I've just set up a new observatory with a new-to-me, never used Losmandy G11G wiith Gemini 2. My goal is to control the G11 with Starry Night or Cartes du Ciel (I like both well enough). My first attempt to align solely within Cartes du Ciel on Thursday was something of a nightmare. Gotos were way off, but I kept trying. When I would center on the target star and synch in Cartes du Ciel, the program would not synch. Multiple things were going wrong and I was sure it was all due to user error. I've read the majority of the manual in bits and piecesSince I had been working out in the observatory for a few hours doing other things, I was tired, and it was late, I decided it would be better to walk away from the issue for the night and come back out fresh.?
Tonight, the weather was cold with snow showers, but I could figure out issues in the observatory. This time I tried to align first with the hand controller. I fake aligned on several stars in the east and one in the west, and I made "corrections" for the positions of the stars before hitting align so that the model parameters would change. I should note that I queried the GPS to update time and location, though both had already been correct when I turned the mount on. The gotos looked pretty good. Then I connected to Gemini.net on the PC and the model parameters on the hand controller matched those in Gemini.net. I had been unsure whether the alignment would carry over once I got to the PC, so this was comforting. I then connected Gemini.net to Starry Night and it showed my mount was centered on Dubhe, which was correct. I slewed to Betelgeuse and then pretended the mount was a little off on the goto and made some adjustments in RA and Dec to "center" the star. After pretend centering, I synched on Betelgeuse. Starry Night updated and centered the cursor on the map; however, my modeling parameters in Gemini.net did not change. I slewed to several other stars, making adjustments in RA and Dec on each slew and these modeling parameters stayed the same. I checked the box for "Sync does additional align." When I had attempted to do this on another computer indoors, each sync within Starry Nights updated the modeling parameters, but I never performed an initial align with the hand controller when doing this.?
Does Gemini.net not update modeling parameters it initially receives from the hand controller?
A fully separate question: Does Gemini.net read the GPS from the Gemini II Mainboard? Mine does not when I query through Gemini.net. For background, I am connected via USB and my hand controller does find the GPS when I query it. I also understand why Gemini.net wouldn't pick it up, but I just making sure my suspicions are correct. I do have a USB GPS module, though I doubt I'll ever need or use it in the observatory. This is mostly just a curiosity.?
Thanks for any feedback and please accept my apologies for the newbie questions. I've never had a Gemini-based mount before. It's like I'm back in the late 1990s using my first goto mount again. : )?
Regards,?
George
