Asiair Pro won't finish calibrating for guiding any longer.

pemongillo

Calibration begins and east/west goes smoothly. It then takes about 35 steps to clear backlash. Then it begins the north journey which never ends and calibration fails. It seem like the Asiair is not sending any Dec commands to the mount. After several nights of failure I quickly learned some of the basics of PHD2 yesterday. Last nigh PHD2 quickly calibrated and started guiding. I got nice round stars after 10 minute exposers. Help please. Thanks

wvreeven

pemongillo What mount are you using? If it is an iOptron mount, do you use SkySafari? If yes, try without using SkySafari and see if that solves the issue.

pemongillo

I use sky safari, but usually just to search for things, not work the mount. So I am not using sky safari to guide my iOptron CEM26 mount.

Markus

pemongillo what you describe is exactly what is described in several other post and what wvreeven and myself happened. You write „usually“ which is not „no“. The issue you describe happens with some mounts (iOptron, sometimes AVX), when you connect SkySafari (and probably other third party software) to the mount via AAP. For iOptron one connect and positioning with SkaySafari is enough to get AAP struggle with any following calibration, a disconnect before will have no effect. The communication is in dissorder and you will see the backlash error. As said, probably you will see the effect also with other software you work with in parallel, sending commands to mount via AAP. I don’t see the error any more since using only (completely) AAP.
If the problem for you will not be solved this way, try the following workaround:

when error occurs, stop calibration
disconnect mount in the mount menue
wait a few seconds, connect again
sync to mount in mount menue
back to guiding and start calibration again

this worked for myself and several others.

Markus

pemongillo

Wow, thank you Markus. This could be the problem. I will definitely not "connect" if I have a look at sky safari. As a matter of fact I won't even turn it on next time. Astrophotography is so full of these little idiosyncrasies.

Markus

pemongillo I still use SkaySafari to plan my observation and look for star names needed in AAP for the goto for focusing near the real target, but never connect. This works for me now. What mount do you use? Would be interesting if this issue is seen also with other mounts than iOptron and AVX.

pemongillo

Yea, calibration and guiding works like charm again.

astrosatch

Just curious. I have gem45 mount and see
periodic dec spikes. Can this skysafari issue also affect guiding behaviour? Have no problem calibrating though.

Andrej