After some time, I restarted playing with Ekos and Indi. The previous days, I had the same problems that I had a year ago. When capture a frame no star fields were shown, robofocus crashed all the time, camera crashed...
Setup: SBIG ST8xme camera w. internal CFW8 filterwheel, AZEQ6 eqmod, robofocus.

Today, I removed the whole indi+kstars, reinstalled it from the ppa, and installed the newest KDE plasma from the backports ppa of my kubuntu distro. Finally no more errors and it all seemed to work. It seemed the newest KDE plasma / Kubuntu upgrade did the trick. YES!!!

But I encountered some small issues for Ekos:

1) Focus Module in Ekos: when I choose the filter to focus and then click "capture", it doesn't change the filterwheel. When I use the sequence/capture module, or set the filter manually in Indi, the filter does change. The "Lock"-box in the focus-module is unchecked. This means, if you want to focus for a certain filter in the focus-module, you have to go to the indi-control-panel and select the filter there manually, then go back to the focus-module to focus for this filter. I think, when selecting a filter in the Focus-module, the focussing should change the filter to the filter that is set in the user interface.

It's also not really clear to me how to view the total CCD frame when I click "capture". The software seems to search every time automatically for a star. The total CCD frame appears for a few seconds, then the star is shown. If it runs flawlessly, this is probably handy, but when you work manually step-by-step and try to solve some problems, this is not very handy.

Also maybe a tip: it would be handy to have a running-wheel indicator on the capture-button to show that the image is busy being captured. I've seen this implemented in the Align-module, but not in the Focus-module.

2) Robofocus: I found that under the "settings tab", I have to set the 'Duty Cycle', 'Step delay', 'motorsteps per tick' manually. Even when the correct values were set correctly loaded and set from the loading of the driver! I had 1 time a robofocus that started to jump between values, but when I connect now and set the values manually, it works and robofocus driver seems stable and doesn't have it quirks. Maybe this is a bug, maybe not... Future testing have to make this clear.

3) Is it possible to have an extra button "warm up" button in the indi SBIG driver? Next to the cooler On/Off would be great. I know you can execute it manually in Ekos, but it would be very handy if I could warm up the CCD from the driver in the indi-control-panel.

4) In the Align-module, when the solver doesn't find the location in the first run, it will try to re-run the solver a few times again. Now, when the solver is 1st time run, you can click "Stop" in the solver control. When the solver is started again for a new attempt, then the Solver-control jumps back to the standard settings. The button "stop" is then greyed out, and "capture&solve/load&slew" are active again. This way, it's impssible to stop the solver from Ekos.

Otherwise, it's my impression that the software has improved quite a bit! Nice piece of work! I'll test further to use it on my "production" nights (still in windows).

1. Why don't you check "Lock"? If you do, then it switches to the selected filter. There are instances where the filter wheel changes, and the focus should focus on whatever filter currently set, and other situations where focus should only happen in a specific filter set.
2. Need robo focus debug log to investigate any issues.
3. Cooler off doesn't warm the CCD? That's what "warm up" does, just switches cooler off.
4. Solved in GIT!

You should not have to set these manually with Robofocus. What version is your control box, and have you run the Robofocus calibration routine? I suspect you did not run the routine, or that the routines calibration was lost, thus the firmware didnt know what to set for default values.

It is a very simple procedure to calibrate Robofocus.

As an aside -- I highly suggest getting away from Robofocus. It is not that precise, and will give you more challenges trying to get precise CFZ focusing than it is worth. If you consider replacing it, I highly suggest the Moonlite High-Res Stepper motor, which has less than 2 micron steps, compared to the almost 8 micron steps of the Robofocus.

I completely agree with Bill here. I had Robofocus before and once I tried MoonLite I never looked back. Unless Robofocus step up their game and release something close to the quality of MoonLite, it will be a very hard competition.

Completely agree, Jasem.

With slower F Ratio gear, step size becomes less of an issue to care about. The slower the optics, the more tolerance. The problem that people need to see is that telescopes are moving toward being faster and faster in terms of the optics, and Robofocus isn't going to change its game anytime soon. They have way too many government contracts to ever care about us lowly scope nerds.

What I really like about Ron at Moonlite is that he makes products for US, the astro imagers. His High-Res stepper motor is better than the Posi Motor from Feathertouch (albeit only by a tiny tiny nearly insignificant amount) but more importantly it does not commandeer your telescope in the way that Robofocus does. Go try to manually focus a Robofocus equipped scope, you will probably need to disassemble the Robofocus entirely. Now, try it on a Moonlite focuser, you turn a knob and disengage the clutch and get to use a super buttery smooth focuser all you want.

Why does that matter to the dude that only images? It probably doesn't. But for those of us that have really nice scopes, like my Takahashi TOA130 -- I like to do visual as well. Anyone would if they had this scope, its a dream to use visually!

Now pair all of that with the fact that Ron wants INDI to be successful. He wants everyone on every platform to love his products and to use them. His Nitecrawler doesn't have INDI drivers yet -- but it is really new, taking off like crazy, and he has already told me he has folks (mostly customers) working on the INDI driver set for the Nitecrawler.

Yeah my chips are not going in the Robofocus bucket. The sooner people get onto the Moonlite platform, the better.

Really? He told you customers are working on INDI driver set for the Nitecrawler? I communicated with him a few weeks ago asking for the updated set but didn't receive any thus far. If someone else is working on the driver, I'd like to know so there is no duplicate effort.

You would likely have more up to date info on that. He just mentioned it was being worked on, and mentioned a customer. Maybe thats you?

Yeah they actually just replied today and said will send documentation soon, so we'll see!

Tell him he should send you a test device

This is great news!

I did not ask Ron about the INDI driver yet, as I am waiting for more info on a NightCrawler prototype that may work for my Celestron OAG and EdgeHD 11. The support Ron has given is amazing. Ron requested pictures of my setup to understand more about the back focus. With luck this new version will fit the back focus for this setup, and I eagerly await the results and will check back in 3 weeks when the prototype is expected.

Perhaps the INDI drivers can be done in 3 weeks If so my pocket book will definitely be lighter.

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