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Problems Aligning Celestron Evolution WiFi + StarSense (Solution: Update Your Mount And HC Firmware Using The Latest Celestron CFM Updater And Everything Should Work - Read On!)

Joseph Luciani

August 27, 2018 13:21

Answered

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Total frustration, please help!

History first:

2 night ago I was having complete success doing manual, three-star alignments with my Evolution WiFi using SkySafari 6 Pro, but couldn’t get close enough to target objects (at least 3-5 degrees off target). Tried numerous calibrations, nothing helped.

Celestron advised me to go to the Starsense HC and restore the Starsense Camera (i.e., reset AIS camera). Also, Celestron said that my trying to calibrate on Polaris was a problem.

Yesterday, I reset AIS Camera and also, for good measure, on the Starsense HC I restored defaults (don’t know if this was a mistake). After the restore, I reset the time zone to -5 (Eastern United States) and daylight savings. (Note: I didn’t do anything with the original Evo HC, should I have checked the time zone, etc. on that HC?)

Last night, I could not achieve a manual, three-star alignment (one exception is noted below). Typically, I would get two stars to align and then get a failure notice, i.e., “Alignment pointing error too large, please try another alignment.” I tried this both in Skysafari and Skyportal—same results. After numerous other attempts (perhaps 15 tries), Skysafari froze (wheel kept spinning). Then, went to Skyportal and somehow managed to get three of three stars aligned!!! I pressed “done.” After all this frustration, I decided to see if, in fact, I had finally achieved any kind of substantial alignment. I targeted Polaris on my iPad, hit Go-To, and wound up pointing more toward Cassiopeia rather than Polaris!!!

I simply can’t imagine what else to do….

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199 comments

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  Joseph Luciani February 14, 2019 20:12

  Daniel,

  Okay, a bit of clarification ( I really need a step-by-step break this down):

  1.) When you say, "when you perform the calibration make sure that the calibrated center reported is close to the calibrated center that the StarSense HC reports." I assume you're suggesting that I do this initial  calibration using the app? If so, are you saying that after this calibration is successful, that I need to then go into the app to see the "calibration that is reported?"  (I assume I find this number at: Settings->Setup and Control->Alignment->Calibration Info. Is that right?) 

  2.) Then you say check this value with the StarSense HC. A.) If I'm using the app, can I just plug in the HC and check? If so, where do I find the calibration value using the HC?

  3.) What constitutes a "close" value?

  4.) If the values aren't close, you say to try again. Why would this make a difference? The values change? Don't understand.

  5.) Lastly, whenever I've preformed a calibration with SkySafari, after the calibration the prompt, "you will need to do another alignment." What do I do? Ignore the alignment, perform it. Or do I simply check the values before doing an alignment.

  Thanks for your patience with this,

  Joe

   

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  Daniel Goodwin February 14, 2019 21:16

  Sorry for the confusion.

  You mentioned you have StarSense working with the hand-controller, and you have accurately calibrated with the hand-controller, correct? Just connect the hand-controller and write down what it reports as the center calibration. After that, just put the hand-controller aside.

  Now connect with the app and align your telescope. At the end, you will be prompted to calibrate. Do so and it will prompt you that the calibrated center is now xxx, xxx. Just check to see if these values are both +/-100 of the values reported by the hand-controller. At this point DO NOT ACCEPT THE CENTER CALIBRATION. And perform the center calibration at least two more times on different stars, checking to see if they are all roughly the same. If everything is good to go, then accept the calibration and make sure you are able to re-align.

  The part where you calibrate on multiple stars is just for my testing purposes, to make sure there is nothing else going wrong.

  -Daniel

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  Conrad Sanders February 14, 2019 23:06

  Joe,

  On your last question # 5.

  You should always do another alignment after the calibrate.  Once it's calibrated, supposedly if you leave the camera on the OTA, the next time you go out, you should only have to do the first alignment since the calibrate information is stored on the Star Sense camera or on the Apple Device if you are using Sky Safari.

  If I am wrong Daniel, please correct me but it usually always worked for me on the SS HC but lately not with Sky Safari which I am trying to address.

  Daniel, I will hook up my Star Sense Camera tonight and provide you with those numbers from the Sky Safari tomorrow.

   

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  Conrad Sanders February 15, 2019 13:33

  Daniel,

  So I hooked up my Star Sense Camera last night and here are my calibration settings from the Sky Safari setup.

  Sky Safari Pro - Center 7209, -6785

  Sky Safari Plus - Center 640,480

  Celestron Sky Portal - Center 640,480

  The last time I tried this was in late January and I was having all the problems when I was using Sky Safari Pro.  I had been using Sky Safari Plus for the past year and did not have any issues until January where I had to perform another calibrate using Sky Safari Plus because I had taken off my SS camera off of the OTA.  And that's when I started to have all these problems with the 'Too Large' message during the calibrate and final alignment. I then decided to purchase Sky Safari Pro to see if that would make any difference and it did not help fix the problem.

  I only see the Celestron.dat file on my Ipad for Sky Safari Pro and obviously the calibrate numbers are messed up which is why we have this problem.  I do not have those goofy numbers for Sky Safari Plus and Celestron Sky Portal because I did a un-install and re-install of the products so I would of lost that information.  But as you see above it looks like Sky Safari Plus and Sky Portal are coming back with 640,480 so I am not sure if these are the default calibrate numbers for the Apps or they are picking it up from the Star Sense Camera?

  If the numbers are being picked up from the Star Sense Camera, I can tell you that I do not have any issues using Star Sense and the Star Sense Hand control doing the initial alignment, calibrating on a star and then a final re-alignment.

  This problem all started when I took off my Star Sense Camera from the OTA and noticed that when I put the camera back on my objects were no longer centered and I read that you should perform another calibrate when you remove the camera.  So I did that successfully only using the Star Sense Hand control but never got it to work again with Sky Safari.

  There has been a lot of comments on this ticket and my head is starting to hurt on trying to remember what you have telling others to do to try and fix this problem.

  Can you give me the run down again what I need to do to try and resolve this problem once and for all?

   

   

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  Joseph Luciani February 15, 2019 16:36

  Daniel,

  Fantastic breakdown! You should be writing all of Celestron's manuals. I'll wait for a clear sky to test and report back

   

  Again, thank you for your clarity

  Joe

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  Daniel Goodwin February 15, 2019 17:25

  Hey Conrad,

  Yup, your highly erroneous center calibration in SkySafari is going to prevent you from being able to align. So delete the Celestron.dat file for SkySafari. This should reset your center calibration back to 640,480.

  Now same thing that I told Joseph: Align your mount using SkySafari, and at the end, you will be prompted to calibrate. Do so and it will prompt you that the calibrated center is now xxx, xxx. Just check to see if these values are both +/-100 of the values reported by the hand-controller. At this point DO NOT ACCEPT THE CENTER CALIBRATION. And perform the center calibration at least two more times on different stars, checking to see if they are all roughly the same. If everything is good to go, then accept the calibration and make sure you are able to re-align.

  Please let me know the results once you're able to test. Thanks!

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  Conrad Sanders February 15, 2019 18:02

  Daniel,

  I have a few questions in regards to your last set of  instructions.

  1.  I have always been told not to use both the hand controller and Sky Safari at the same time for me to check what the calibration values show on the hand control.

  2.  Secondly, if this is ok to do this just to check the values on the HC, where do I look for these values?

  3.  And Thirdly, why has this all of a sudden become a problem?  I used to be able to do an alignment, calibrate and a final alignment without any issues using Sky Safari.

  This is kind of going backwards to using the Sky Align hand controller when I had to manually center 3 stars to perform an alignment.  The reason I bought Star Sense was to speed up the process of alignment.  And if I don't remove the SS camera from the OTA, I can be aligned within minutes using Star Sense.

  Do you expect some kind of fix and where is the problem in Sky Safari or Star Sense?  Is your work around a temporary fix where I have to perform this lengthy process each time I go out or just the one time to get a good Celestron.dat file?

  I apologize if the questions have already been answered from the above posts but I would rather get the scoop right here.

