Is your compass reading stable?

Bendak

Lately I've been unable to properly align my S50 in EQ mode, whereas before I had no issue getting it working with nice round stars at 30s subs. But now I have horizontal star trails regardless of how many times I re-do compass calibration, level calibration, and polar alignment. I have a theory that it's my compass acting up and giving me bad horizontal polar align deviation adjustments.

It would be helpful if people could go into their Seestar app and the compass calibration section where it shows a live feed of where the compass is pointing. Is your compass reading stable or does it fluctuate? Mine fluctuates +/- 5 degrees constantly (every second) no matter how many times I perform a compass calibration, and no matter how far away I am from magnetic interference (in the middle of a field).

This would help me troubleshoot to see if this behavior is normal because I've wasted nights trying to get this working.

Daemon42

Bendak You shouldn't really need to calibrate compass for EQ mode. Pretty sure it uses gyros to read the final adjustment angles because they're just too stable to be based on compass.
So far my keys to success with EQ mode (success being solid 30s exposures) is to align the tripod roughly pointed north, bubble level the base, get the polar offsets, adjust alt/az of eq mount until the the offsets are less than 0.3.. Then exit the EQ screen, come back to it, and get offsets again. Often it's already within spec (meaning the first one was ok), but sometimes not, in which case I do it again. Note if you request offsets again without leaving the EQ screen it's likely they'll be wildly wrong (thus any adjustment you make will move off polar alignment), so just don't do that.

starnet59

On my S50 (18 months old) the current compass value varies continuously between 82 and 85 degrees.

Bendak

starnet59 Thanks. Fairly similar to mine in terms of range. Does your EQ mode work well?

starnet59

Depends on your definition of well. It works better than Alt/Az mode, but I get the notorious vertical band instead. I average a stacking efficiency of about 75% in EQ mode, which is not bad, it could be better but I am happy with that.

I have stopped using Alt/Az mode completely, I do not use the SeeStar mosaic (or framing mode as ZWO calls it) at all, it never worked for me at all, it is a waste of exposure time in my opinion. I also stopped doing "live" captures and I only use both by S50 and my Dwarf 3 only in planning mode, because I value my sanity. Whenever I have a clear night I set a plan on each telescope, it takes me about 15 minutes to set them up and then I go to bed and collect them in the morning.

Lilo

Seestar's compas is very odd and unreliable thing. It shouldn't be used in PA procedure, but for some reason ZWO decided it should ))

Try this, my experience
Put ss in eq position, roughly by eye
Buttons direction up/down/left/right doesn't matter
Goto to any visible point in the sky in order for it to perform sync
Now go to the pa deviation screen
Move the numbers into green, no need to catch zeroes, just green
EXIT the pa deviation screen, this step is essential, do not press check again, just EXIT
Now enter it again. You'll see numbers different from the previous attempt. Hahahah, hello ZWO programmers))))
Repeat tuning, numbers into green. Now you could try to get numbers closer to zero.
Exit, enter, repeat.
Usually three iterations are enough.

Enjoy your eq mode! Since I discovered this method by trial and error I had no issues with tracking. Just checked 60s exposures yesterday, no problem at all.

Clear skyes!!