STXL-11002 with FW8G-STXL - issue with flats and with reliably connecting to camera

I have an STXL-11002 CCD camera with an attached filter wheel FW8G-STXL that for the last ~year has been giving me intermittent issues, resulting in Camera Error (17) when trying to expose using MaxIm DL. Sometimes, this issue is resolved by turning the power off and back on again, but sometimes I lose entire clear nights because the camera has issues exposing. I thought it may have been a weird filter wheel issue - see previous thread - and it may still be, but I need some help.

Just today I updated the flat field images for calibrating and there are white blobs and streaks across the edges of the flats, and there is a different pattern produced with each of the filters. Flats were taken today during the day in a closed dome with a Flat-Man flat panel. I did a whole bunch of flats today in two separate instances - the second set is worse than the first! Unprocessed images from overnight last night, however, look normal.

What is happening with my flat field images, and could it be related to the intermittent issues I have taking exposures or likely two separate issues?

I've attached a couple of single flat frames as an example. flat-GRN2-0007.fit was done in the first round of flats today, while flat-BLU2-0005.fit was done in the second round of flats. I've also attached a raw light frame of M31 from exposures done last night in the middle of the observing session where I don't notice the same issue and I'm waiting to see what things look like tonight...

I've just had the main camera on my telescope stop working (an Apogee CG-16M) and have been relying on the SBIG camera much more than usual. (I am also in the market to buy a new CCD.)

 

Thanks, Doug! Quick and straightforward thoughts on both issues, I appreciate it. I'll look into recharging the desiccant.

For maybe requiring service for the shutter issue, I'd be interested in knowing more though wouldn't be able to do that until I had a back-up camera in place at the Observatory here, as long as it continued to sometimes-function, at least.