EQMOD Release notes: Changes since V1.12k


EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V112l

Bug fixes:
RA Limit reset was still being overridden to default position on start up. Now if you set it to 0 it stays at 0.

If EQMOD was maximised then the setup button pressed it would crash due to an unhandled exception  fix: handle the exception!

Fix to MoveAxis function such that in-progress slews take priority.


New features
The Slewpad from can now be resized and the associate controls will reposition accordingly. This allows you to have a larger (or indeed smaller) slew pad area to receive mouse clicks. Dimensions are stored
in the ini file so are preserved

Two new COM interfaces added SyncRaMotor and SyncDecMotor. These return the current motor position from the mount and force a synchronisation of the emulated positions maintained by the driver. The provision of these new functions is the primary reason for this release as they are useful in syncronising motor position with PEC capture and Playback (currently under development). It is likely that
to use these applications in future V112l or later will be a pre-requisite.


EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113a

The simulator and actual driver now use separate ini files. Find the sim files in  %appdata%\EQMOD_SIM. If you want you can copy ini files back and forth as much as you like.


EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113b

A new 'custom' interface to allow clients to instigate Sidereal rate adjustment without causing EQMOD to background poll the RA/DEC motor positions (the current MoveAxis interface does this). This interface may be subsequently removed once PEC has been fully integrated into EQMOD itself. 

The Custom Tracking Rate is now saved into the ini file on EQMOD load
and saved on EQMOD closure as per the recent request on this forum.


EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_113c

Integrated PEC playback. This represents the first stage of full PEC integration and allows tracking a PEC+Sidereal rate. 

Full integration of PEC with other EQMOD services such as pulse guiding, gamepad button support etc. have not yet be completed and
will follow in due course.

Some interface changes have been necessary to make space to add this
new feature. Hopefully this won't upset folks (sorry JonD but it had
to be done!):

PulseGuiding settings: Vertical sliders have been replaced by horizontal sliders.

AutoGuider Port Rate: Individual rate buttons replaced by drop down lists.

Alignment/Sync: AFFINE_TAKI+POLAR option added (removed from "Other Settings")

Slew Controls: Spiral search controls added (removed from "Other Settings")

Track Rate: Custom tracking controls added; PEC+Sidereal button Added.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113d

Changes from previous version as follows:

Bug fix to Autoguider DEC rate load from ini

PE corrections stopped on Park.

[Sidereal + PEC] button enabled on manual PEC file load.

New [Display+] button added to cycle through main status displays 

On manual PEC file load main status frame shows the PEC curve.

[setup] button moved to allow minimal desktop footprint.

Window now restores both height when setup is closed - If the user
resizes the  window (perhaps to show only the status display) then on
[setup] the window is expanded in height and width - on closing setup
the window restores to the previous size.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_113e 

"PEC+Sidereal" displayed when tracking with PEC (previously custom rate was displayed)

Joystick configuration modified to include PEC+Sidereal tracking button assignment.

Mount worm period is now determined automatically thereby providing PEC support for EQ5. The Worm Period is exposed via Com interface RAWormPeriod.

Sidereal rate stored and read form the EQMOD ini file. 

TimeStamp button added to the PEC display. When pressed, EQMOD reads the mounts RA motor position and writes it, together timestamp to the
ini file. This feature is included so that if third party software such as K3CCDTools or PHD etc. is used record sidereal PE it will be possible for PECPrep to use the position timestamp to synchronise the acquired data to worm position and thereby produce a PE file that can be read into perecorder for smoothing & drift removal. Whilst perecorder is the preferred tool for PE acquisition this may provide an acceptable method for those using camera types that perecorder doesn't currently support.

PEC + Pulse guiding changes:
When a pulse guide command is received the correction pulse is applied using the current PEC rate not sidereal. During the pulse period PEC rate calculations continue but are not applied to the mount. When the Pulse finishes the rate is set to the result of the most recent PEC calculation.

Sync mode and N-Star checkboxes have been replaced with two dropdown lists  "Alignment Behavior" and "Sync Behavior". Hopefully this will
remove some confusion over these options.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113f

Drift compensation slider bar. This slider bar  basically "fine-tunes" the RA motor tracking rate. However, not all mounts require RA motor speed compensation, thus you may have to leave the settings to 0.

The drift compensation slider bar settings are stored in the ini file 
thus this should only be a one time setting unless you feel the need to compensate also for drift caused by polar alignment.

Usage:

- Basically you move the slider bar to the desired setting and then click any of the tracking buttons. A positive value rotates the motor faster, a negative value rotates the motor slower.

- NOTE: You need to click the desired tracking button again everytime you change the compensation setting.

- The drift compensation settings also adjusts the custom tracking rate, PEC, Sidereal, lunar, Solar, and pulseguide rates using your target  minimal drift sidereal rate as the base rate.

- The RA compensation setting does not affect the mounts slews (spiral, gotos, joystick, pad).



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113g

Fix:
- Extend RA Compensation settings:  from -20 up to  20 (at 0.024 rcsec/sec per step)
- RA Compensation settings now also compensates  joystick/button/pad count slews
New Adjustable Eqmod Parameter:
Pulseguide Granularity Setting (Minimum Correction Pulsewidth) - The riginal minimum width setting was hardcoded to 50 milliseconds (default value).  Users can now adjust this value using a slider bar from  10 milliseconds to 50 milliseconds allowing correction pulsewidths as low as 10 milliseconds on the given guiderate.  PHD for example have correction duration values lower than 50 milliseconds.  The combination of PEC, Drift compensation and Pulseguide granularity settings would allow the autoguiding software to poke even "miniscule"  corrections to the mount from  0.1x up to 0.9x  of the sidereal rate. 
Users who are  comfortable with their own pulseguide settings should keep this value to 50 milliseconds.

EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113h
Uploaded a test version of the eqmod driver which improves the Stepper Emulator routines (used primarily for PERecording and PEC playback). Sidereal tracking accuracy is not related to this modification.

The versions prior to this release uses VB timers as 'software emulation' for stepper counters. The VB timers tend to lose their count accuracy whenever there are heavy processes working at the windows background and the errors tend to accumulate until the next sync operation because the stepper motor count is incremented based on fixed a constant on every timer tick.

Current version uses the PC's on-board hardware clock as basis for the computation. The VB timer here is now used to read the PC clock and convert its value to an emulated stepper motor count.

This version also includes the V1.3 Spanish DLL.
 


EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113i

Fix:
  - Pulseguide Interval setting automatically saved on Ini file upon movement of the sliderbar and not only on driver exit. 
New:
  - Added an "Auto RA Sync" option
Auto RA Sync function was initially applied on old eqmod releases and then removed when Maurice reported a drift when the mount is being polled at a regular interval of 200ms. However this drift is not known to exist on mounts on later versions. If ever the drift exhists, it can be compensated using the RA Drift Compensate slider bar (which is not available as user-define-able setting back then). Auto syncing will work best for PERecorder and PECPlayback without relying on the emulated stepper values as it reads absolute mount positions both during recording and during playback.
With this release, the auto sync function is made available at the user's option to enable it or to disable it. To make PEC work best on the two modes;
  - Auto RA Sync function Disabled:  RA value is generated using emulated (PC clock accurate) stepper values
     * RA Motor counter values are emulated here and less communication is imposed on the board avoiding any Comms drift. 
     * Mount has to be properly RA Drift Compensated for the emulation data to be  (tuned to the sidereal rate)  virtually "In Sync" with the mount's stepper motor counter.   PEC should become accurate at this point avoiding any "PEC drift" as earlier reported by Chris V. 
    *This setting will work best on old board versions (V1.05 and earlier) as the mount does not require RA Drift compensation and the emulated data is always in-sync with the true stepper counter data.
  - Auto RA Sync function Enabled: RA Emulation is disabled here as EQMOD reads the stepper board every 200ms
    * May exhibit a COMMs drift on earlier board version which can be easily compensated using the "RA Drift Compensation"
    * PERecorder and PECPlayer will be ALWAYS "in Sync" here avoiding "PEC Drift" but you have to watch out for the reported COMMs drift
If user is not using PEC, best option is to disable the AutoSync function. This to ensure that there will be no Comms drift regardless of board version. If user wishes to use PEC, both modes will work, you are simply required to RA Drift Compensate on both settings.  
The RA Drift Compensation setting is automatically reset to "0" whenever the RA Sync function setting is changed. This ensures that the user has to re-define his RA compensation settings.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113j

PEC: PE correction rates are now pre-calculated to ensure minimum drift remained caused by the quantisation of ideal rate into those the mount can recognise. Any drift induced by PEC can be assessed by using the EQMOD_RA_DRIFT_METER application with PEC running and noting any net gain over a multi cycle period (there will be cyclical drift due to the correction process). 

The PEC playback is now automatically resynchronised to the current motor position and so the [resynch] button has been removed.

An issue with earlier mount control boards not returning the number of worm steps has been fixed. If a valid number isnt returned then it is loaded from the ini file instead (default EQ6 value). 

PEC save now uses a file format compatible with perecorder version 1.0.12 or later. PEC file load has been change to accept perecorder V1.0.12 file format (earlier versions should also load).

Graphical tracking buttons are trialed with this version. Each button displays associated tooltip text (loaded from the various language dlls) when hovering over it 

EQMOD V1.13j includes French, Spanish and Dutch language dlls.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113k

Park/Unpark operation:
Individual Park buttons replaced with drop-downs list to select behaviour and single Park/Unpark button to action.

ASCOM Pulseguide Monitor: 
Avilable via double click on ASCOM PulseGuiding frame.

Pulseguide corrections are plotted across a time axis with the height/amplitude of the wave  determined by the duration value being passed to the eqmod driver.

Here you can easily visualize the characteristics of the corrections being sent to the mount. Sample of them would be oscillations or correction overshoots, undershoots (less aggressive) and no correction at all. The graph changes realtime depending on the type of modifications made to the guiding parameters. 

RA and DEC Correction Pulsewidth gain: 
A 100% gain setting means eqmod will apply "as is" the correction 
duration value as provided by the client autoguiding software. Anything below 100 will force eqmod to reduce the correction duration as a "percentage" of what the autoguiding software has submitted. That is for example a "75%" gain setting would convert a 100 millisecond 
correction to 75 milliseconds.

Motor Position Emulation:
EQMOD ASCOM now emulates the values in between the 200ms AutoRA
Sync sample. Previously clients requesting either motor position or RA/DEC coordinates may have read values up to 200ms out of date. New 'emulated' values are now calculated on request.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113L

Park status saved on DCOM termination, ASCOM disconnection and on PARK slew completion
Mout status now shows "PARKING..." and "PARKED" when slew is complete.

PulseGuide Monitor moved to one of the cyclic status displays. Individual zoom for RA and DEC axis.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113m

Addition of EQMosaic and EQTour quick launch buttons.

Spiral button replaced with graphical button.

Park/Unpark button now takes caption text from appropriate park/unpark dropdown.

Spanish dll updated.

Polar Alignment tool - Initial framework included for evaluation.



EQMOD_ASCOM_BETA_V113n

Additional error checking to Tour/Mosaic quick launch.

Form resize of Joystick config form (left bigger than it need be in an previous release)
