Help with set-up of Shelyak Dome Controller

[mhard26339]

Hi,

I have been setting up a Pulsar 2.2M dome complete with the Dome Rotation and Shutter controlled through the Shelyak Controller. The system is running through ASCOM and Maxim DL5. All is working fine, shutter perfect and the dome in isolation but whenever I click the box to synchonise scope to dome the dome moves off approx 60 degrees, stays at that offset and does not track correctly. In Maxim a similar problem compounded by the fact that the graphic does not correlate to the dome/scope position, 60 degrees out. It is all working BUT!!!!. Home and Park positions work OK but it will not happen with the synchonise scope button selected. this happens in ASCOM on its own and Maxim.

We have tried every setup configuration that we can think of, changing settings, Shelyak setup for dome actuation etc but nothing appears to solve the problem. I am certain it miust be something simple but we cannot find it. Has anybody else come accross a similar problem, if so would appreciate some heplp and ideas.

Regards

Mike 

[dmahon]

Do you have a GEM or an alt-az mounted scope? If alt-az not on a wedge, just use offsets of 0.

My home position is at 290 degrees. If I have my scope pointing at Polaris and my scope at "home", hitting sync makes the dome move to 0 degrees.

In fact, to work out where the home position was, I made a guess of 270, homed the dome, hit sync and then corrected my guess and repeated until hitting sync made the middle of the shutter sit right in front of the scope. It then tracked fine. Hitting sync should have the same effect as moving the dome to 0 degrees.

If your home position is accurate and it's still sitting 60 degrees out, I suspect one of your measurements is off. Is it telling it to move to 0 degrees but actually going elsewhere, or is it telling it to move to 60 degrees out? Oh, and check (with a torch) the little grey counting wheel isn't slipping - that will make it off as well.

It has to be set up twice - once in the scopedome program itself and once in the ASCOM driver setup for the Shelyak unit. Both need the offsets, dome size, home position, etc. and of course, you need to tell maxim (or whatever) to use the scopedome program rather than use the mount/dome directly.

[mhard26339]

Do you have a GEM or an alt-az mounted scope? If alt-az not on a wedge, just use offsets of 0.

My home position is at 290 degrees. If I have my scope pointing at Polaris and my scope at "home", hitting sync makes the dome move to 0 degrees.

In fact, to work out where the home position was, I made a guess of 270, homed the dome, hit sync and then corrected my guess and repeated until hitting sync made the middle of the shutter sit right in front of the scope. It then tracked fine. Hitting sync should have the same effect as moving the dome to 0 degrees.

If your home position is accurate and it's still sitting 60 degrees out, I suspect one of your measurements is off. Is it telling it to move to 0 degrees but actually going elsewhere, or is it telling it to move to 60 degrees out? Oh, and check (with a torch) the little grey counting wheel isn't slipping - that will make it off as well.

It has to be set up twice - once in the scopedome program itself and once in the ASCOM driver setup for the Shelyak unit. Both need the offsets, dome size, home position, etc. and of course, you need to tell maxim (or whatever) to use the scopedome program rather than use the mount/dome directly.

Hi David,

Thank you for your post, when I read it I realised what needed to be done ie setting the Home position offset, I went straight into the dome (well after the World Cup Final) which after much trial and error has now been done and lo and behold the dome syncronises with the scope perfectly. The only problem that I have now is when the scope slews the shutter position does not line up very well, in fact not at all in some cases; the dome follows but not enough. I guess that I will have to adjust the dimension boxes to ensure all is well. One problem solved,but another (the final one??) to solve and then we are there, nearling the end of a long journey. Thank you again David

Regards

Mike