Need advice on Dome Rotation

[tkozikowski]

Hi Everyone –

I’m in search of some suggestions and advice and apologize if this is not the correct forum but there are many of you with the same equipment and thought this would be help. I’m running ACP with my Maxome II board for observatory control. The dome rotation works great but upon using it with a script for multi-target slews I receive the following error:


==== Starting target NGC 3047 ====
Start slew to NGC 3047...
**Script Error (Tracking has been stopped)**
Source: MaxDome.Dome.1
Message: Could not send rotate command at line 2017 column 9.


It appears the command message that Maxdome II’s ASCOM driver sends to the dome controller is not acknowledging a returned response. The driver reports “Could not send rotate command” since it cannot get a correct acknowledgement from the dome controller.


I’ve been working with the folks at Diffraction Limited who have been terrific with ideas and suggestions. We just can’t seem to crack the problem. I checked the following:
1. Bad connections and cables (installed multiple new cables and connections snap in correctly)
2. I captured the port traffic and sent the logs to DL to see if they can determine anything from it


I installed a new USB-to-serial converter from a Belkin to a Quatech as I’ve known many Belkin products to be a little “flakey.” My next idea is to install an internal dual-port serial card to see if this adds any improvement.


The question I have is what are people running from their computers to the Maxdome II board that’s been reliable (especially as you’re running scripts within ACP)? I’m wondering if I have a defective board or if there’s some additional variable that I haven’t considered. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you and clear skies,
Todd

[Bob Denny]

Todd --

You're doing the right thing by asking for help from Diffraction. I do know that a fair number of people are using MAxDome-based domes with ACP, not that it matters to ACP (which knows nothing at all about the specifics of any dome control system).

One thing to try before any more hardware changes on the serial end: Go to the ASCOM-Talk list on Yahoo, look in the Files section for HelperNet. Grab eht installer and install it. That is a pre-release of a new driver helper library for the upcoming Platform 5.5 update. It has completely overhauled low-level serial support, and has helped quite a few people who were wrestling with serial I/O reliability problems.

I'm moving this to the Hardware/Drivers section...

[tkozikowski]

Thanks Bob for the advice and recommendations. I'll download the driver and see what happens.

Cheers,
Todd