¶ Troubleshooting
¶ Nema 17
¶ Steppers do not hold (no torque while idle)
While turned on (even if idle) steppers should hold the camera and in best case you should not be able to rotate RA or DEC rings by hand (this is not the case if the steppers are turned off). If this is not the case for you, you should check following:
- Power supply is wired up and works properly. Use a multimeter or an oscilloscope for the measurements if needed.
- The E pin is connected properly from arduino to the driver. This pin enables and disables the steppers. If it is not getting proper signal, steppers will stay turned off.
- Stepper wires (between driver board and stepper) are connected properly. This is kind of trivial, if nothing is connected to the stepper, it wont do anything.
¶ Steppers turn only in one direction
- Check the D pin connection between Arduino and driver
- Is it wired to the correct Arduino pin?
- Is there a proper connection?
¶ UART audio test
If you use the UART one cable connection to your drivers and you notice that the steppers do not behave as you expect, do UART audio test to check, if the UART communication works as intended. In the file Configure_adv.hpp, there are lines RA_AUDIO_FEEDBACK and DEC_AUDIO_FEEDBACK.
- Set the first one to 1, upload the firmware to the board and you should hear the motor "sing".
- Then, set the first line back to 0 and the 2nd to 1, and upload. Now, the 2nd motor should "sing".
- If one of the motors or both do not make the audible sounds, most probably, something with the wiring is wrong. (If using break boards for the TMC drivers, please note, that the microswitches are used for addressing the motors, not for microstepping while using UART!)
¶ Steppers turn in the wrong direction
See Calibration to determine whether this is actually the case.
If you have determined that one of the axes is turning the wrong way, you can edit your local config (see FirmwareConfiguration) to include one of teh following lines:
#define RA_INVERT_DIR 1 to reverse the direction of the RA ring
#define DEC_INVERT_DIR 1 to reverse the direction of the DEC ring
¶ LCD Screen
¶ LCD screen doesn't show anything
If the upload completed and the RA drivers LEDs blink (for the BYJ48 steppers), the code is working. You will have to adjust the screen contrast via the potentiometer on the LCD. Turn the tiny screw on the small blue box until letters are visible on the LCD. This might take a lot of turns.
¶ LCD Screen shows something but not all
This can happen when the Arduino runs out of memory. Make sure you are on a supported device (Arduino Mega or ESP32). Check the output of Arduino IDE when uploading. If the program usage goes above 80%-85% or the data above 75%, you might be experiencing this.
¶ LCD Keypad buttons misbehaving
Sometimes (on some shields) the buttons act strange and e.g. LEFT triggers a DOWN (or other combinations). This is due to the shields being manifactured differently. Some shields provide different voltage levels on the A0 pin and OAT Firmware assigns them to wrong buttons.
To check for this, place the following line in you configuration_local.hpp file:
#define LCD_BUTTON_TEST 1
and recompile/upload. The display will now show the numeric value that each button generates as well as how the firmware will interpret the button. If one of them is off, make a note of the numeric value it generates.
Then open the LcdButtons.cpp file and adapt the thresholds of the following code lines (near line 90) to appropriate values (with some some reasonable paddings):
if (_analogKeyValue > 1000) _currentKey = btnNONE;
else if (_analogKeyValue < 50) _currentKey = btnRIGHT;
else if (_analogKeyValue < 240) _currentKey = btnUP;
else if (_analogKeyValue < 400) _currentKey = btnDOWN;
else if (_analogKeyValue < 600) _currentKey = btnLEFT;
else if (_analogKeyValue < 920) _currentKey = btnSELECT;
¶ 28BYJ-48 Steppers
¶ Motors not moving
If the motors don't move, or just vibrate but do not move, double check your wiring. If you are certain your wiring is correct, try switching the position of the wires 2 and 3. If that doesn't work, try different wires, they are sometimes broken.
