EQMOD PEC not applying between sessions

[Garbz (Chris)]

Has anyone had a problem where the PEC curve captured in EQMOD through pulse guiding doesn't automagically apply at the start of the night?

I'm running EQMOD with PHD2 and have no problem generating a great PEC curve. However as of late it appears as though the PEC curve no longer automatically loads at the start of the night.

My process for starting and shutting down is:
1. Boot up computer
2. Fire up all imaging programs.
3. In my pointing software I connect to EQMOD via ASCOM starting the EQMOD software which connects to the mount.
4. In PHD2 I then connect to the mount and my guidecam.
5. In EQMOD I unpark the scope and start the session.

Now I believe normally once you have recorded a PEC curve it should autoload the curve from here and go on imaging.

At the end of the session I:
1. Close PHD2.
2. In EQMOD issue the park command.
3. After EQMOD shows everything is parked I close the pointing software which also closes EQMOD as it is the last piece of software connected at this point.
4. Then I power down all my equipment.


Recently I have found I can not get a PEC curve to remain consistent between imaging sessions. The other night I noticed that my guiding was absolutely horrible and realised PEC wasn't running. So I hit play on the previously loaded curve and that just made everything much worse, so I stopped PEC and hit the record button. Some 40minutes later once 5 passes were recorded guiding was pretty sweet. Next night the same thing happened.

So the only thing I'm doing that may be slightly out of the ordinary is that I'm parking to a non-default position, but the software should be able to track that as it seems to remember where the mount is pointed. The other thing that may be confusing it is that my park position is slightly past the meridian. But again according to my pointing software it is tracking it's location correctly.

Has anyone else had a problem with PEC curves not remembering in EQMOD between sessions?

[Shiraz (Ray)]

PEC is a bit of a dark art in EQMOD. It doesn't work at all on my EQ8, but that may be something to do with the mount software - but how to tell?

In partial/possible answer to your questions, when messing around with PEC on my EQ8, it got into a state where tracking was not working and whatever was screwy was being stored somewhere to mess up future sessions (again, who knows what it was storing and where). I had to reinstall both PHD2 and EQMOD to restore it to normal operation - if all else fails, give that a try.

The other thing is that EQMOD will occasionally boot up with a Northern Hemisphere site location (or sometimes not at all). Easily fixed with a restore in the config section of the toolbox (provided that you have a saved config file in the first place).

But, minor irritations aside, it is still great software - I can't imagine going back to the handset.

[Garbz (Chris)]

Indeed. I wonder if at some point I saved something in EQMOD and it since doesn't know where the file is stored. I may give EQMOD a bit of a reset today.

It's a good day for it. .... clouds :-/

[RobF (Rob)]

I've had this happen often Chris, and always thought I hadn't save a default PEC somehow. The EQMOD guys (Chris?) visit IIS sometimes. Might be worth a PM, or posting on EQMOD forum somewhere? Sorry can't be more specific. Think there was a Yahoo group.