I personally would rather have a power switch. That aside, I believe
that the AP mounts were designed with many target requirements, one
of those being someone doing visual observing with or without the
goto (my guess). In that case, one could align and use the scope
manually, but the RA would need to rotate in the opposite direction,
depending on the hemisphere.

Why not both?

A switch somewhere would be welcome.

Dave

--- In ap-gto@..., "Joseph Zeglinski" <J.Zeglinski@...>
wrote:

I wonder if someone at AP might consider eliminating the N-S

switch, in

future versions of the GTO Control Panel. Indeed, use it as a

lighted POWER

Switch, which many of us have asked for.

Seems to me that if you enter your location coordinates, you

are already

specifying whether your AP Mount is being used in the north or

south

hemisphere. That makes the N-S switch redundant.

If there is more than one circuit board contact that needs to

be switched,

couldn't this be done by the firmware setting flip flops, or

activating a

multi-pole reed relay, based on that observer's Latitude setting?

By comparison, the Losmandy G11 Digital Drive controller - the

stepper

motor version, not being a GOTO, and thus having no processor -

does require

an internal N-S switch, which the user needs to set after removing

the control

panel. However, the Losmandy GEMINI GOTO controller, servo motor

version, does

NOT have a N-S switch on that processor board. I suppose it relies

on the

observer's North or South latitude setting, instead of wasting

panel space for

a mechanical switch, which perhaps for most of us, is rarely

toggled anyway.

Just wondering,
Joe


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