  Now I just have to wait for some decent weather and clear skies to try this.

   

   

   

   

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  Daniel Goodwin February 15, 2019 18:16

  Conrad,

  There is an issue in all the apps which does not gut-check the center calibration value. That will be fixed in the next update. The issue popped up "suddenly" for you since at some point you had a bad calibration which can be caused by two things:

  1. Selecting a star to calibrate on, then centering the wrong star in the eye-piece, OR forgetting the step to center the star in the eye-piece.

  2. StarSense is not perfect and sometimes it solves a plate erroneously, and if this occurs during calibration, the value calculated will be highly erroneous.

  Once you accept a center calibration that is highly erroneous, it will never align successfully again.

  The process I asked you to follow is mostly for testing purposes for me. BUT if you do not wish to provide feedback, then all you need to do is delete the Celestron.dat file, connect with SkySafari, align the telescope, and calibrate after the alignment completes. BUT until I release the next app update, you will need to manually gut check the result, and DO NOT ACCEPT IT if either of the two numbers are outside the range of 0 - 1000.

  -Daniel

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  Joseph Luciani February 15, 2019 18:29

  Daniel,

  Following your comment to Conrad, I'm not sure if I need to delete the Celestron.dat file. Currently I can only report that I have managed to achieve the acceptable calibration numbers and achieved an Access Point connection to my iPad (haven't tried to align, etc.). If, in fact, I need to delete the Celestron.dat file I'll need some help. When I go to 'files' on my iPad and browse SkySafari I only have the "History Settings" and the Current Settings file. Neither bring up any specific files like the Celestron.dat file. Am I looking in the wrong place (same thing with my iPhone, couldn't find the file). Hope you can clear this up. 

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  Daniel Goodwin February 15, 2019 18:34

  Joseph,

  You previously stated that your center calibration values were: 9198-3581... which is way outside of 0 - 1000. You will need to delete that Celestron.dat. OR just simply delete and re-install the app. I'm not very familiar with how to delete file on iOS. Maybe Bill can help here.

  -Daniel

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  Joseph Luciani February 15, 2019 18:38

  Daniel,

  Okay, I realize that this thread has become quite difficult to follow, but I did delete and re-load SkySafari and that's when my calibration numbers were fixed. I'm assuming I'm okay now without deleting the file. Please confirm. And thanks again for juggling all these questions.

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  Daniel Goodwin February 15, 2019 18:40

  Oh yeah, you're good to go. The deleting of the file is simply to delete the bad center calibration value.

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  Joseph Luciani February 15, 2019 18:40

  Your lips to god's ears!

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  Conrad Sanders February 15, 2019 20:10

  If you want to delete the Celestron.dat file on your Apple Device, (i have an Ipad), just go into the 'Files' App and then in location select 'On My Ipad'.  I had two folders one for SkySafari Plus and the other SkySafari Pro.  Click on your folder of choice and you will see Current Settings, History and the Celestron file.  Hold down the Celestron file and then click on 'Delete'.

  Your choice delete and re-install the app or delete the Celestron.dat file.

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  Conrad Sanders February 15, 2019 20:14

  Daniel,

  Your statement:

  Just check to see if these values are both +/-100 of the values reported by the hand-controller.

  How do I check the values on the hand controller?

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  Daniel Goodwin February 15, 2019 20:18

  Conrad,

  Menu->StarSense->Calibrate

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  Joseph Luciani February 15, 2019 23:51

  Daniel,

  I never checked the calibration on my StarSense HC, it's +873, +708  The calibration in my SkySafari is 640  480 / Is this discrepancy a problem???  If so, what do I need to do?

   

  Joe

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  Conrad Sanders February 16, 2019 08:06

  Daniel,

  So I was able to get out tonight and do some testing for a short time with Sky Safari Pro and Celestron Sky Portal.

   

  1.  So the first thing I tried is I deleted the Celestron.dat file which had the bad numbers.  I did not delete and re-install Sky Safari Pro.  I started the alignment and before I even got to the calibrate option, I got the 'Too Large' message.

