Our CG5-ASGT does not support automatic meridian flip itself. Can we add automatic meridian flip in the "Mount" module by checking the Flip if HA > and setting it to something like 0.1? Is it really *that* easy??
My iOptron CEM25p does automatic flip. From reading the threads, again I can set Flip if HA > 0.1 and change the default in my HC to something like 25 minutes past meridian thus ensuring Ekos does the flip. Yes?
Quick answer, yes, use the flip option in Ekosset to 0.1 to 0.2 hours past the meridian. If you don't flip the mount will stop tracking when it hits a soft limit which is 6 degrees past the meridian for the ASGT and 20 degrees for the other Celestron GEMs.
My preference is not to flip without warning. I don't want the mount to take off by itseld when it feels like it. Flipping during a sequence is fine of course.
Last night while I was taking care of my mount, I noticed my wife's was getting awfully close to pinching a cable. I figured I'd deal with it as soon as I took care of whatever I was working on. Moments later, I heard a "pop" - the mount had over-rotated and was actually locked. I sent it home, then sent it back to M42. It flipped around *but* it could not plate solve - kept driving the mount away from the target. I'm hoping setting the Flip option takes this into consideration.
I had this problem a few days ago. For some reason the guiding (PHD2) was not paused or resumed too early or whatever. So the guiding kept driving the mount away from the target. It was a hard fight between alignment and guiding.
Small update - my wife's CG5 performed the flip flawlessly, waiting until the end of a frame to start, realigning after, and continuing imaging until the end of the session. Absolutely brilliant!
My CEM25p, on the other hand, not only failed to do any flip (even though I'd set the HC to something like 20 minutes and Ekos to 6 minutes), it got totally confused after I tried to do the flip manually (send it home, slew to target again). I wonder if this has to do with bad GPS data for some reason? If opportunity presents, will try again tonight.
If time or location are wrong, so will be the local meridian, and the scheduler/mount likely didn't think they were close to meridian. Did you check the reported hour angle in the mount tab?
In any case, make sure time and location are correct. If the GPS doesn't work properly set EKOS to upate the mount on connect (and set the values properly in KStars)