IC1805, IC1848, Heart and Soul nebulae

After my last attempt to collect some data on these nebulae and SSD storage failure, I gave this target another go and managed to collect some data in my Bottle 8 backyard.

I'm still learning how to do things properly, and the initial idea of semi-automated acquisition put the bar quite high. After yet another failure to start the session smoothly, I found the reason of this, and it was incorrect time, date and location in my Stellarmate OS running on Raspberry Pi4. I had some issues connecting via mobile/tablet apps and they made my session worse – EKOS crashed far too often. This problem was addressed by a GPS dongle, which made things much easier. But still, I need to sync system date/time for correct timestamps in filenames.

Another issue I noticed when EKOS crashed yet another time just after meridian flip, thanks to the watchdog in Stellarmate. After that, it happened during dithering. And again, and again. It happened to be related to guiding, both meridian flip and dithering require guiding subsystem to adjust itself to new position. I tried to disable PGP (which should be quite nice if not crashes), and finally, I managed to get both dithering and meridian flips without any crashes.

I was a bit disappointed by the fact I was not able to use my tablet to run the session, but anyway, I've got the data and that's what important.

PS: I managed to run the session from tablet flawlessly the next night. Not sure what happened, maybe system/app update, but it works now.