Tom OD

Ah ok, we did not make any changes in the Config program. Tom

We did not change any PID settings, it was the Gain in the Mount Parameters tab in Sitech. Bottom right corner. We were 9 and went to 0.9, or vice versa I can remember The only oth4er parameter we changed was the Meridian Limit West to 10 for Over Pole. Where are those PID settings you mention? Tom

Yes i'll update the thread as I progress. As you say I 'll stick with what is working at the moment too. Tom

I sure am, although there still a little bit of work to do. I m relieved I don't have to send anything back for repair too. Yes its been a few months of pain. Now I hope to reap the rewards of years of imaging Tom

Hi Peter, I m up and running now thanks. Tom.

Finally some great news, the Mesu is now working! Massive thanks to Gav, Steve, William David and anyone else who responded to the thread. Gav was on the phone as I set everything up. We went through some settings which matched profiles of a working set up. Two values for Gain and Threshold were changed, and Encoders set from Polite to Ignore. My money is on that change, which I can test by resetting the other values, but finally round stars regular tracking, no more etch a sketch images. Next up is Guiding, then Sequencing a run. Oh the relief. I'll post the next progress as soon I reach that step. Hopefully tonight, as the weather looks good. Thanks again everyone Tom.

Thanks David, I 'll download these now thanks. Tom

I'll post screen shots of my settgins in case anyone spots something. I ve followed Steve Richards manual and set the Encoders to Polite. Then I have also had the advice from another Mesu user who is at Ollys to use Ignore. I m not sure why he went tht way, I'll quiz him on that. My co-ords on the Observatory between the CDC and SiTech might not be the same. One might be in degrees decimal while the other is in mins arc secs I think. That might be a conflict. Tom.

This will be my next test I think. Just keeping the software connections to a minimum. CDC will actually perform the slew, I cold see M13 almost in the centre of the field after the Slew. Pity it would just not remain tracking. Thanks Tom

Another update on this but its just pure frustration. I cannot get the mount to work with CDC. If I dont connect to CDC and just press Start, I get blind tracking. After about 3 attempts it will blind solve, but once I connect to CDC, then it starts the Slewing / Tracking alternation when I start to get the squiggly lines in the pic attached. Even after disconnecting the camera and mount and Sitech it still gave me Slewing / Tracking when i hit start. I had to restart the Eagle just to get back control. Nothing changed. It looks like I can not connect CDC and only get Blind tracking, or connect CDC and have it completely messed up with the slewing / tracking. I have no idea what the hell is going on here. This is really starting to [removed word] me off now. I ve gone from one ridiculous electrical / software issue to another ridiculous software / mechanical issue. If anyone can offer any more help I d be grateful, go ahead and dial in to the system and have a go yourself if you d like, as right now, and for the last 4 months I ve been staring at a shed that has just been sitting there doing nothing when it has so much potential. As it turns out today is the 40th Anniversary of Alien. My trackign seems to stencil out a pretty good Alien head of whatever star it thought it was looking at. Tom. Tom

At this point I could almost ignore CDC, and just blind track and use the Sitech buttons to send the mount to the RA and Dec that I wanted, once I could do a Blind Solve. At least I know the Blind Solve works too, or did last week before I connected the CDC to the mount. T.

Adding in the opto isolator seems to have too so far. I have a battery power supply ready to go in case further testing is needed. Tom.

Without CDC connected, it just says Blind Tracking. Seems that as soon as I connect CDC, that on Start or Connect in CDC, then it starts this Slewing / Tracking. I m waiting for clear skies to test this further. Tom

So I now have the Opto Isolator in series with the USB to the Eagle, it connects without errors. I m too nervous to try it ten times in a row, but its working each time I connect so far. So now I moved onto the next step (Gavs guide above), getting the Offset Init working and the mount tracking and slewing. I'll do the Cal Init later with a proper map of the sky. Last night I was just starting the CDC and seeing if I could blind solve. Despite the bright moon it could solve on Lum filter, but only if i took a 5s pic. CDC showed the cross hair on the map, and I just did a Goto M13 without any Offset Init. Again I was just messing about. Anyway the mount slewed for the first time and M13 was in the frame almost centered. So this was a big step. However when it was saying tracking in CDC Connect, it was alternating between Slewing / Tracking on the Sitech.exe program. See first pic. I tried again tonight, this time following the steps above, but it would not solve, so no Offset Init again. The moon was too bright and I was not Blind tracking on Start. Again it was Slewing / Tracking. See screenshots, so I had to hit "stop". I probably need to wait for the moon to go away to take a long enough exp without trailing stars, but any idea why its just not tracking when I hit start. Clearly the squiggly pic shows the mount is moving / making corrections when it should be at least Blind tracking right? Thanks Tom.

