight/balance and tuning. if that's not dialed it, all sorts of drama happens.

so mars is near opposition and i decided to put my pt.grey grasshopper3 on my mount to get some pictures. i took off my atik, and placed the grasshopper on, with a powermate 2x. the weight difference and length are about an inch or so and 4-5 ounces. i started up autoslew, and did a balance check. i made a minor adjustment to the weights. while doing a 3 star polar align, i realized the 2x powermate was making it really hard to find stars, so i took it off. obviously that threw the balance off a bit, but i figured it would be okay. i went ahead and completed it and adjusted the mount. then i figured i'd better do another one. then strange things started happening. the DE slew started to stick. like it would just freeze up. strange. i don't remember everything i did, but i did some restarts, reboots, and then i noticed the DE drifting while it was sidereal mode! this is not supposed to happen. it would just drift by .02" every second or so. just a steady drift. and then slewing would get stuck in RA, freeze up and stop. again, more reboots. one time after i shutdown autoslew, i physically moved the mount back to the homefind position, but it wouldn't move! it's the like magnets were fighting against me. i shut off the power to it, and it then moved freely. so weird. then i uninstalled my pt. grey camera, and did a restore on windows 8 to the previous configuration to really clean out the drivers. i also reinstalled autoslew to make sure it's drivers were in place. sigh. anyway, still wrestling with it. not sure what's going on. it's balanced well, and there aren't any error messages. scratching my head. is the DDM85 and autoslew just a temperamental beast? or am i just unlucky? or do you think something is wrong with my hardware?

mirandola, you really need to post a log file. iirc, it's in the servo menu where you can set the log to have extra information in it.

>From time to time his DDM85 looses connection with RA axis during slewing and stops. i think it would be helpful if you would post your friend's autoslew log that shows the error message when this happens. >When we uncheck "Filter noise on" in "manual tune" window, the RA axis does not loose connection, but the mount is much more noisy.Any solutions? sounds like you should keep the filter noise option checked. > In bottom menu wee see command that file can't be loaded ( I think CCD fits file is not loaded to plate solve). one idea here is to find the .fits file in your file system and confirm that it is there, and also confirm that the file permissions are such that it can be accessed/read by other users (or applications.)

okay, so it looks like the 'raw' polar error could be improved. i can keep iterating on that. i'll go for 2 minutes or better. but if the RMS correction is sub arc-minute, i would think that would be good enough to get round stars at a 5 minute exposure. am i mistaken here? what do you guys typically achieve on RMS correction? george, so does this 'collimation' mean that where the OTA connects to the mount plate? like it's not square all the way? if so, i guess i could use some shims to try and square it up. also note that the mount is currently on a non-permanent setup (on a CGEM tripod, which is on rollers with wheel locks) and so it's not ideal! thanks again for all your help everyone! the learning curve is steep, but this is a lot of fun and i love this new mount technology!

thanks lukas. yes, the pointing file isn't that big. i suppose i should make a larger one. i'll do a check for looseness on the mount and OTA. the mirror is locked. the PID settings are really quite good right now. i guess i'm curious about how to read the output of autoslew here. the one window on the left says "Pointing Error Azimuth: -9.64" and "Pointing Error Altitude: 28.97" which seems kind of bad to me, but then in the window on the right it says "RMS RA Error after fit: 00.46 arc min" and "RMS DE Error after fit: 00.21 arc min" which seems really good to me. i'm curious what a "good" configuration looks like as far as the numbers go. also, what the heck is "collimation"? sounds like they are using the term to me "how level is your mount" or something as opposed to the mirrors lining up in your OTA.

i've been tinkering the last hour. i cleared my config, did a 3 point polar alignment (picked option #1) and then i did a auto pointing file, and loaded it and ran calculate on it and this was the result: after this, i didn't slew, i just went ahead and did a 5 minute exposure and this is what came out: it's so-so, but the stars are really a bit too egg shaped. so, any advice on how to improve?

