Gemini 2 Firmware Changes

• Many fixes for L6 PEC, works with PEMPro 3.10.05 and later
• Fixes for Southern hemisphere parking behavior, safety limits, and to limit computation
• New serial command 70 to fine tune tracking to an unprecedented precision

• Many fixes for L6 PEC, works with PEMPro 3.10.05 and later
• Fixes for Southern hemisphere parking behavior, safety limits, and to limit computation
• New serial command 70 to fine tune tracking to an unprecedented precision

• New firmware version with many new enhancements, including
• new servo motor PIC firmware to support 4x encoder resolution and improved runaway protection
• support for fast (satellite) tracking in both axes
• introduction of meridian flip points
• improvements to PEC management and storage
• improved HC displays and better network/DHCP management
• much more!

• New beta firmware to fix the issue caused by very short slews

• New main unit firmware to to support the new G11T and G811 mount combinations.
• This new firmware supports all the older mounts except the Titan 25 (only 1 exists), which has been removed from this firmware.

• New main unit firmware to improve the GoTos (starting the RA axis one second after the DEC axis to reduce current drain.
• Improve satellite tracking by getting rid of leap-frogging.
• Getting rid of the worm contact problems by slightly overshooting targets to the East then stopping and moving to the west at centering speed till target is reached, then continuing at sidereal speed. This will ensure gears are fully messed at start of sidereal tracking.
• Implemented an Network Time Protocol (NTP) to receive time/date from the many NIST Internet Time Services for time/date setting at startup and over the web interface. See
  • HC time/date
  • web-NTP
  • web network
  • web site/time
  If a NIST Internet Time Server IP address has been set up in the Gemini-2 Network Web page, then at boot up, the Gemini-2 will go out to that NIST Internet Time Server IP address and get the current UTC Time and Date.

• Barnard catalogs and a revised LDN_EN with additional objects added.
• Small change to hand controller to allow proper display of Barnard catalog.

• Main web pages updated to show new firmware dates.
• The Gemini Firmware Update (GFU) program removed from Web interface.

• Polar Align Correction (PAC) has further fine tuning done.
  Please note that PAC is not going to get you as close as a drift alignment. It will probably get you within 5 arc-minutes. For more polar alignment methods' please see
  "Manuals/Tips/Misc"-->"Polar Alignment Tips"

• Hand-Controller update: A checkbox has been added to the PEC menu which will allow PEC to start with tracking if checked.
• At the bottom of the Park screen, is a new button called Park Modes. It will take you to a new screen that will let you select how you get out of a parked condition. See Park screen and Park mode.

• Hand-Controller update: A new System Screen that replaces the Site Screen. This screen adds some control to the HC that has previously only been in the Web interface. This is mainly the ability to:
  1. Store the SRAM contents into the Micro SD card of the main unit
  2. The ability to reload these stored values
  3. The ability to reset the Gemini-2 to Default HGM200 values
  At the top of the screen is buttons to go to previous "Site," "Time," and "Network" screens.  You can see this in the Hand Controller Tutorial.

• Option to start Periodic Error Correction (PEC) when when tracking starts. Only from the Function page of the main unit Web interface at this time. A new version of the ASCOM Gemini.net driver now supports this feature.  It is under Tracking on the Advanced Menu. The ASCOM manual was also updated.
• Fixed a state bug in the PEC routine that stopped PEC when least expected.
• New Serial commands added:
  • 51 - Return 0 for original Gemini-2, Return 1 for Gemini-2 Mini.
  • 321 - Return Main Battery Voltage in Volts, This is floating Point value.
  • 322 - Return Lithium battery Voltage in Volts. This is floating Point value.
  • 508 - Enable (1) or disable (0) PEC Playback at boot time, if PEC data is available.

• The Hand Controller info page page now tells you what processor is being used.  This indicates which model of hand controller you have.  If it says "Himax Graphic chip detected"  under the build date, then you have the new version the Losmandy designed from scratch. This version started shipping sometime in 2012.  If it says anything else, or does not say anything then you have one of the older versions.
• The HC screen for the newer version (Himax Graphic chip, Green PCB) of the hand controller can be rotated 180°.  Use the Menu-->HC-->Display screen, and at the bottom of the screen is a place to put a checkmark to flip the screen.  Once this is done, for it to stay you have to hit the "Back" button then "Store Setting". Caution: Screen Calibration has to be done in non-flipped mode. Example page.   The screen calibration must never be done when the screen is in the flipped mode (cord coming out the top).