If you are using a Mega, make sure you wired the steppers as indicated in the Mega wiring diagram and not like the Uno one. If you soldered the stepper wires onto the LCD Shield, the DEC pins will need to be increased by 40 (so 15 becomes 55, etc).
If you're using the Mega with the standard pinout according to the wiring guide, go to the a_inits.ino in the code and change the numbers for the RA and DECmotorpins as following: 22, 24, 26, 28 for RA, 30, 34, 32, 36 for DEC (yes, the order is correct). This is going to be automated in the next update.
¶ Motors STILL not moving / only vibrating
It has been reported that certain kinds of ULN2003 versions sometimes don't work as intended. Take a very close look to the small black piece on the drivers and the number written on it.
If it says "ULN2003APG" you may have one of those strange behaving drivers. Buy new ones from a different source. Tip: you can buy the IC only instead of the whole driver board, but you'll have to switch it manually which can be a bit hard.
¶ Motors turn in the wrong direction
See Calibration to determine whether this is actually the case.
If you have determined that one of the axes is turning the wrong way, you can edit your local config (see FirmwareConfiguration) to include one of teh following lines:
#define RA_INVERT_DIR 1 to reverse the direction of the RA ring
#define DEC_INVERT_DIR 1 to reverse the direction of the DEC ring
¶ Tracking
¶ Is it moving correctly?
You really should work through the Calibration to make sure it's moving correctly.
When you use either the LCD or the PC OATControl app, using the arrows to move the mount from startup should cause this behavior (in the northern hemisphere):
- Pressing Left should move the RA ring logo to the left (CW) and decrease the RA hour time.
- Pressing Right should move the RA ring logo to the right (CCW) and increase the RA hour time.
- Pressing Up (from home position) will move the camera lens upwards and DEC will decrease and RA will flip by 12 hrs.
- Pressing Down (from home position) will move the camera lens downwards and DEC will decrease.
¶ Mount isn’t tracking
If the mount moves when you set coordinates but doesn’t if it’s tracking, check the LEDs on the RA driver. They should be “marching” in a straight pattern. If they do, the mount is tracking, but keep in mind that the movement is extremely slow, too slow to actually see any movement. To test the tracking, leave the mount on for 10-20 minutes and see if it has moved a little.
¶ I have Star trails on my exposures
First check that you have correctly set RAPulleyTeeth in OpenAstroTracker.hpp. If you printed the RA pulley, you will need to change it to 20. If you purchased gears, count how many teeth they have, they usually come in 20 and 16 tooth variants.
If you have set this correctly and are still getting star trails, look at the direction in which they occur. RA Tracking speed errors will cause horizontal streaks. If this is the case, you should set the Speed Calibration setting to either speed up (make it larger than 1.0) or slow down (make it less than 1.0) tracking. Access this in the CAL menu.
If you streaks are not continuous, you may have bumped the mount or other vibrations may have caused it. Telescopes are very sensitive to vibrations.
If the streaks are not horizontal you may not be correctly Polar aligned. If you have aligned by Polar Alignment only, you may need to also do a Drift Alignment to get an exact polar alignment.
¶ Star trails after a slew (GoTo)
This is a common behavior. The gears in the motor have become misaligned and first have to overcome the backlash. Wait one or two minutes and things should be back to normal. Current firmware does account for backlash when using GoTo to slew to various locations, but not after a manual slew.
¶ Connectivity
¶ ASCOM / PC not connecting, connection timing out
Did you enable configure the ASCOM properties of the mount to use the correct baudrate and port? Note that plugging the OAT into different physical USB ports can change the COM number that it uses.
To find the right COM port, open Device Manager and look under the section "Ports (COM & LPT)". (Un)plug the OAT and note which device appears. If you do not have the correct drivers it may show up in "Other devices". Google the name to find the right driver.
¶ I can’t connect via Bluetooth
Yes, the current code base does not support Bluetooth. It is on our long-term plan of features, so it may come at some point in the future. The other wireless option is to use the ESP32 board, which support WiFi connectivity.
