STXL Timeout Errors

Before you start: I have not read the +7 pages of this thread, just the starting page and some of the above. This may not be the same as your fault.

In my instance, the camera was faulting mostly during focus runs. In the threads somewhere, I may have posted the fault codes. I had spent hundreds of dollars on fancy USB cables and powered USB hubs, but nothing of those fixed the issue. I ended up sitting in my home test observatory running the camera as if it was doing focus runs, and within 30 mins, or much less, it would fault. But that only showed the issue was repeatable.

Nothing gave the fault away sitting there on the OTA, so i took the camera off and ran the camera in pieces, so I could watch the guts move, mains shutter, guide shutter, and filter wheel too. The moment the fault happened, I saw the main camera shutter stuck out of position, with the software waiting for the shutter to get back into position - it had nothing to do with there being a download error. I ran a laser temp tool on the little servo motor that did the shutter rotating, it did get hotter, but was apparently still within specification. Looked further. The tiny bearing seemed not to be turning well. I bathed it in light oil; black grit came out, then i refitted it. It then ran all day! So i refitted it to the OTA and the camera stopped again! Blasted. The bearing had tighten up again. The bearing in the main shutter was the issue. Thankfully SBIG sent me a bearing in haste for me to try, and once installed, the fault has never returned [+2-3 years ago, and it runs virtually nightly].

Good luck.

Steve

 

Hi. Steve,

Can you please explain more precise how and which bearing you have fixed. Do you have a image?

Konstantin

 

Here is the bearing position and a picture of [I think] the old and the new bearings [I think there's only one in there - its was Dec 2015]. The location picture shows a laser temp reader trained on the actuating servo motor [I was questioning if it was over heating - I sat there for half an hour watching its surface temp], as I was trying to figure out what was stopping the shutter rotation. But in this instance, it was the bearing. After then period of rotation, the bearing didn't rotate correctly/ freely.

This was my situation for why the download error was occurring.

Bye,
Steve

 

Thanks for the great detective work and for posting your findings.

Cheers
Martin

 

No worries Martin. But it may not be the answer for everyone. After all that investment in USB gear, it had to be something else.

The camera has been working quite well since. But alas, I am in the forum to write to Bill, as during a simple service of the camera, cleaning out the fan, cleaning it up after 1.5 years 24/7 running in an observatory, I tripped on the power cable, ripped it off the kitchen bench, tore the power cable, blew the USB port on the camera, and blew up the Observatory PC attached to it. Ahhhh. How nice was that.

I am looking on the bright side, the observatory has been working awesome for so long, nightly doing its thing. I have over 100gb of keepable data produced by it, and around 5000 subs sitting on my server of unfinished data sets. I'll take this break to make a 2nd generation control system for the observatory.

I hope that my experience may help another on fixing their download issue.

Bye

Steve