• Bug fix of the hand controller Clock Frequency fixed. The Time displayed on the lower right of the main screen should remain constant now. The main unit time is what all GOTO are calculated from, and it maintains correct time. Only the hand controller had this bug.
• Bug fix: The hash, CR, LF, NL signs of object information of catalog objects are no longer displayed.
• The hand controller has new battery warning screens. There are two, a yellow one for when the Battery is between 2.7V and 2.5V, and red if battery is 2.5V or less. They stay on the screen for about 40 Seconds.
  You must have updated the main unit to Level 5.2, 23 June 2015 or newer firmware for these to work. If you have not then you will get a message from the hand controller to update the main board firmware. The hand controller version must also be V1.2 dated 5 July 2015 or newer.

• Videos Losmandy produced.
• Mobile Hand Controller.

• When the Gemini-2 Mini was released, René made the necessary changes to support it's wiring changes. He also made it backwards compatible with the Original Gemini-2 versions. No changes was made to add and features or fix anything except the wiring changes for the Gemini-2 Mini.

• Gemini Firmware Updater is now also stored on the micro SD card, and can be installed from the Gemini-2 onto your computer (Windows only for this version).

  It is selected from Tab GFU, of the Web interface and makes no change in version dates.

• Fix the Start tracking in the web interface for all three stop modes
• A new script that sets all three passwords from the given input. The telnet password can be changed by using telnet, no separate change is possible for ftp yet.
• A German page updated to show motor cgi page published.

• The modeling unctions have been updated to fix a bug in the hand controller.

• The buttons on the classic hand controller have been made to react the same as they did with the Gemini-1 system.

• Corrections to HC Bookmark screen and HC cosmetics
• The delete model buttons now only delete the selected model, either east or west. This is implemented in both the hand controller and the web interface.

• Adaptive tracking on the HC. If you GOTO Sun, tracking is changed to Solar, for Moon to Lunar, all other objects to Sidereal.
• Limited Comet Tracking is implemented.
  Comet Tracking - On hand controller Menu-->Track-->Comet/User Defined
• The tactile buttons on the back of the hand controller are now active in the Balance menu and also the RA tactile buttons are now active on the Hand controller Limits menu.
• There have been many internal improvements.
• Micro SDc ards up to 32Gbytes now work in both the hand controller and main unit. Please make sure you use a premium brand, such as Panasonic, SanDisk, Toshiba or Kingston if you do.

• New parking levels 0,1, 2.
  While the mount resumed tracking in the former (now level 0) parking mode at every button touch, there are two additional parking levels.
  Level 1 allows that GOTO commands are executed and resume tracking.
  Level 2 insist on an Unpark command. This function is available at the HC, the GoTo button changes to Unpark as long as the mount is parked. It is also available at the Park screen, and in the ASCOM Gemini.net driver (1.0.51.0 and later).
• Serial status command <97 was extended (it returns 8 instead of 6 characters now, there's no change in the ENQ macro).
• Serial command 92 was added for managing the parking level. There's no selection for parking levels on the HC yet, it must be done using the serial command over a communication path, ASCOM or the Functions web page.
• Ruggedized TCP socket support. 
  The transparent socket access, using the serial commands, over the default TCP port 4030 has been extended in several ways. First, Keil reacted to the error reports René sent while trying to connect to Southern Stars' Sky Safari. In fact, SkySafari is programmed in a really cruel way that René now uses to shock his students: For each command (like :GR# or :GD#) a TCP socket is opened, then these few bytes are put into the output buffer and the socket is closed. Keil was not prepared for this behavior (although it complies to RF793), but now they are.
  It's evident (and you can watch the socket port numbers climb up quickly on the Network Statistics web page) that opening and closing several sockets a second doesn't improve SkySafari's performance, but this is the problem of Southern Stars. The iPhone 4 Rene tested with reacts pretty lame.
• There are good news about using Stellarium. This is a really nice free planetarium program that works on Linux, Mac and Windows. For Windows, there is a StellariumScope software available that connects over ASCOM. In René's tests it worked flawlessly over ASCOM and Ethernet. René started to work on a Linux driver, once available it should be possible to port it to MacOS.
• Since the transparent sockets are not password protected, René has added some features to switch them off (by setting the TCP port to zero) and to specify a peer IP address to reject all other hosts. In the future this will be possibly to specify a range of IP addresses (similar to a firewall rule).
• Protection for UDP: The same security measures (switching off by setting the port to zero and selecting a peer IP) apply here.
  The settings (both UDP and TCP) can be done over the Network web page.
• Sebastian Mrozek contributed professionally designed buttons for the HC. They replace the built-in buttons. (Aug 22, 2013)

• The HC has a new Balance Menu.  See Menu--Mount-->Balance (See note 1 )
• The HC now starts up in the Centering speed.
• The default mount type is now G11
• The Model building menus have been reworked.
• The Dec calibration and Dec guiding has been reworked.