¶ OATControl doesn't find my wireless ESP32
Check both the PC and ESP32 are on the same network (2.4GHz only, not 5GHz!) and double check that it is connected from your router settings or with a wireless scanner app.
If it is still not detected, go to "Network & Internet settings" > "Change adapter options" and right-click & disable any network adapters besides the one you are currently using to make sure OATControl is broadcasting to the right one. You may need to click the Rescan button on the Connect dialog.
¶ OATControl can't connect reliably via Serial
There can be a number of reasons why OATControl can't connect to OAT.
- There might be another process using the serial port. Make sure that :
a. the Arduino IDE Monitor window is closed.
b. no ASCOM client is connected.
c. no 3D printer slicer is using the serial port (it's happened).
d. no crashed OATControl or ASCOM driver is running. - Check that you have the right COM driver for the serial chip installed; see the first point in this section for links.
- You might be using the wrong COM port. COM port numbers can change when you plug the cable into different USB ports or hubs. Arduino IDE detects and lists the devices it finds on the ports, use it to confirm you have the right port.
To make sure that connectivity is correct, use the Monitor window in Arduino IDE to connect at 19200 and once connected, type :GVP# in the bar at the top and hit Send. If you see OpenAstroTracker# appear in the window, everything is working as expected.
¶ OpenAstroGuider
¶ Exposure Time Bug with AR0130 Sensor
The AR0130 sensor has a bug where the exposure is not set correctly. An easy workaround:
- In PHD2, set the exposure to 0.5 or 1 second.
- Go to the camera settings (the little green camera button at the bottom), go to the second tab and set the exposure to automatic.
- Apply and let it run for 10-20 seconds.
- Go to the camera settings again and disable automatic exposure, then set the slider to the right most position. Then in the first tab set the gain to 100 and maybe very slightly increase the gamma.
- It should now be forced to its maximum exposure time, which is 0.5s. It should be enough to see plenty stars.
Note: Make sure that the slider at the bottom in PHD2 isn't too far to the right side. The max exposure the camera can do is 0.5s, but if you select a higher time in PHD2's main window, it will stack those 0.5s exposures to match your selected time. Recommendation is 2s (4x 0.5s stacked images).
¶ Add-Ons
¶ My GPS isn't finding any satellites
If you have the LCD, check whether the asterisk in the display is blinking. If it is not blinking, then the GPS unit is not communicating with the Arduino. Make sure that Arduino TX pin is connected to the GPS RX pin and the Arduino RX pin is connected to the GPS TX pin.
You can also skip this step (if you indoors, testing, for example), by pressing RIGHT. You then will get a menu asking whether to Sync (use the GPS), or Set (using buttons) the HA. Use the LEFTbutton to select Set and then hit SELECT.
It is possible to get a fix indoors, but it can take up to 10 minutes of uptime.
¶ Support
¶ How can I find and send logfiles?
For ASCOM Logs: In the ASCOM Chooser Dialog, check the option to enable Trace Logging. Then execute the action that causes problems and shutdown the app. Navigate to your \Documents\ASCOM\Logs YYYY-MM-DD\ folder, you’ll find log files in here.
For OATControl logs: Start OATControl and click on the Log Files button, this will open the logs folder which is in your AppData folder: C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\OpenAstroTracker\. The logfiles of you last 6 sessions will be saved there.
For PHD2 Logs: Navigate to \Documents\PHD2\. There will be a bunch of .txt files, containing either DebugLog or GuideLog. For troubleshooting your guiding, we are interested in the GuideLog files.
¶ Is there a support avenue?
Well, this is an Open Source project, so technically there is no official support. However, we will all try to help you as best we can, either on
- Discord server (preferred) (link) where we hang out and discuss the tracker (amongst other things, like 3D printing, weather, AP equipment, pandemics, etc.)
- Reddit in /r/OpenAstroTech which we might be slow to respond on....