Gina

In testing the mount I found the observatory wiring was dropping volts and have traced this to the warm room power distribution unit and the power ground terminal which had come slightly loose. Low voltage would explain all sorts of faults.

Traced the voltage drop to the power distribution box in the warm room. This connects to the 13.8v PSU, backup battery and power lines to pier plus ground wire which goes to the pier top and earth rod. It contains a digital ammeter and three fuses. The ground terminal was slightly loose and may have been the problem. I've tightened it up and will see if the problem is fixed.

Now back to this project encouraged by the amazing weather. I have decided to use the EQ8 in my observatory for this rig. I may end up swapping scopes if I do planetary or narrow field DSO imaging but that will be later when it's dark enough and planetary may wait until the planets are higher in the sky. Currently I have a problem with the EQ8 which I'm now trying to sort out. I think it might be a power problem as the power LED has started blinking which means low voltage I gather. There may be a faulty connection in the observatory wiring as the voltage at the warm room end is 13.8v. I'm thinking maybe I should have a voltage display on the pier. That would be easy enough. Meanwhile I'll check with a DMM. There also appears to be a fault in the CAT6 Ethernet cable I have from the house to the observatory. The Raspberry Pi I'm using for control has WiFi capability but isn't capable of image capture at the high rates required for Ha solar imaging. All attempts at getting a mini PC working have failed so I may go for a laptop or even tower PC for image capture. There is plenty of room in the observatory.

Connection working indoors so I conclude that the CAT6 cable is faulty. I shall have to get WiFi working.

Have an imaging control box set up in the observatory but can't connect to it via CAT6 Ethernet cable so it seems like the cable has developed a fault. I'll bring it indoors and test.

Check all connections. Make sure all ribbon cables are fully inserted into the connectors. This is the usual trouble.

I expect to be adding to this blog shortly as I shall be building a new astro imaging control system from scratch and including installing 3rd party drivers and editing the source code to alter and/or add features. I have a spare Raspberry Pi 3B and an 8GB micro SD card. For setting up I have a spare keyboard, trackball and a small TV set I can use as a monitor using HDMI.

Been doing some thinking. What are the differences between the ASC indoors and connected by a CAT5e Ethernet cable and out in/on the observatory roof? I think tomorrow I might take one of my other astro imaging control boxes and check that out on the CAT6 cable. I will also be test the EQ8 mount again and see if I can make out what's wrong with it. I suspect it's the USB adapter cable.

Nuff 4 now! Tomorrow is another day week! I have never had this particular rig working over the CAT6 cable though I have had very similar RPi astro imaging rigs working. Maybe I'll do a new setup and get WiFi working - sometime...

Been out to observatory, opened roof, fixed ASC up on the ROR with the new spacers and that looks good - nice and solid. Closed roof and screwed control box on the inside, connected everything up and powered up. Came indoors and connected. Partly working only for a minute of two then disconnected with "broken pipe". Would seem it doesn't like my CAT6 cable. I suppose I'll get this thing working properly some day!!! I'll pop out again shortly and switch it all off.

Well... Unsoldered an unwanted connector, cleared out the solder hole (plated through) and moved the drive resistor onto GPIO6. The controls are now both working. It's just a bit annoying that the "Dew Heater ON" is LOW cooling and "Dew Heater OFF" is HIGH cooling plus the "Camera Cooling ON" means Dew Heater ON similarly for OFF. Oh well, guess it'll do for now!

I've checked that the files required are in their correct directories and that the CMakeLists.txt which is supposed to determine what's compiled, is correct. All this has worked fine in the past so I can't understand why it doesn't work now. I've edited source files and recompiled etc. many times in the past to add and alter features. I'm stumped!! I think I shall have to give up for now and just alter the hardware to make it work with the present software and pursue the compiling problem later. I may want to start again from scratch to build the RPi software system so that I can write the new blog.