  2.  I then deleted Sky Safari Pro and did a reinstall and verified that the Celestron.dat file did not exist before I attempted the initial alignment.  When I got to the calibrate part, I centered on a star and did a calibrate and the number looked acceptable 840,230 so I hit enter to accept.  I then was prompted to perform another alignment and I proceeded and eventually I got the 'Too Large' message again even with the good numbers.

  3.  I then decided to try using Celestron Sky Portal for the heck of it and I got the 'Too Large' message after accepting the calibration numbers of 851,278 during the final alignment.

  4.  I went back to using the Star Sense Hand Control with no Sky Safari Ipad app and performed an initial alignment and a calibration using the numbers of 838,276 and everything worked perfect like last time I was out.

  So with the numbers being reasonable, why do I continue getting the 'Too Large' error message?

  I am ready to give up using Sky Safari on my Ipad and start using my laptop to control my telescope wirelessly.  Since that solution involves using the SS Hand Control plugged into the SkyFi III device, I am assuming I won't have this problem but I ran out of time to test this since the clouds started to roll in again.

  Please Advise.

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  Donald Swetzig February 16, 2019 13:11

  I am happy to see the SkySafari team pushing Celestron to get this sorted out and am looking forward to the release of the next version.   It would be very nice to finally be able to use all the tools in the toolbox for viewing sessions.

  How will we know when its released so we can update our systems.

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  Bill Tschumy February 16, 2019 15:57

  Conrad,

  You said:

  I am ready to give up using Sky Safari on my Ipad and start using my laptop to control my telescope wirelessly.  Since that solution involves using the SS Hand Control plugged into the SkyFi III device, I am assuming I won't have this problem but I ran out of time to test this since the clouds started to roll in again.

  If you have a SkyFi you don't need to give up using SkySafari on the iPad.  Just use the SkyFi and talk though it rather than using Celestron Wi-Fi.  That gives you the best of both worlds (IMO) since you can use either the hand controller or SkySafari as you see fit.

  This is not to say that we won't continue to work to resolve the issues with StarSense and Celestron Wi-Fi.

  Bill

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  Joseph Luciani February 16, 2019 16:20

  Bill,

  I wish I had realized that a second option would be to purchase a SkyFi device a two years ago! If the current situation doesn't get resolved soon and adequately, I'd like your opinion and feedback:

  1. Can this be used with StarSense? (if not no, how do you align with SkyFi?)

  2. With SkyFi, would I have the exact same capability the I am currently supposed to have using SkySafari on my iPad, i.e., ability to remotely use the iPad to align with StarSense, and go-to function, etc.? 

  3. Assuming you can use StarSense camera, Is there any disadvantage using SkyFi (in terms of functionality) rather than the Celestron WiFi?

  4. If all of the above are "yes" then what is the probability that I would have no calibration (etc.) problems? 

  I will wait for the "fix" before going down this road, but after almost two years, I need a plan 'B'

  Thanks,

  Joe

   

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  Conrad Sanders February 16, 2019 18:03

  Bill,

  Your absolutely right.  I did not buy SkyFi III to work with Sky Safari but to be able to use my laptop to control my telescope without any cables.  I was able to test SkyFi III with Sky Safari Pro indoors and I had good results.  I think my next plan of attack is to use the SkyFi III device with the Ipad using Sky Safari Pro and I am thinking it will work because I am using the Star Sense hand control and not the internal Celestron WiFi.

  I also have a license for Starry Night Pro and I have used Stellarium along with SkyFi III but again I have only tested these connections indoors. I have a few options here until the bug is resolved and I generally don't use the Ipad in cold weather since it's not very responsive to my touch and shutdowns rather quickly even with a power source. 

  What I really need is a testbed somewhere in Arizona !

  I will keep you posted with the results of using the WiFi solution using SkyFi III plugged into the Star Sense hand control.  It would be nice if this worked to give me another option of having to being outside in the cold using the hand control.

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  Joseph Luciani February 17, 2019 14:16

  Daniel and Bill,

  Last night I had a flawless manual alignment/calibration(s) using my iPad and SkySafari. My calibration numbers, however, seem odd, which is where I think you can help.

