Astrotortilla S-L-O-W

[Oregon Craig]

Hi all,

 

Tried AT with BYEOS for the first time last night.  Managed to connect AT with BYEOS per the instructions on this website and all was well.  I had already played enough with AT using files to get a hang of it and how the settings worked, so the test was to see how well AT and BYEOS played together.

 

My issue is that as soon as I connected AT to my telescope (via ASCOM), AT slowed down to a crawl -- it became almost completely unresponsive.  Not completely frozen, though; if I tried to make an edit to one of the settings, for example, if I clicked and waited about 20 seconds the cursor would finally show up so I could finish the edit.  Even if all I wanted to do was move the AT window it would take five-ten seconds to move.  Most critically, when I tried to solve, BYEOS would take a picture, then after about two minutes AT would start reading the photo -- then start going through the index files agonizingly slowly.  I would always give up after five minutes or so.

 

All other programs ran fine even while AT was slogging away with no lag, and when I monitored my hard drive and CPU, nothing seemed maxed out, so I don't think I'm overtaxing my laptop.  Or am I?  I have a Windows 7 laptop with an Athlon E300 processor and 4 GB of RAM.

 

Any suggestions welcome; the combo of AT+BYEOS is too promising for me to just give up.

 

Cheers from Oregon

 

 

[xdw]

I'm using BYEOS, AT, and a Meade Astrostar on an older slower laptop without problems.

[Oregon Craig]

xdw --

Thanks, that helps rule out the computer at least.  Are you connecting to your telescope with ASCOM?

Craig.

[astroman133]

Craig,

 

This is probably not strictly a BYE issue since it is between AT, ASCOM, and your mount.

 

What mount do you have? Do you see the same symptoms with other planetarium programs that connect with your mount via ASCOM?  What else is connected to your mount at the same time as AT?

 

When not slewing, all AT does with the mount is to poll it to get the RA and Dec and some flags.  This should be pretty quick with no noticeable slowing of AT, unless there are issues communicating with the mount.

 

The app does become somewhat non-responsive when it is solving an image.

 

Rick Burke

[admin]

You can eliminate BYE from the equation very quickly by using an image file instead of having AT use BYE to take the image.  If it's as slow the issue is between AT and ASCOM/Mount.

 

Guylain

[Oregon Craig]

Guylain, I didn't think of trying to solve an image file rather than BYEOS while still connected to the mount, but I don't think it's connecting to BYEOS that's the problem; the slowdown occurs immediately after I connect to my mount (AP Mach1 using ASCOM).  I have connected the mount to Stellarium via ASCOM in the past and didn't notice any slowdowns then.  However I will try your suggestion to make absolutely sure.

 

Rick, when I was experiencing this issue AT was the only thing communicating with the mount.

 

Craig. 

[astroman133]

I did not think that Craig's problem had anything to do with BYE because he said that AT became sluggish after connecting to the telescope.  He said nothing about even trying to plate solve while AT was sluggish. 

 

As a troubleshooting step, I would suggest that he try disconnecting all apps from the telescope before connecting with AT.

 

I use AT connected to my AP900 mount with no problems.  The AP ASCOM telescope driver acts as a hub and allows multiple apps to connect to it simultaneously, so I have had Sky Tools 3,  AT, and my own "nudge" program connected simultaneously without an issue.

 

 

[Oregon Craig]

Guylain -- as you suspected, BYEOS is not involved at all, this is strictly an AT - ASCOM issue.  Feel free to move this thread if you like, since it appears I am officially off-topic here! 

 

But I did some trouble shooting: I tried to increase the priority of the process, that didn't help, AT remained extremely unresponsive.  Then I tried to run AT in Administrator mode.  When I did that, I got an error when trying to connect to the telescope, the error log said that there was 'no mount on COM port'  -- on the other hand AT didn't slow down.

 

Then, instead of having the serial-to-USB cable plugged into my USB hub, I plugged it directly into the laptop and tried again.  This time, I got results -- AT was ...better, its delay in responding to a mouse click was reduced to a second or two.  Very interesting!  Could the issue be related to some data transfer rate or data polling frequency?  But now I'm over my head...

 

Any other suggestions from anyone what to try next?

 

Craig. 

 

PS Go Habs!

[zelonisv_bob]

Hi all,

 

Tried AT with BYEOS for the first time last night.  Managed to connect AT with BYEOS per the instructions on this website and all was well.  I had already played enough with AT using files to get a hang of it and how the settings worked, so the test was to see how well AT and BYEOS played together.

 

My issue is that as soon as I connected AT to my telescope (via ASCOM), AT slowed down to a crawl -- it became almost completely unresponsive.  Not completely frozen, though; if I tried to make an edit to one of the settings, for example, if I clicked and waited about 20 seconds the cursor would finally show up so I could finish the edit.  Even if all I wanted to do was move the AT window it would take five-ten seconds to move.  Most critically, when I tried to solve, BYEOS would take a picture, then after about two minutes AT would start reading the photo -- then start going through the index files agonizingly slowly.  I would always give up after five minutes or so.

 

All other programs ran fine even while AT was slogging away with no lag, and when I monitored my hard drive and CPU, nothing seemed maxed out, so I don't think I'm overtaxing my laptop.  Or am I?  I have a Windows 7 laptop with an Athlon E300 processor and 4 GB of RAM.

 

Any suggestions welcome; the combo of AT+BYEOS is too promising for me to just give up.

 

Cheers from Oregon

 

Please forgive me for using this post from Oregon Craig to ask a basic question: How do I submit a post of my own (new topic) in this forum? I cannot find any button similar to the Yahoo site's "New Topic" button!

[xdw]

I use POTH / ASCOM  to connect.

[astroman133]

I am going to answer 2 questions in this post.

 

Yes, POTH can be used to allow more than one app to be connected to the scope at the same time. The OP of this thread indicated that he was using an Astro-Physics Mach 1 and since it is written as an ASCOM "server" use of POTH is not necessary.

 

To start a new thread. Select the appropriate forum, BackyardEOS for example, then click on the "New Topic" button at the upper right.