It seems to be compiling and installing only libbcm2835 & indi_rpifocus and not indi_rpibrd - the one I want! gina@asc:~/astroberry-diy/build$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .. -- Configuring done -- Generating done -- Build files have been written to: /home/gina/astroberry-diy/build gina@asc:~/astroberry-diy/build$ make [ 80%] Built target libbcm2835 [100%] Built target indi_rpifocus gina@asc:~/astroberry-diy/build$ sudo make install [sudo] password for gina: [ 80%] Built target libbcm2835 [100%] Built target indi_rpifocus Install the project... -- Install configuration: "" -- Up-to-date: /usr/bin/indi_rpifocus -- Up-to-date: /usr/share/indi/indi_rpifocus.xml gina@asc:~/astroberry-diy/build$

Hmm... It doesn't seem to have compiled and installed the new source code. Checked that the source file is correct in the micro SD using cat remotely from Terminal. I'll check further after eating...

Source code edited to make it work correctly. There is a lot of redundant code that was added for controls that I no longer have. (I was going to have an open lens with a motorised cover but decided this was too problematic so went back to a fixed transparent dome). I'll test the current code and check that it works before removing the deprecated code.

I've taken the micro SD card out of the RPi and put it in my Mint machine and looking at the source code in the editor - the code agrees with the results! It isn't the same as the backup I have on my main machine which I have been referring to and has GPIO12 assigned correctly. I'm now wondering if somehow I picked up the wrong micro SD card when working on the ASC though I can't imagine how. Anyway, I can now put everything right.

The commands to compile the source code and install into the system are simply :- cd astroberry-diy/build cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .. make sudo make install sudo reboot I choose to edit the source code on my Linux Mint desktop using a standard editor in the GUI rather than using Terminal to the remote system.

GPIO6 is next to GPIO12 on the HAT so I could just move the opto-coupler drive resistor one position. OTOH I can change the source code and recompile as I should change the labels over anyway.

Results showing logic level of last 14 pins (2 rows of 7):- Powered up, code not running :- 1 000 000 1 110 000 Code running, both GPIOs OFF :- 1 000 000 1 111 010 GPIO12 ON - GPIO13 OFF 1 000 000 1 101 010 GPIO12 OFF - GPIO13 ON 1 000 000 1 110 010 Well, this is strange! No even numbered pins are changing, including pin 32 which is supposed to be GPIO12. I'll now refer places to pin numbers - logic 0 = white, logic 1 = green :- Both off :- 31 33 35 37 39 GPIO12 ON - GPIO13 OFF 31 33 35 37 39 GPIO12 OFF - GPIO13 ON 31 33 35 37 39 Conclusion :- GPIO12 is pin 31 not 32 and GPIO13 is confirmed as pin 33. The book says pin 31 is GPIO6. I can only conclude that my code must be wrong or somehow has changed. I should add that I have not changed the code and am simply referring to the controls as the reverse of the labels.

Spacers printed fine and pretty sure they'll be alright so back to the electronics... GPIO12 is pin 32 and GPIO13 is pin 33. The GPIO connector has 40 pins so the right hand end looks like this :- 32 34 36 38 40 31 33 35 37 39 Now I'll check the volts on these pins and change the control states and see what happens...

Designed and now printing spacers for mounting the ASC on the ROR.

The 28BYJ-48 gearbox stepper motors are small and very cheap but suited to light duty only. Generally speaking focusers don't need much power. However, my newer focuser drivers have used Nema type steppers plus A4988 driver modules and Raspberry Pi as I now use these for remote controlled astro imaging so everything in one unit saving a PC in the observatory. But they use the Linux INDI drivers (RPi uses Linux) and my indoor computer uses KStars/Ekos on a Linux Mint machine and many are unwilling to go the Linux route.

Yes, Dave's is a good one. Has the advantage of working with the most popular software.

New board is the same but I think I'm getting confused with the pin numbers ? Guess I need a break...

Pin is at logic 0 when it should be at logic 1 (0.005v rather than 3.2v) so something seems to have happened to that GPIO circuit. There are plenty of spare GPIO lines I'm not using so I guess I'll use another. Or I could swap RPi boards. I can try a new RPi board since I have a brand new unused one and see if that GPIO is working without plugging HAT onto it.