Using manual slew controls breaking connection

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi, I am just starting to use N.I.N.A. software and i'm experiencing a problem. My telescope mount is connected using Ascom Mobile Telescope wireless driver. On several occasions while using the manual slew buttons in the software, the connection to the mount is disconnected in the software leaving the scope still slewing in whatever direction I was slewing to. All other software (Cartes Du Ceil, PHD, Synscan Pro, etc) remain connected OK. I have attached the log file for that session.

Kind regards, Paul

[Stanley Dimant]

Are you talking about the manual slew buttons in NINA that break your connection?

[Paul Mahoney]

Yes, that is correct.

[Stanley Dimant]

Sorry for the late reply, but can you check if changing the device update time in the settings to like 15s helps with your problem at least to a degree? It looks like your driver doesn't like being pulled for information while the mount is slewing. Can you tell me more about the mount?

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi, thanks for your reply. Is that the 'Device Polling Interval' that you are referring to?

The mount is the Skywatcher AZ-GTi mount working in Equatorial mode.

[Stanley Dimant]

Yes I am referring to the Device Polling Interval. Setting it to something like 30s should give you 30s of time where no new coordinates are pulled. I can look into disabling the update timer completely when manually slewing because that appears to be the issue.

[Stanley Dimant]

If you can verify that this helps not breaking the connection or it happens more rarely I'll make a pull request for a change to not update coordinates until the manual slew is over.

[Paul Mahoney]

Thanks for all your help. I'm going to set my rig up now and do some testing, then I will report back to you.

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi again, Just to let you know that I have been testing the manual slewing with the Device Polling Interval set to 30 seconds and I have not experienced any disconnection problems at all. Thank you again for all your help. Paul

[Stanley Dimant]

Okay, can you set the interval to 1 and do some longer target slew commands that aren't manual? Like slew to a specific target or something that takes longer than that time.

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi, after setting the interval to 1 I did a number of short, medium and long slews. The connection remained OK throughout.

[Stanley Dimant]

Okay that is super weird. I made a pull request for a change that will disable reading out the telescope information while manually slewing via NINA.

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi again, I cannot work out why I can't reproduce the problem that I had regardless of which interval I set. However I have found that when I change the slew rate quickly with the default interval or 1 set, the telescope disconnects. With an interval of 30 set this doesn't happen unless I continually change the slew rate quickly and for a long time. Not sure if this helps your thinking or not. Kind regards, Paul

[Stanley Dimant]

Hi Paul, now I'm even more confused. So manual slewing works without issues but sending slew speed changes too often disconnects the mount? I'd like to see the logs for that behavior too if you could provide them.

[Paul Mahoney]

Hi, I've attached two log files, one with the interval set at 1 and the other with it set at 30. Hope this helps.

Paul.

[Stanley Dimant]

Hi Paul, thanks for the logs. Could you update to 1.7.1.7 and see if the issues persist? Just want to make sure, you are running a "very" old beta here.

[Paul Mahoney]

Two new log files with latest version v1.7.1.7 Behaviour appears to be the same. Paul

[Stanley Dimant]

Hi Paul, thanks for your logs. I can't really tell what the issue here is except that we cannot fix it without breaking functionality (updating coordinates on manual slewing). If the 30s (or maybe less) device update timer solution works for you as a workaround that would be great. There is little downside to that solution except that all of your devices will report their status periodically less often. The issue that I see here is that the device kills the connection when we try to get the data in the forms of coordinates from your mount while it is doing another operation for whatever reason. This isn't something that we really can avoid since the connection break destroys our connection to the ASCOM driver forcefully. I will discuss a solution that will reconnect the mount when it senses are forceful disconnect but this is also a not very clean solution as well. I'll keep you updated.

[Paul Mahoney]

Many thanks for your help. I will experiment with interval times to get the best situation for me with regard to slewing. As far as the rate changes are concerned, it is highly unlikely that I would make such rapid changes as I did in my testing. Love the software in general and really appreciate the support you have given me.

Kind regards,

Paul