Dome Motion Issues

Saturday, November 21, 2015 3:12 PM

Problem(s) Encountered:

When homing the dome at the very end, it got stuck at AZ 95 degrees, which is - if I am not remembering incorrectly - the same location it gave me trouble a few nights ago. TCS however showed that the dome was properly at home ! Manually drove it to 320....


Solutions:

Checked out the dome this morning and found that the encoder readout would only increment when the dome was moved in one direction.  Also, not surprisingly, when the yellow button was pressed (computer control), the dome started up with the fugue state—never stopping because the encoder never read out to the desired ‘320’ home position.

Opened up the electronics box for the dome encoder and replaced the MM74C221N, Dual Monostable Multivibrator IC.  Ran a series of tests slewing the telescope around with the dome slaved to telescope position; also sent the dome to the “home” position.  All tests were successful.