It appears that when guiding with AO enabled, my mount is not getting bumped to allow the AO to re-center somewhat. I am noticing that my tilt is going to 100% and staying in that range, sometimes with the guide star drifting out of the small guider window.

I initialized successfully I believe. Is there anything else that I should be looking for? I am always looking for the easy answer!

Please post a log...

Hi David,

Do you have the bump setting set in CCDSoft or MaximDL? You need to have this set to the appropriate number. I'm sure you've done this but just checking. I think I'm one of your neighbors. I'm building an observatory on Putman mountain off of RR2323. Glad to know there's another imager in the area!

Best regards

Ken

Ken--I do have my bump settings in place and do not "think" that I have had this problem running straight CCDSoft5. I will diagnose some more, or hopefully not have to by binning my guider images 3x3 and finding some solid guide stars...

It is great that you are close by--amazingly close. There is another guy on my road with a 32" mirror arriving and who has obs's in Ft. Davis and Alpine. We should all get together. Would love to talk to you and share experiences. You can get me at home @ 997.9795.

David.

Well, I am very interesed in how this is resolved. I have been using an AO-L unit for some time and have run into an opposite problem that has been raised here and on the CCDsoft forum. My AO-L will semingly guide fine, but when I examine the autoguider log, I see hundreds of bump corrections to the mount, even when the corresponding error indicates the mount should not be bumped. I am still working to track this down and I think it occurs even when not using ccdautopilot.

At any rate, my understanding of the AO-L autoguiding is that when a bump is issued, CCDSoft uses the vectors that have been set in CCDSoft as well as the aggressiveness setting, but does not use min/max settings because they are irrelevant to a bump. So, only thing I can think of is to make sure you have corrections in both axes enabled as well as the mount corrections turned on for both axes. You might also want to try setting the maximum deflection to 50% or 65%. You shouldn't be getting out to 100% at the end of the range for the AO unit.

Well good to know you. I will send you an email to your info@ address on your website to correspond further about the Hill Country area. I didn't know there were other observatories out there. All I saw were the wineries and looks like you are near Luckenbach.

regards,

Ken

Ken--I am actually right down the hill from 2323. I am on 87s just about 1 mile south of the 2323 junction...

You can get me @ davidplesko@beecreek.net

Hi David
great website and images
Can I contact you offline about how you automated/control your slide off roof? I have the same type of observatory, and need to automate the roof part. Grateful for some specs, particularly on the control system.

many thanks
Martin

Martin--DO contact me and we can figure this out together. This is something I want to do but have not done yet. Check past messages on the Skyshed forum on Yahoo if you would like. I know there is some information and pictures there on garage door openers. I have not seen anything on automating the button pressing to actually open the door, but I am confident there will be a solution. davidplesko at beecreek dot net.

Thanks!