Thanks yet again William. When I tested the RS232 cable I removed the old usb cable, and installed just the Star tech serial to USB cable along with my soldered cable. This failed in the Eagle but worked in the Alienware. I also tested both Eagle and Alienware with a brand new fancy looking USB cable. Again Eagle failed but Alienware worked. I m not sure which model UPS I have. I'll get Olly to check the manual which I left in the Observatory. Olly has said there was no power failure onsite yesterday that he was aware off. Also I don't think I could have used Team Viewer to access my laptop as I m connected to the main observatories Network. While this is on a UPS too, the house feed which we all use is not on a UPS, so any power failure should have killed the net period. I think my UPS just kicked in, not sure why. Better be lucky than good right :) I think I'll take your advice and just run the UPS every now and again to cycle the system in case of a noise build up. The Opto Isolator will be ordered too. As soon as Farrell take card payments. Their website is not accepting my CC numbers. Tom

Well the latest update is very odd. I logged in today and the Eagle was showing a battery % and remaining time etc in the Ui. The eagle manager was the same version as before, I thought it might have updated the rev and added the graphic of the power %. I had 2 other astronomers onsite last week who I asked to remove the USB/SERIAL/RS232 cable and to remove the RS232 jumper on the board, and reinstall my new USB cable (which I had tested as working with the Alienware but not with the Eagle). Anyway now the Eagle connected 10x with the battery running. I figured maybe the UPS had kicked in during a power cut or disconnection, and again later after the AC came back on it connected 10x without an issue. The Earth cable connection Olly added a few days ago, made no difference when I tested it. I cant understand why it works, but I d still like to know, as I m nervous it could return again. I fear we ve pulled a "Homer" here, a success through idiocy. Maybe I should not complain, but I remain cautious. I ve sent a few questions to the guys involved in the replacement of the cables just in case something was routed differently etc.. I'll still send over the opto isolator I think for installation just in case. More to come on all this I think. Tom.

Thanks William, That is an excellent summation. Post any battery testing we do, I think insulating the mount / Pier would require a full rebuild of everything. I m not sure that is an option, given the way we have got the Mesu onto the pier and bolted it all down. I would go with the second option, and the opto isolator. After Olly connected a ground from the Earth pin on the plug extension to the Mesu, I tried again, and it failed again. If I have understood you correctly, this would not work anyway, as we would be givng the stray voltage a path to ground this way, rather than isolating it from ground as in option 1 as you described. Time for me to ask Olly to charge the batteries Tom

I was thinking about the car battery too! I used one before as my dew heater power supply It could at least support a large current needed to fit the Eagle. Of course the caveat to this is that the power input on the Eagle is a CPC type screw in cable. In other words I would need to hodge-bodge up another cable for you with connectors to fit to the car battery. I'll update you on that progress. Tom

Thanks William, Olly has added an Earth cable from the mount to an Earth pin on a plug, so I'll try later and see if that helps. We don't have an oscilloscope as far as I know onsite. Is there anyway to try and measure the voltage on the Earth line with a multimeter, would it even give a sensible result? I power the observatory through a UPS system. So incoming 220v power goes to the UPS. Then the out puts from the UPS feed an extension lead. The Eagle and al other devices are coming from that power strip. Would the UPS not constitute a smooth voltage? If not I'll get a high Amp battery to test the Eagle. I have only been loading it with the Mesu as the Power load during my testing. All other devices were off. I need to read up some more on the Galvo Opto option, but I presume I could just solder one in Series onto the USB / RS232 cable. Is only one wire needed to have the opto isolator? Thanks Tom.

