Hi Mark, I think that there was a setting in EQMod which enables accepting clock change. The error message is given on connection time as this is the moment when APT tries to send the current time. Maybe this is the reason not seeing it every time? Maybe the other profiles are using another mount driver? Statistics: Posted by Yoddha — Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:00 am ..read more

Hi Ivo, This deep dive into APT I'm working on is certainly throwing up a few things I need to work through but this one is the strangest I've come across yet. First the problem: I haven't been using the "Export PC time to ASCOM" option in the location setting but enabled it, only to start getting the message "Cannot set UTC Time. Exception occurred.". TimeError.png So I went investigating & found out that if I disabled daylight savings (which is currently active here), everything went fine & it still appears fine after re-enabling DST - not sure everything is right or the correct ti ..read more

Hi Mark, Don't worry, it's not a problem. Although astro mechanics gives me a headache , I'm fascinated by it. So, anything that can add to my meagre understanding is always of interest. Hence my reading up in the EQMOD/EQASCOM documentation. I hope I answered you question OK? I'm getting on a bit too. Cheers, Jim Statistics: Posted by JST200 — Thu Nov 02, 2023 4:23 pm ..read more

Hi Mark, I do, yes. The merdian "problem" is the same one that we have with Auto Merdian Flips. That is that generally we have to wait until the target RA is around 10mins (time) after the merdian to be sure it flips, rather than just slews across the merdian. With merdian flips the timing/position is critical, but for the Alignment model not so much. I apologies if I'm "teaching my grandmother to suck eggs" here, but... The Alignment model is only used to make slews more accurate. It has no affect on the accuracy of the mounts tracking. Since, with APT's PointCraft, we can get the poin ..read more

Hi Mark, I do, yes. The merdian "problem" is the same one that we have with Auto Merdian Flips. That is that generally we have to wait until the target RA is around 10mins (time) after the merdian to be sure it flips, rather than just slews across the merdian. With merdian flips the timing/position is critical, but for the Alignment model not so much. I apologies if I'm "teaching my grandmother to suck eggs" here, but... The Alignment model is only used to make slews more accurate. It has no affect on the accuracy of the mounts tracking. Since, with APT's PointCraft, we can get the point ..read more

Thanks for that Jim. I already use a 6 point alignment plan - two actually, a 6 point for imaging to the north & another when imaging to the south. The only problem with creating sync/alignment points close the meridian is that many mounts drivers seem to get quite inaccurate around the meridian. I think the reason is because the calculation between RA/DEC to ALT/AZ is quite complex and it's easy for small rounding errors to creep in. Ivo recently had to significantly increase the accuracy of PI because of PI based rounding errors. This is what I'm really interested in, so do you think k ..read more

Hi Mark, There's no celestial mechanics problem with creating sync/alignment points close to the meridian. It is close to the celestial poles that is the problem. I wouldn't create a sync point closer than about 10 deg (Declination) to the celestial pole. The problem with creating sync/alignment points close to the celestial poles is that the closer you get to them so the closer together are the lines of RA. So any RA pointing error gets more and more magnified the closer you get. Ultimately the smallest pointing error possible can create an RA error of 12 hours. I wouldn't create a sync/a ..read more

Thank you for sharing the solution and for the good news! Statistics: Posted by Yoddha — Fri Oct 27, 2023 2:55 pm ..read more

Coming back to this with news of "eventual" success. Initially i could not get this to work. Then i changed from the old Ascom Driver "Meade LX200GPS/R) to a new one which is pointed to from the Ascom Downloads page and is called "Meade Generic". This works well. Shift+click on "park" sets current position as park position and sets that in the LX200 handset. Click on park then parks the scope to the previously set position. A slight complication is that once the scope has been sent to park, it is necessary to immediately turn off the scope. If that is not done and I then disconnect scope wi ..read more

Hi Mark, Thanks for that. Really useful info. How would you feel about producing a specific post for the "Tools Box" section of the forum? It would be great of you could identify the setup steps (with screen captures if possible). Perhaps use a structure similar to my "Using EQMOD/EQASCOM with APT" post. With a bit explanation, the steps and any "gotcha's" (like the power fail) or whatever you feel comfortable with. I'd not, then perhaps we could produce one in some form of calibration? Cheers, Jim No worries Jim, will work up something over the next few days. Cheers, Mark Statistic ..read more