AOX will not calibrate

Discussion in 'Guiding and Adaptive Optics - StarChaser and AO' started by Martin Pugh, Dec 2, 2018.

  1. Martin Pugh

    Martin Pugh Cyanogen Customer

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    Hi Doug

    So I am still getting this new STXL/FW8G/AOX to work. It is amazing what you actually have to do to get this stuff working, even brand new. I did post an issue last night, but deleted the post having resolved it. The guider would take an image no problem, but when it subtracted a dark the stars went black. Because I have two of these cameras, I compared the gain/offset of my other camera with this one and the gain on this camera was double. So I set the gain value to match and the problem went away.

    Still have the power problem obviously, but now I am onto the AOX and it is not calibrating. It moves in X by about 2 pixels or so, and then in Y it moves quite a bit more but only appears to calibrate in one direction before the calibration routine fails stating invalid motion. I get the same behaviour in CCDOps as I am getting in TSX.

    I have exercised the AO, I can hear it exercising, but will need to remove the camera to observe what it is doing.

    any thoughts at this stage?
    thanks
    Martin
     
  2. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Hard to say at this point. It was definitely working well at the factory; hopefully it wasn't damaged in shipping somehow.

    Visual inspection will tell us a lot.
     
  3. Martin Pugh

    Martin Pugh Cyanogen Customer

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    Doug
    lucky for me I have another new AOX that I bought from you just a few months ago. That AOX is clearly a model left over from the SBIG era when comparing the two e.g colour scheme. So the first thing I did is change the cables, the one that goes into the I2C port, but that made no difference. So I simply swapped it out. When I exercised the AOX it was WOW....totally different and the optical window was easily moving double the distance of the new unit. I checked the new unit just to make sure that no foam was left behind, but it was clear and nothing appears to be blocking its movement.

    The other thing I immediately noticed Doug is that the interior of the AOX casing on the new unit is not even anodized, just bare metal. Surely that cannot be right. It is just going to lead to internal reflections all over the place -see the attached pics. I cannot say I am happy with this at all given my experience of AO units.

    I will let you know how the calibration goes tonight, but I fully expect it will work fine.

    Please advise next steps.
    Martin
     

    Attached Files:

  4. Martin Pugh

    Martin Pugh Cyanogen Customer

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    and calibration worked as expected tonight.
     
  5. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Hmm... very odd about the bare aluminum. Let me look into that.
     
  6. Tim

    Tim Staff Member

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    RMA PM sent!
     
  7. Martin Pugh

    Martin Pugh Cyanogen Customer

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    Doug

    Will the unit come back anodized? Andany chance I can get replacement power bricks tha a up to the task sent back with the AOX?
    Thanks
    Martin
     
  8. Doug

    Doug Staff Member

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    Yes it will. Anodizing was the result of an unfortunate series of miscommunications. Sincere apologies for that. Will swap bricks too.
     

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