robertp

Hello Tavi, I do not understand the error message either. Have you tried to run both Autoslew and MaximDL as administrator? Do you connect directly to Astrooptik.Server within MaximDL or via the DeviceHub? Best regards, Robert

Another option would be to use N.I.N.A, Gerald developed a wonderful plugin that works perfectly well from within N.I.N.A to create pointing-files without the need to pay for PinPoint and MaximDL. Hope that you will be able to resolve the problems and use the full potential of your great setup! Robert

Hi, any progress on your problems? It would be great if you could keep us updated so that everybody here can learn from your experiences, Robert

Hello Gerald, I just realized that there is a newer version (1.0.0.5) of your proxy. I uninstalled my older version (1.0.0.3) and now everything works as intended! Thanks again for your great support of the community, Robert

Hi Gerald, when I try to connect Nina to my DDM60 via your proxy hub, I get the same error message as Joha. Updating to Ascom 6.6SP2 did not help. I tried to test the proxy from within MaximDL and when I try to connect via the proxy, a window pops up asking for the type of mount: When I select e.g. German Equatorial, MaximDL disconnects from the proxy (without a visible error message). Here's what the ASCOM Diagnosis shows when trying to connect: Is there anything that I can do to help you track the problem down? Thanks and best regards, Robert

Hi, have you been able to work on your problem? Best regards, Robert

Hi, first of all I do not think that the tightening of the screws that fix the dovetail in the saddle-plate has any impact on the balance. But if you see a slight gap between the bottom of the saddle plate and the dovetail, that might be a dangerous situation, depending on the confguration. I did a quick sketch to illustrate that: Here you see three possible configurations. Number 1 and number 2 are safe to operate, as the dovetail is clamped properly in the saddle plate (if you have tightened the screws adequately). Number 3 is potentially very dangerous, as the dovetail plate might be clamped in the saddle plate, but could move down towards the saddle plate and then there is not enough clamping force anymore and the scope could slip out of the saddle plate and crash! So if you see a gap between the dovetail and the saddle plate all the way from left to right in my drawing and you do not have a dovetail like in number 2, you should very carefully unclap the dovetail, make sure that it sits flat on the bed of the saddle plate (like in drawing number 1) and then tighten the screws appropriately. I would really recommend to get into contact with somebody who is experienced with the correct setup of such a telescope. And in order to get a decent balance, I recommend that you do that with the final setup that you want to use. I guess you are planning to do images, so you really should intall the camera with all cables before trying to balance the scope. Otherwise the balance will be thrown off as soon as you change the setup.

Sorry, obviously you have to add weight to the south side of the scope, not the north side.

Hi, from your issues 1 and 2 it seems clear that there is a noticable imbalance in the scope itself, even though I would not have expected that to be the case (are there e.g. additional motors inside the scope that are off-center or maybe a finder scope?). So for the moment, I would recommend not to focus on the issues 3, 4 and 5 as they might be a result of that remaining imbalance. I recommend to try the following: Attach a smaller weight (around 100 -200 grams, use whatever you can easily attach with a ziptie, velcro or tape) to the strut as indicated in the picture below (but on the north side of the scope) and see whether that improves the imbalance. Try to alter the weight until the imbalance is gone and see whether that adresses all your issues. If your camera setup includes e.g. a filterwheel, that is not symetrical, you could also use that to fine-tune the balance in different positions of the scope.

Hi, there are locking screws for both axis. See image below. Let us know how your progress is, Robert

I guess the connection between the telescope and the mount looks like on the image below (or similar). If you loosen the screws marked blue slightly, you should be able to slide the telescope within the saddle plate. I would suggest that you do it with at least 2 persons, move the scope so that the counterweight is pointing down and the telescope is in a horizontal position and be very careful not to loosen the screws too much, otherwise you risk the scope to create very expensive noises. Be sure to really know what you are doing, otherwise get the support from somebody who is familiar with tasks like that or contact ASA. If your setup is not similar to the one in the image below, please post some pictures showing the mount/telescope from all sides.

One more comment: When balancing the axis, the goal is to make sure that the two red lines meet at the same spot - meaning that the maximum power indicated by the red lines is identical when moving the axis in both directions. It is not the goal to move the red lines as far to the left as possible. I would guess that if you have the dec-axis well balanced, the mount will draw about 2.5 to 3 amps when slewing which is absolutely fine given the high load and should not be a problem at all. During tracking, the current will probably be much lower.

That's a beautiful setup! The photos really help to understand your issue with balancing. In my opinion, the inbalance is very high given the fact that the graph is set to 7ams full scale. It is very likely that improving the balance will help to get rid of jerky motions and oscillation. What I don't understand: If you would have to move the weight higher, then the camera-end of the telescope is too heavy. So adding more weight to that shaft would increase the inbalance. So I see the following options: * Move the whole telescope a little "up" in the saddle plate - I guess that 1 or 2 cm would be enough to achieve a great balance. * Take off the DEC-counterweight completely or use a much smaller one. I would recommend that you attach the camera and everything you normaly use in an imaging session (all the cables and stuff), rotate the scope to a horizontal position (scope and the RA-counterweight shaft horizontally), put the small DEC-counterweight in the middle of the small shaft and then balance DEC roughly by moving the whole scope in the saddle plate and then do the fine-balancing with the DEC-counterweight. Let me know if I have a wrong understanding of the situation, Best regards, Robert

