Help with BT2EQ5 on Windows 10

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astronate
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Help with BT2EQ5 on Windows 10

Post by astronate » Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:00 pm

I've been having intermittent issues with a BT2EQ5 device and am looking for troubleshooting advice.

Setup:
Intel Compute Stick (builtin bluetooth) mounted to scope
Windows 10 - 32 bit
BT2EQ5
EQMOD (1.26 and 2.0i)
Orion Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G on 120V AC power through Orion DC Adapter

I have no trouble pairing to the Atlas, no trouble finding a com port, and no trouble starting and running EQMOD. But occasionally I'll go to the EQMOD window and find EQMOD unresponsive (blue spinning circle). If CDC is running and connected as a client it too will be unresponsive. EQMOD log files do not show an error.

I can restore functionality by turning off bluetooth on the computer momentarily, when it reconnects EQMOD is active again.

I have disabled all the power saving settings on a per device basis that I can find.

Does anyone have suggestions of troubleshooting I can do? Windows event log files perhaps?

What's odd is that this is truly intermittent. I ran a couple hours a few nights ago without a problem, but last night I got locked up only after a few minutes.

I observed the same behavior on my old setup which was a Windows 10 laptop with external USB BT dongle (two different ones, an old generic dongle and a new ASUS BT 4.0 dongle).

I've ordered a USB2EQ5 cable to use in the meantime. It will become my backup if I can get the BT working.

Thanks,
Nathan

dpanderson
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Re: Help with BT2EQ5 on Windows 10

Post by dpanderson » Thu Feb 02, 2017 6:12 pm

I do know that occasionally users have issues with BT like this, but it is always difficult to track down the root cause. I believe it is because other processes running on the computer block the BT serial port and create a delay longer than the EQMOD software can handle, but I have no proof of this.

I always recommend a wired solution over BT unless there is a compelling reason to avoid wires.
Doug Anderson
Shoestring Astronomy
http://www.ShoestringAstronomy.com

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