Using NINA with Seestar

bhauber

I've discovered there is an issue with the Alpaca 1.1.3 (and all prior) implementations that is causing an issue with NINA or any other ASCOM/Alpaca client. I have a sequence I've created in NINA that connects to all the Seestar Alpaca devices and then attempts to slew to the zenith. It connects to all the devices fine, with one exception. When it connects to the Telescope/Mount it throws a warning stating the mount's clock differs from the computer's clock by 217672901 seconds. Once the connects complete, it attempts to slew to zenith which throws an ASCOM Driver Error "SlewToCoordinatesAync" fail: fail to operate.

If I launch the app on my phone, and try this sequence again it success with no warning about the time difference and it successfully slews to zenith. The app is doing something, even when just connecting that allows NINA to function.

I rebooted the Seestar, connected to the Alpaca web interface (http://192.168.1.144:32323) and went into Telescope and hit connect and then went into Setup and it shows the date/time as 02/14/2019 07:15:02. I then repeated the sequence in NINA and the date/time STILL show the 2019 date. This proves that NINA is not able to successfully set the date/time, even though I have it configured to do so. I launch the app.. it connects... I refresh the Alpaca web page and the date/time are the current date/time.

To debug this, I ran Wireshark to capture the traffic between NINA and the Seestar and re-ran the sequence in NINA.

I was able to capture the interaction and saw this:

PUT /api/v1/telescope/0/utcdate HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.1.144:32323
Accept: application/json
User-Agent: ASCOMAlpacaClient/2.1.0.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 79

UTCDate=2026-01-07T17%3A37%3A02.4835738Z&ClientID=13731&ClientTransactionID=126

This shows the utcdate PUT that NINA is attempting to set the date/time.

I then attempted to perform the same utcdate command using curl to try and see if I could get anymore insight:

$ curl -v -X PUT "http://192.168.1.144:32323/api/v1/telescope/0/utcdate" -H "Accept: application/json" -H "User-Agent: ASCOMAlpacaClient/2.1.0.0" -H "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded" -d "UTCDate=2026-01-07T17:37:02.4835738Z&ClientID=13731&ClientTransactionID=126"

Trying 192.168.1.144:32323...
Connected to 192.168.1.144 (192.168.1.144) port 32323
using HTTP/1.x

PUT /api/v1/telescope/0/utcdate HTTP/1.1
Host: 192.168.1.144:32323
Accept: application/json
User-Agent: ASCOMAlpacaClient/2.1.0.0
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 75

upload completely sent off: 75 bytes
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
< Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 13:17:47 GMT
< Server: Kestrel
< Transfer-Encoding: chunked
<
Connection #0 to host 192.168.1.144 left intact
{"ClientTransactionID":126,"ServerTransactionID":6,"ErrorNumber":1279,"ErrorMessage":"SET_PI_SET_TIME Year 2019 Month 2 Day 14 Hour 7 Minute 17 Second 48 fail: invalid value"}

That error returned makes it seem like it's attempting to set the time, but ignoring the UTCDate value specified and is instead just substituting the current time (wrong) on the Seestar. NINA is transmitting the time in the ASCOM standard format (ISO 8601) . Either the Seestar Alpaca code isn't parsing it correctly, or it's completely ignoring it.

It would be greatly appreciated if you could address this so that I can use NINA without the need to launch the Seestar app.

marvindj

Nice debug and nice test case.

I've tried to reproduce your error without any luck. That is, I was always able to reset the time. My S30 seems to have a limit to successfully setting the date/time to 2022/01/01 0:0:0. Anything before that fails to set with error:

SET_PI_SET_TIME Year 2021 Month 12 Day 31 Hour 23 Minute 59 Second 59 fail: invalid value

I have the S30 at firmware level v6.58 (the current latest level). I connected to the S30's wifi network directly.

marvindj

How did you get your Seestar to have an initial date of02/14/2019 07:15:02 ?

bhauber

marvindj

The Seestar always boots with that date/time. It has no real time clock and relies on the time being synced from either the Seestar app or via Alpaca.

tech49

bhauber I'm having the same problem in NINA, but my error reports that the time mismatch is always in the vicinity of 3256 seconds.

I then have to click the settings icon (gears) in NINA's Mount tab to get to the mount's web interface, set the clock and then reconnect. This takes care of the error for that session, but the error will be reported again the next time I connect to NINA.

marvindj

OK. I had forgotten to disable Station Mode. My S30 boots to an initial date and time of 2020/02/22 21:43:28. I did not use a line trace but I did get the same slewing error and the NINA trace showed the date/time setting error.

The S30 does seem to cache location information.

curtismacc

Fortunately I have not encountered this problem. But I have had other off/on issues with making connection between NINA and all of the Seestar devices. Still have not figured out what is causing this, but it appears that doing a hardware re-set, i.e. holding down the ON/Off switch on the Seestar for 30sec seems to resolve this.

Software@ZWO

Hi, bhauber.
Previous versions of Alpaca did indeed have an issue where NINA failed to synchronize Seestar time. This issue has been fixed in the latest Alpaca version 1.2.0-3 and will be updated via firmware upgrade along with the Seestar app version 3.0.2. The app will be released soon, so please stay tuned.
Best Regards,
Travis