Rick - Cabrillo College Astronomy Chair: I've got a problem - "Shutter Error". It's with our SBIG ST4000xcm camera, which we've been happy with for 10+ years or so. We've not used it at all for a couple of years however, it's sat in it's secure company-built black case at the observatory during this time. I've got a new Trio Win10 tablet computer for dedicated use solely on running CCDOPS and our SBIG cameras in the field. I fired it up first at home, and all seemed well, and I anticipated a great night of shooting come PANSTARRS and the Helix Nebula. But in the field (hills of central California, dry mild night at low 60's F temperatures), after connecting to a good full-charged hefty gel-cell 12v battery, and separate fully charged new battery to keep the Trio tablet happy, I got the camera going, put it in "focus" mode, it downloaded the first few focus frames (1 sec images), and then it froze with "shutter error". I tried powering camera off/on, re-booting computer, re-seating all connections, looked at the window above sensor, all without trouble. But still, after putting in 'focus' mode (or 'grab' mode too), it would work for less than a minute and then 'shutter error'. Sometimes I'd get 3 or 4 images, sometimes 1, once I got 0 images before the error. But nothing resolved it. The drivers and CCDOPS were downloaded just a couple of weeks ago and seemed happy. The one thing is that the firmware has never been updated, so it's ancient. Could that be a problem?
Hi Rick, Sorry for the late response. You should get in touch with Bill Lynch about the shutter error. He knows the older systems very well. Below is his contact info. Authorized Repair Center Bill Lynch - bill@sbig.com Phone: (805) 308-6979 Best regards Tim
