Major, potentially equipment-damaging bug

nebulachadnezzer

There have been plenty of reports of ASIAir guiding scopes (at least EQMOD scopes -- not sure about others) in completely insane ways, with GoTos that wind up pointing at the ground, meridian flips that never happen, etc.

However, in testing this last night I observed the AAP doing something it should never do: try to drive the RA beyond 24 hours!

In trying to get from about 12h RA to about 5h RA the AAP tried to drive my EQ6-R Pro the long way around, increasing the RA rather than decreasing. It knew it was doing it because it was displaying the current position on screen. I watched it count past 24 hours on RA and keep going. I canceled it at 29h because my camera was about to crash into my tripod.

This is simple bounds-checking in the code. This first-year software development stuff. Please fix this before someone's camera, scope, or mount is damaged by a crash.

Dr_Washington

I've been experiencing similar issues in the past few weeks. I'm using an Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro mount and notice it will slew past the horizontal limit rather than flipping around the meridian. This bug was possibly introduced in the latest version (1.5.3).

PMTeam@ZWO

Hi guys, if the GoTo was incorrect plz check the date/time settings and cause you are on the EQMOD way, ensure the mount is powered on at zero position.

nebulachadnezzer

The mount is powered on at home position, and ASIAir is syncing time and location from the app which displays both correctly when I start up. If I do a PA the AAP leaves my mount rotated ₆₀ degrees West on RA. If I slew South and do a plate solve, it's happy with it and syncs that to the mount.

Then when I do a GoTo it's completely screwed up.

The only fix seems to be to power down the mount and AAP, manually return to home position, and power back up. Then hope it works.

As noted, it tried to rotate my RA axis beyond 24 hours. It should have at least realized that what comes after 23h59m59s is 0h0m0s, not 24h-plus. I supplied this information in hopes of helping ZWO find this bug.

There are lots of reports of this on social media. It seems like it may have been introduced with the latest firmware.

suttonrog

This is a long running problem that ZWO refuse to acknowledge or test or come up with a solution. It had been an issue for over a year. It is a problem with syncing to the Skywatcher mount.

My workaround is:

Turn on Auto centre
Manually put the mount into the home position.
In the mount settings goto home. This makes sure the mount and Asiair knows where the mount is.
If the mount moves return it manually to home.
Use goto your target. It will then slew, take a pic, plate solve and then centre.
Never plate solve and sync to mount.

Rog

GooE

Are you, at any point, moving the mount manually by unlocking the clutches? I had a similar issue where the GoTo was screwed up because I turned the mount on, got the ASIAIR Pro powered up, connected, etc, and then unlocked my RA to pivot the scope sideways in order to view the built-in PA scope in my EQ6-R. Because I did that, unlocked it and moved it manually, the ASIAIR was confused about the actual position of the scope. Now, I get my rough polar alignment through the built in scope before powering on the ASIAIR. That has taken care of the problem I was having. Additionally, I have found that syncing the mount in the ASIAIR app when the mount isn't at the home position will confuse the app again. I never sync to the mount once the mount has moved after connecting to the mount in the ASIAIR app.