so i've been tinkering with this new mount for a few weeks now. i absolutely love it! i finally got to the point where i felt like i could try out a reasonably long exposure of 8 minutes. here's how it turned out (uncalibrated, minor stretch): so i thought "wow, i think i got this down" and so i went a few degrees over and did a 5 minute exposure of C39 the clown face nebula: and yeah, it looks like crap. so...not sure what happened here. i polar aligned with 3 stars, and then cleared my configuration and then did a 5 star point file, then did the good 8 minute exposure, and immediately after my short slew did the awful 5 minute one. so what is the best way to diagnose my system? what should i be looking at here?

hi john. i don't the answer to your first question about the +/- .01 in RA. i've just sort of ignored it. but the question about autofind, i asked in the DDM85 section of the forum just last week. look for my post there. the short answer is: "don't worry about it - it's all automatic stuff that previously had to be messed with by users, but now it's fully automated." at least, that's my understanding.

bernard - so if it says "54% quality" one time and then "84% quality" another time - does this matter? does it have any effect on tracking accuracy?

i googled and couldn't find anything on this. i searched the manual and couldn't find anything either. perhaps i'm missing the obvious. does anyone know what this is for? i know it runs when you first start up the motor, but what these settings do? and what about the "optimize" button? what happens if i get a 'bad grade' in "Measured Autofind Quality"?

i have also had trouble with the logitech F710. it worked fine with autoslew, but then a couple of days later i had reinstalled windows 8.1 and reinstalled autoslew, and it stopped working. it turns out that the logitech F710 is kind of a pain. i finally got it working last night. here is a video that might help you: and here is a really long thread on the logitech forum that could be helpful to you: http://forums.logitech.com/t5/Logitech-G-Controllers/Wireless-Gamepad-F710-with-Windows-8-1/td-p/1098603

christian, that sounds super frustrating. it sounds like it would benefit everyone if ASA had an option to enable verbose logging of AS and sequence. software is complicated, and sifting through logs can be difficult, but at least logs could be sent to ASA and their developers should be able to quickly identify what causes these strange anomalies.

success!!! the key was upgrading TheSkyX to the latest daily build. before i had only upgraded to the most recent official release (from 2012.) but towards the end of 2013 it looks like they fixed a lot of the ASCOM support problems they previously had. so basically the drop down menu from TSX now lists "Ascom->ASCOM Mount" whereas before, this options only was "Ascom->Telescope Driver" which didn't work - and previous to that there was some kind of strange TeleAPI driver which didn't work either. so, thanks everyone for your support and advice. now could anyone do something about the rain please?

thanks guys. i went ahead and wiped everything and did a fresh reinstall of windows 8! i will carefully reinstall all the software packages and make a log of everything i do, and then i will post the results here tonight (in about 8 hours or so.)

ugh. thanks jay and christian - but i'm still struggling through this. i reinstalled ascom 6.1 and now maxim DL won't connect to POTH Hub (it gives an error that it can't create the COM object) and TheSkyX starts up a second instance of Autoslew. i wish i could wipe everything clean and start over. this is such a nightmare. i guess it's fortunate that it's raining outside right now, and so i'm not missing the sky.. christian, i went ahead and purchased the Pro version of TheSkyX because i'm going to try your method of connecting Maxim and TSX. it's downloading right now (slowly - it's 1.3GB!) but i'm curious about when you say "In TSX telescope control connect via "ascom mount" and choose "astrooptik server telescope" in my system, if i choose ASCOM in the "Choose Mount" dialog, it shows only "Telescope Driver" under the ASCOM menu option. and if i select "Telescope Driver" it produces an error saying that it could not find the driver. i've been using the TeleAPI "mount" instead - but of course, i still end up with two instances of Autoslew. perhaps i should update TheSkyX to the latest daily build and maybe the ASCOM mount will work.

weird. all the documentation for theskyx tells me i need to run as administrator - and i'm not sure if i'm running autoslew and sequence as administrator, but i'll check on that. jay - could you tell me what order you start your programs in? also, are you running windows 8?