Hello, MaxIm is having trouble polling the scope coordinates with AO connected. Sheesh. How’s that for sounding weird. I have SBIG STT 8300, FW8 STT, AO8 all running though Ethernet connection to MaxIm DL 6.13. All SBIG firmware and drivers up to date. Windows 10, most recent ASCOM platform 6. Behavior described below is same for two different computer set ups. One when in the field, one at home. Different cables, different computer. Same behavior. Also, i think recent problem with newer MaxIm. Old version MaxIm did not do this 3 months ago with same HW set-up (Long time user, but not counting out user error somewhere : ). I noticed my RA, Dec coordinates in my FITS files were wrong when running the AO and I have done a slew outside of MaxIm DL. The old pre-slew coordinates were in the header. So, I connected ASCOM Pipe tool between MaxIm and the scope so I could watch the MaxIm polls. When camera not connected in MaxIm, I can connect MaxIm to the scope and see MaxIm polling for coordinates in Pipe window. All good. When camera is then connected in MaxIm with SBIG w/AO driver I see the polling just stop. Disconnect camera and polling begins again. Played with priority and threads settings and no difference. When I tell MaxIm to connect with SBIG Universal (ignoring the AO8 in the setup), all is well. Polling keeps on chugging. Only when connected with SBIG AO driver does scope polling stop. Once polling stops, old cached coordinates seem to be used. Not intermittent. Happens all the time. And as you should note, no AO guiding need be done during any of this. Additional fun: When connected to scope and camera and no polling occurring (funky error state described above), if I then click the Options menu in the “observatory” window where scope connections in MaxIm are managed, polling begins. When menu is dismissed polling stops again. Kinda nasty since I do want to use AO, and post processing via Pinpoint and other tools need the correct coordinates in the FITS header. Thoughts? Extra experiments? Oh I tried simulated camera driver and polling is fine. Only the AO driver has this problem. Telescope can be simulated and no sky needed to see this behavior. It's a 5 min experiment if you have the AO HW with the STT camera. Simplest experiment: connect MaxIm to scope simulator and STT/AO driver. Take image. slew simulated scope from the simulator interface, not MaxIm. Take another image. Compare FITS. Thanks tons in advance. Jon