Hi Steve, It was an anxious few openings and closings of the SiTech before the error arrived, but with the Alienware connecting at least it tells us that the mount is more than likely good, once I go for the full set up that is. Yes I have your notes on the Below Horizon fix, so I'll be able to clear that Below Horizon I think once I get to that stage. Tom

Ok So I have an update on this issue. I m back from Ollys where I tried to test the RS232 connection. I brought my Alienware laptop with me as a second Host to test, and for each test the Eagle was supplying power t the Mesu. So using a New USB cable: 1) I first tried the Alienware connected to the Mesu. After setting the Comm port to 9 as that was what appeared in the Device Manager when I plugged it in, the SiTech Config program showed a Good Connection and it read the Encoders and other data from the Mount. I opened the SiTech.exe and it had the "2" errors Faking Servos, and Bad Comms, Then I set the Comm port to 9 in the Misc tab in the Sitech.exe Change Config tab. On re-opening the Sitech.exe 10 times in a row, there was only the Below Horizon Limit, and Not Initialised seen. All 10 times seemed to work as I think it should. 2) I tried the same with the Eagle and the new USB cable. I checked that the Comm port 7 was Set up in the Config file. However it gave the 2 errors the first time I opened the SiTech.exe program. Over to the RS232 / Serial to USB tests then. I had my cable made up, and I was able to confirm that the pins had connectivity with a multimeter. Harry Page and Taj from Sitech confirmed that the pins I had soldered were correct. I opened the cover and set the Jumper to one for RS232 comms. There was a large dead spider in there, so I did wonder if it had fried something when I first saw it. 3) I used the Alienware first with the RS232 and it connected through Comm Port 8 seen in the Device Manager, 10 times without issue. Just the Below Horizon and Not Initialised seen. 4) I tried the Eagle and the Comm port was also 8 (I guess that was it holding the port as Odd Socks said). It erred on the first opening in Sitech.exe. I power cycled the Eagle to try again in case it needed that after the Comm port change. It worked 5 times, but failed on the 6th attempt. The second time it has made it that far in all my tests. So in conclusion as I have not yet Initialised / Set up the mount, or set Cal Init, or Any stars having the Not Intialised and Below Horizon Limit seem normal at this point. This means that the Alienware can work on both USB and RS232, while the Eagle is unable to work on either setting of comms. As all tests were done with the Eagle powering the Mesu, power is not the issue given that the Alienware worked each time, every time. A friend has suggested that using the ComDisable feature may hold the port open and allow the comms to work. I have yet to try that though. If it does not, then I guess I need to remove the Eagle and go to another PC / Laptop source. Hopefully Primaluce can offer some help before any final decisions are made to the set up. Tom

I quizzed Harry on his pin out and he said this: "Ok you have it wired correctly , its just you are naming them wrongly ie your rx is actually the tx and your tx is the rx So go plug it in all will be fine Cheers Harry" Fingers crossed now. Tom

Thanks William, I think I may have it wrong now though. If the Host is the Mount then the Tx should be the right pin and I have it as the Rx pin the black wire from pin 2. I read it as the Host was the PC, and the From Host Rcv (Rx) so that is why I out the pin 2 there. Damn this is confusing. Now I have a way out of this. I have the other end of the cable and a second D style sub block. So I'll just wire up a second with Tx, Rx, Gnd reading right to left. Ahh heuristic Astrophotography Tom

Ok, finally I got all the parts, I think. I just wanted another sanity check please from folks. So I have the USB to serial cable. It has a Male D9 sub connector. I presume that the pins 2, 3 and 5 are Rx, Tx and Ground in that order. According to multiple google searches. I was unable to solder the jumper pins 4-6 and 7-8 as I did not have a holder to keep the 9 pin D sub in place. Will this be an issue not having those? I bought a second D sub in case I needed to redo this. So I soldered those pins, 2, 3 and 5 to the Black, Red, and Green which I read as being the order when the RJ plug goes into the RS232 Socket on the SiTech. When I say order, that's reading "the from Host" in the Sitech schematics as incoming Pins for Rx and Tx. This is the bit I need a second pair of eyes please. Thanks Tom.

Thank Steve, Yes I went very wrong with this I don't have a serial D style connector so I'll get the USB to serial connector, as per William's specs. The soldering is something I will do myself. Tom