Hi, sorry for answering so late, I have been quite busy the last few days. I had a first look at your log-files and did not find a real clue to what the problem might be. In the log from 2023_11_8 the average pos-errors while tracking look ok and the currents are not indicating any problems. The only thing that looks suspicious is the following: If you look at the mag-angle of the Dec-axis (axis2) after the slew at 18:38 you can see that at the beginning the mag-angle is 231 degrees. At 18:42 it changes to 232 degrees, at 18:49 to 233 degrees and at 21:56 back to 232 degrees. I would expect the mag-angle for the Dec-axis not to change during tracking (at least as long as you do have a decent polar alignment, an up-to-date pointing file and no MLPT or guiding activated). I verified that in my log-files and always see no deviation of the Dec mag-angle. Can you post a screenshot of your advanced pointing control screen? In the log from 2023_7_26 I can see that between 20:00 and midnight before you did the tuning the position-errors were very high and fluctuated quite strong. While tracking, I seldom see a pos-error bigger than 0.06arcsec. The currents (especially of RA) are often very high, sometimes close to 5 amp, so it seems that the mount struggled hard to compensate the pos-errors. Aftter the tuning, the situation got better, but still rather high pos-errors. As this looks way better in the log from 2023_11_8, I guess that this issue was partly resolved. One last question: In your first post, you mentioned that you could not fully balance the scope in Dec due to not being able to move the counterweight further up. Is that a special counterweight sitting at the scope? A photo of you setup might also be helpfull. Achieving the best possible balance is really helpfull with our direct drive mounts, so it might make sense to try to improve that. Best regards, Robert

Hi Gerald, today I had an unexpected slot of clear skies and did a test with your NINA-plugin. I did a 20 star pointing-file and everything worked perfectly well! I did some tests with 5 minute and 30 minute unguided exposures and they came out great. Thanks again for your effort and the great plugin - no need for me to use Sequence anymore! Best regards from Ulm, Robert

Hi, have you tried to fine-tune the servo-settings at one of the specific positions where you get the oscillation? It might also be helpfull if you could post a servo-log file from your ..\ProgramData\ASA\Autoslew\ClServoLogs directory from a session where you experienced the problem. Best regards, Robert

Hello Gerald, amazing - I will try it as soon as the weather cooperates. Thanks alot for your great effort to prevent our great mounts to become an obsolete piece of hardware! Best regards and clear skies, Robert

Hello Anak, thanks for the interesting post. I installed ASCOM remote and set up the Astrooptik Telescope driver there. Within NINA, I also connect to the Astrooptik Telescope driver (is that correct?). During the initial connect, I don't get the date warning anymore, but I still get the tracking rate warning and the 3PPA routine stops after the first exposure due to tracking rate errors. Could you please describe your setup-procedure a little more detailed? I would really love to get 3PPA to work, Thanks and clear skies, Robert

Hello again, sorry, I just saw that you already did a clean installation (even on a different PC), so a corrupt ini-file can not be your problem. Robert

Hello Andrzej, very strange behaviour! I once had a problem with tracking speed being noticably off and tested everything I could think of. In the end, the problem was a parameter in the Cl-servo.ini file that obviously got corrupted. I only found it after comparing all entries in the ini-file against those of an older version, that I still had. The paramater was "Encoder Resolution per Revolution (or mm)" of the RA-axis. Somehow, the value was wrong which lead to the axis moving too slow or too fast. I had no clue, how this could happen but as in your case everything was fine and the next day the problem occured. When you did a new installation of autoslew, did you also delete all ini-files or did you just deinstall autoslew and then installed it agains? In the latter case, autoslew takes over the old ini-files. Maybe you can deinstall autoslew again, delete all files in ProgramData/ASA/Autoslew (or better rename the directory) and then do a clean install. Or if you still have an older version of the Cl-servo.ini compare the entries. Other than that, I can't think of why your mount should behave so weird. Hope you find a fix for your problem, Robert

Hello Tavi, Autoslew should not crash in W10 Pro. I have no problems using it under Win 10 Pro and under Win 11. Can you describe your problem a little more detailed? Best regards, Robert

Hi, could you post the part of the ClServoLogs-file for the time where the image was taken? Maybe that gives us a clue to what might be the root cause. Robert P.S.: You posted several questions and problem descriptions within the last few months and in most cases got recommendations how to fix the problem. Would you mind to also let us know whether those recommendations were helpful, whether the problem still exists or whether you managed to resolve it and how? That would be very beneficial for us all in case we see similar issues. Thanks!

Hi Mike, great to hear that you're back in business. As I also experienced problems with Sequence 2.1.3 and had to go back to 2.1.1 to resolve them, there might be a problem with that release. It also seems not to be available for download anymore. clear skies, Robert

Hi, when you open the folder of the pointing files under ..\programdata\ASA\Sequence\PointingPics\..., you should see your 50 fits-images (the pointing images) as well as a *.pox file (by default PointingErrors.pox). Is the pox-file missing? If not, how does it look like when you open it in wordpad? You should see something like the lines below. Best regards, Robert 11 "Number 1" "'2022-12-28T18:34:23'" "18:34:23" "5.0000000000000000" 4.4903444 4.49528668891238 4.949836 4.94971815440997 "1" "**************************" "Number 2" "'2022-12-28T18:36:50'" "18:36:50" "5.0000000000000000" 3.4736323 3.47595974694701 19.919851 19.921038150899 "1" "**************************" "Number 3" "'2022-12-28T18:37:05'" "18:37:05" "5.0000000000000000" 2.4149356 2.41708383420873 19.895396 19.8972852801236 "1"

Hi, you can change the two default park positions by clicking on "Mount" - "Park Positions" - "Set new Parkpositions". Then you get a dialog (see below) where you can redefine the position. Hope this helps, Robert