Motion Failures

Wednesday, January 17, 2018 2:59 PM

Problem(s) Encountered:

When slewing to the next target I got an error: point not converging.  So I tried to home the telescope but it would not move in either axis. Restarting the telescope program and TCS GUI, I saw that HA, Dec, and Equinox were not being displayed.  Suspecting that the Dec motor power needed to be recycled, I asked Rob Fesen to do that.  Then, I was able, through many attempts to get the telescope to HA zero and just a few degrees from home

in Dec.  But I still get Error where m_ha not homed, and the same error in Dec.  The HA, Dec, and Equinox are still not displayed, although the TCS

seems to know the time and the RA.  Another thing I found is that when I tried to use the software paddle, the rtel program would cut out.


I closed the mirror cover and dome with no problem. The telescope is close to zenith.


Solutions:


Found the dec motor controller box indicating an error this morning.  Cycled power to it, correcting the error.  Found the TCS GUI as detailed by Jules.  When I went to home HA, I noticed that the boxes for both HA & Dec were checked.  Trying to home more than one item at a time can have unexpected and negative consequences (I wish the option wasn’t even presented!).  I unchecked the Dec box and home HA.  I then homed Dec as it claimed to not be homed either.  Once HA & Dec were homed, all values in the GUI (HA, Dec, equinox) were displayed properly again.  I then drove the telescope around, focusing on dec motion to make sure everything looked ok.  At zenith, I zeroed encoders relative to tilt sensors then drove around a bit more.  Everything appears to be functioning properly.