Hello there,
greetings to the INDI team and forum members.
I am still considering myself just starting in astrophotography, even though have been enjoying my gear and ekos/kstars for almost 2 years now - learned a lot from this forum, too.
So, instead of breaking my head (and after searching the internet), I've finally decided to come back and ask for the expert wisdom on the following:
Apparently SkyWatcher does not allow to control the goto slew rate, always using the max 9 being the fastest and LOUDEST slew rate. People have been asking for it but Santa does not see it worthwhile to adjust the firmware.
This makes nightly sessions in my dense neighbourhood pretty stressful for me and my neighbours, and requires manual slewing to lower the noise.
So far I have found only the EQMOD Ascom driver allows to work around it - is the Goto Rate Limit, as seen under the EQMOD Ascom drive in the attached picture, available under INDI Eqmod?


Many thanks,
Mariusz

Hi Mariusz,

thanks for that request! I would like to see that feature too.
Reducing the max. speed of an EQ6 only a little bit reduces the noisy sound a lot.

I think I found the parameter in the code: github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty/blob/ma...i-eqmod/skywatcher.h
Code Line 141: static constexpr double MAX_RATE = 800.0;

However I'm not a coder and cannot change that parameter since I do not know how to compile.

So we've to wait if anyone of experts will give us that feature...would be great!

Regards,
Hardy

(Apologies, if published twice, but the editor has kicked me out...)

Hi Hartmut,

I am afraid it's not so simple, but would love to be wrong

as far I as I understand (explained in another forum by the EQASCOM author) the EQMOD ascom driver does the trick by simulating the manual slew for the most of the given distance and making the goto just at the end. At that moment the SW firmware takes over and selects the optimal slew rate, which is low for small distance (and always the max for larger ones). There is apparently no way to control this via the comms protocol/API, and SW did nothing despite multiple requests (although Celestron apparently allows it, so it's possible).
The referenced MAX-RATE is used in methods controlling the slew rate, presumably the manual slew rate, so it won't help to change it.

So, it looks like the only way with the current firmware is to trick the mount in doing the 'manual' slew, like EQASCOM is doing (the caveat being that this requires stable comms with the mount - otherwise upon a disruption the mount keeps slewing according to the EQMOD author).

Would be great to have a confirmation form experts and maybe entry points in the code where this could be implemented?

Regards,
Mariusz

ahh, ok, thought it`s just this parameter. When I used EQMOD under ASCOM I changed the value in the EQMOD config-File. There was an older version of EQMOD without the slider you show in the screenshot.
That was simple...

So let´s hope...