Inverted world after polar alignment

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Marco Montella avatar
Good evening!

I wanted to share a recurrent issue that my friends and I have been encountering on occasion with our setups (we all run Skywatcher 100i/150i mounts with ASIAIR).
After successfully performing polar alignment, upon directing the ASIAIR to move to a specific target, the mount slews to a completely incorrect position, most often below the horizon. This has caused multiple instances of camera-tripod strike, unfortunately. 

We have not found a reliable procedure to fix these occurrences, but the following steps usually work:
Disconnect Mount > AutoHome with SynScan App > Connect Mount on ASIAIR > Manually slew to 3 targets not arranged on a line > Shoot-Solve-SyncMount on each

I am not sure what is causing this, but I suspect it may be caused by a slight sensor rotation (I am running 23° CCW) being interpreted as a large rotation (180+23° CCW) in an upside-down world, which would explain why the ASIAIR slews to below the horizon when looking for targets that are clearly above.

Has anyone here encountered a similar issue? If so, is there a reliable way to prevent it?

Many thanks and clear skies!
Marco
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Sam Badcock avatar
Have ya made sure your location coordinates are set correctly in the first screen on the ASIAir?? 

I wouldn’t think sensor rotation will matter at all in this case!!
Ethan Sweet avatar
I deal with this every night I run my rig.

My mount is the Sky Watcher SA GTi though, not the strain wave mounts.

I have not been able to find a solution. My workaround is I polar align, then turn off the ASIAir and force close the app.
I manually move (release the clutch and move by hand) the GTi back to "home" , then turn the ASIAir back on and reopen the app.

Once that is done I can slew to my target just fine.

If I don't force close the app and just let it reconnect after the ASIAir reboots, everything will still be "upside down" and the mount goes where ever it likes again.

So it seems like it's an app issue. Maybe it has to do with the EQmod driver?

I'm honestly glad I'm not the only one that deals with this haha
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Dunk avatar
Did you home the mount?

1. PA.
2. Home.
3. Go to target.
Stelios_Stergiou avatar
I think this is a skywatcher issue, I had the same in my Neq6 with ASIAIR and with StellaVita
Quinn Groessl avatar

Make sure your latitude is in the correct hemisphere. If that’s correct, what I would always do with my ASIAIR when it did stupid stuff like that I would unlock the clutches, tell the app to home it, then manually move both the axis home, and then lock the clutches. Finally I would point it to some random spot in the sky using the app controls and I would solve and sync.

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Marco Montella avatar
Dunk:
Did you home the mount?

1. PA.
2. Home.
3. Go to target.

Thank you for your answer! In the last few occurrences this has happened after doing a PA on the SE-SW direction, as I had no access to the north direction. I did input the Home command, which brought the scope back to a credible home position, but the next go-to nearly brought the scope to the nadir (and to a mount strike).
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Tamsyboy avatar
Hi @wasteland . I use the same mount and ASIAIR and used to have this problem too. What I did to solve it was to slew the mount back to the home position manually after polar aligning using the controls on the app (the directional keys). I then physically turned off the mount on the red power switch and disconnected the mount in the app too. I then turned the mount back on and reconnected it on the app. From this point on, I slewed using the app (no physically touching the equipment) and took a picture, plate solved it and the mount then knew where it was and could properly slew to its destination. I hope this helps and please let me know if you continue to have issues.
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