Stellarium hangs when trying to slew iOptron mount

[mcovington]

Stellarium 0.21.1, Telescope Control plugin, iOptron GEM45 mount with "old" (pre-2021) firmware, current iOptron Commander (for that level of firmware), ASCOM driver (called "2014 iOptron" if I recall correctly), current Windows 10.

When using telescope control, Stellarium reads the current position of the mount, but hangs when told to slew the mount (and the mount does not move). I have to stop Stellarium using Task Manager.

With the same iOptron Commander and ASCOM driver, Cartes du Ciel and PHD2 control the mount with no problems.

This has been discussed in Cloudy Nights (https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/715795-stellarium-ascom-ioptron/page-2#entry11262454).

[mcovington]

On rare occasions I have had the system work perfectly. This suggests a communication timing problem, uninitialized variable, or other error that is affected by things outside the software.

[rurmston]

I observe the same behavior with the latest iOptron firmware. Mainboard 210106

[rurmston]

I turned logging on and tried a few tests. For some reason there are two ASCOM mount devices listed in the drop down for the GEM45 (I see from the logs that one is 2014 and one is the 2017 version) Using the 2017 version I was able to connect but slewing was hit or miss and fairly random. Sometimes when I tried to slew nothing happened, other times it wakes up after a minute or two and move the mount. I was getting some errors from iOptron commander that an invalid slew request was made that was out of range. Here is what I see in the log file after my tests

[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
connectionType: 7 initString: "New Telescope 1:ASCOM:J2000:ASCOM.iOptron2014.Telescope:false"
Creating telescope "New Telescope 1:ASCOM:J2000:ASCOM.iOptron2014.Telescope:false" ; name/type/equinox/params: "New Telescope 1" "ASCOM" J2000 "ASCOM.iOptron2014.Telescope:false"
TelescopeClientASCOM::TelescopeClientASCOM with telescope name "New Telescope 1" and ascomDeviceId "ASCOM.iOptron2014.Telescope"
OleInvoke: Exception [scode: -2147467259 wcode: 0 puArgErr: 4294967295 ] GLE: 0
Could not connect to device: "ASCOM.iOptron2014.Telescope"
[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
[TelescopeControl] port name: "COM3" ; vendor identifier: 1027 ; product identifier: 24597
connectionType: 7 initString: "New Telescope 1:ASCOM:J2000:ASCOM.iOptron2017.Telescope:false"
Creating telescope "New Telescope 1:ASCOM:J2000:ASCOM.iOptron2017.Telescope:false" ; name/type/equinox/params: "New Telescope 1" "ASCOM" J2000 "ASCOM.iOptron2017.Telescope:false"
TelescopeClientASCOM::TelescopeClientASCOM with telescope name "New Telescope 1" and ascomDeviceId "ASCOM.iOptron2017.Telescope"
Initializing planets GL shaders...
OleInvoke: Exception [scode: -2147220469 wcode: 0 puArgErr: 4294967295 ] GLE: 0
OleInvoke: Exception [scode: -2147220469 wcode: 0 puArgErr: 4294967295 ] GLE: 0

[mcovington]

Mine is working reliably now with the latest firmware, drivers, ASCOM, and Stellarium. More about it:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/821825-success-stellarium-with-ioptron-gem45-probably-also-many-others/

[mcovington]

I am wondering if there's a hidden interaction with graphics. I've had the problem on laptops that were a little graphics-underpowered, using either Angle, MESA, or original mode, and there's a tendency for Stellarium to pause with a black screen when going into and out of full-screen, including doing things with the telescope control. The solution is to run Stellarium in a maximized window rather than full-screen. That eliminates the pauses. I am wondering if this practice, which I adopted universally, is also involved in getting rid of some hangs while slewing.

[github-actions]

This is a good task for the community to participate in the contribution into Stellarium. Who wants to help us?

[gzotti]

This is older than our reported issues around ASCOM6. If problem persists with Stellarium 25.4+ and ASCOM7, we keep it open, else we will close before V26.2.