  FYI: My StarSense HC reports the following calibration: +873 +708

  1. My first calibration was done on Castor with the following readout:

  New: 875 696

  Old: 640 480

  2. My second calibration was done on Polaris:

  New -363 -7812

  Old: 640 480

  3. My third calibration was done on Dubhe:

  New: -6239 -2065

  Old: 640 480

  As you can see there is quite a bit of variation. I don't know what this means (?) I should mention that this was the first time I did not receive any error messages, frozen app, or connection issues!

  One significant problem, which I've never encountered before. While trying to center the above stars in my eyepieces, the left/right slewing (using my iPad) would create a kind of "hic-cup," i.e., it would nudge the star a bit and then the star would "snap" back to where it was. This happened over and over, every time I tried to get the star centered, the slew would refuse to slew smoothly (kind of heard a clicking sound from the mount with each "hic-cup") and after 5 or 6 "hic-cups" would sometimes slew a great distance messing everything up. Could this be the app? The mount?

  Thank you for all the help and feedback

  Joe

   

   

   

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  Daniel Goodwin February 18, 2019 17:30

  Joseph,

  Thanks for trying that out for me. Looks like SkySafari correctly aligned and calibrated the StarSense camera the first time. The error is greater than 30 degrees after that. I have some thoughts on what could be causing that and I will test it out tonight.

  And with SkyFi, you would need to align and calibrate StarSense from the HC, then connect to the SkyFi over the app to do gotos.

  Conrad,

  I have some ideas on what might be causing that issue. I will need to test them out tonight, before I can confirm.

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  Joseph Luciani February 18, 2019 17:45

  Daniel, 

  Good luck tonight. Do you encourage me to stick with my current Wifi before bailing and buying SkyFi. Guess I'm looking for some optimistic encouragement that this can and will be fixed.

   

  Thanks for trying to work this out,

  Joe

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  Joseph Luciani February 18, 2019 19:30

  Daniel, 

  Would there be any value in Celestron sending me a SkyFi III to test/compare with the testing in progress here in New Jersey?

   

  Joe

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  Daniel Goodwin February 18, 2019 19:34

  The SkyFi III is not a Celestron product, it's a Simulation Curriculum product. I cannot speak for or against it. But the one major difference is that with the SkyFi, you will need to align with StarSense from the hand-controller before you connect with SkyFi.

  -Daniel

   

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  Conrad Sanders February 18, 2019 23:38

  If the skies stay clear tonight, my plan is to finally test the SkyFi III device with Sky Safari Pro on my iPad..  Since my hand controller and Star Sense is working fine, I don’t mind performing an Star Sense auto alignment and then connect the hand controller to the SkyFi III device. The other benefit is I can still use the hand control if I need too (Fine Centering) since the Ipad touch controls don’t work well in the cold.

  i was doing some initial testing today indoors and going outside and the range was much better than using the internal WiFi built in the Celestron Mount.  This solution also solves my problem of needing to have my laptop outside in the cold weather.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

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  Conrad Sanders February 19, 2019 05:11

  My testing with the SkyFi III device was successful with using the Ipad and Sky Safari Pro from my 4 four season porch.  The range was superior over the internal WiFi built into the Evolution mount. The drawback with the SkyFi III device is that it did not handle the cold very well.  I had a full charge on the device and I hardly had it hooked up outside for 15 minutes and it died.  So I brought out my DB Power pack which has a AC power source and I hooked up the SkyFi device and left it plugged in to keep it from shutting down. When I brought it back inside to charge it, it was fully charged in about 5 minutes.  The temperature was around 8 above.

  At any rate, I have a work around for the Star Sense Sky Safari problem and I will continue to use it in the cold weather since I can work out of my porch with my ipad or PC.

  Daniel,

  I am willing to test your new code when it’s ready with the fix.

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  Bill Tschumy February 19, 2019 15:41

  Conrad,

  The SkyFi 3 should be able to handle the cold much better than that.  Next time you try it, check the charge before you go out.  After connecting to the SkyFi network you can go to 10.0.0.1 in a browser to see the SkyFi settings page which will have the current charge.