• My series on making a Newtonian telescope
  • How Leon Foucault Made Telescopes

Guy's Math & Astro Blog

Guy's Math & Astro Blog

Tag Archives: mystery

Mysterious OnStep Behavior

16 Saturday Apr 2022

Posted by gfbrandenburg in astronomy, Hopewell Observatorry, Telescope Making

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

electronics, Hopewell Observatory, mystery, OnStep

We are still trying to get our venerable, university-grade Ealing mount to work properly with its new OnStep motor drive system. We thought we had – at long last – everything set up perfectly and running correctly with the various components wired up properly but not yet pushed into place in the interior cavities of our mount. All seemed to be working well until we pushed the last components and wires inside, and then closed the hatches.

Then things stopped working.

We soon figured out that the force we had to use when moving all those items inside the mount had broken some of the leads. We found those broken leads and replaced them with shorter ones.

When we started it up again, we discovered that the mount would not ‘track’ to the west in right ascension — something that the software and hardware are programmed to do as soon as the system is turned on. In fact, I couldn’t slew it to the west either. Eastwards was no problem. Also, we could only slew southwards, not northwards.

We didn’t know what to do, so I emailed a followup question to the wonderful folks at the OnStep wiki. Several folks thought we had a balance issue or a limit switch issue, but I went up today to check on the balance — and concluded that’s not the problem. We have no limit switches yet either in hardware or in software. So that’s not it, either.

Wondering if we had somehow screwed up the MaxESP3 board that is the heart of the OnStep system, I unplugged the board (and all of its sub-boards, as a unit) we had been using last weekend, and plugged in a duplicate board, built by Ken Hunter and ‘flashed’ by him with the same Config.H file as the other one.

Listen to the screeching!

This weird behavior is not the same weird behavior we were getting with the other OnStep MaxESP3.03 board. What on earth is going on?

Another suggestion is that we may be creating ground loops by not connecting our wiring properly. I don’t know. I wish I had taken some electronics classes during my time in college. It would have come in handy here!

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014

Categories

  • astronomy
  • astrophysics
  • education
  • flat
  • History
  • Hopewell Observatorry
  • Math
  • monochromatic
  • nature
  • optical flat
  • Optics
  • Safety
  • science
  • teaching
  • Telescope Making
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Guy's Math & Astro Blog
    • Join 48 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Guy's Math & Astro Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar