Dear all,

I am not sure whether this forum is the right one for my problem
therefore I will post it also on the Bisque website.
Anyway, I am facing a problem concerning the interplay of my AP1200
and TheSky6: Everything is working fine as long as I am on either side
of the meridian. As soon as I want to cross the meridian, the
necessary meridian flip will not take place...

Example (from yesterday evening): Everything is hooked up and running
(MaximDL is connected via TheSky6 to the mount), polar alignment
achieved via PoleAlignMax (since I do not have a permanent
observatory I have to perform this for every session 8-( ), the hand
control box tells me that TheSky connectedto the mount.
I did start my session with Arcturus (star is W side of meridian,
telescope located on E side of meridian), center the star and sync in
TheSky. After a few slews I decided to cross the meridian to visit
Altair using TheSky. I hit Altair in TheSky and Slew...
What I would expect now is, that a meridian flip of the mount takes
place and after this filp, the telescope should be located on the W
side of the meridian, but the slew command in TheSky does not lead
to the desired meridian flip but tries to center the star with the
telescope on the E side of the meridian (leading to a collision with
the pier if I do not cancel the slew). I face the same situation if I
start with Altair and then switch to Arcturus. What is my problem?

Hard and software: AP1200 latest firmware, Maxim 4.58, TheSky 6
6.00.54, XP SP2 all patches and bug fixes installed, Acer 5680
notebook, 2GB Ram, 160 GB harddrive, USB2.0 changed to serial
connection via Keyspan adapters.

Your help to is very much appreciated!
Christian from Munich

In a message dated 8/7/2007 9:44:22 AM Central Daylight Time,
Christian.Wallasch@... writes:

Anyway, I am facing a problem concerning the interplay of my AP1200
and TheSky6: Everything is working fine as long as I am on either side
of the meridian. As soon as I want to cross the meridian, the
necessary meridian flip will not take place...

The meridian flip is not controlled by TheSky6. The meridian flip point is
determined by the location and time data that you sent to the mount servo (the
box with all the wires coming and going). Normally at startup the keypad sends
the proper time and location to the mount servo. The servo then calculates
where the meridian is and uses this information to determine which side the scope
should be on. If you do a normal startup with the keypad (keypad set either
to Autostart Yes or No), then the meridian flip will occur at the proper point
in the sky. The keypad even tells you where this overhead flip point is (the
local sidereal time or LST). This assumes that you have entered your location
and the proper local time and local daylight savings number into the keypad at
some point in the past.

However, since your meridian flip is not occuring at the overhead meridian
point, you have either entered something wrong for the local time, or you have
not used the normal startup procedure. For every hour that you are off in time,
the mount will calculate the meridian flip point wrong by 15 degrees. If you
have set the keypad to not start the mount then there is another possibility
for error - for instance, you may have set the keypad on EXT mode, which
requires an external location and time sent to the servo from your computer. If that
is the case, then this external data is probably wrong.

My suggestion would be to start with the fundamentals. First, check your time
and location entries in the keypad. Start the system up with the keypad (do
NOT use EXT setting for startup). Aquire your first star via GoTo, center and
Rcal. Then go to the setup menu and verify that the 3 park positions are
correct by parking the mount in Park1, 2, and 3. If these 3 positions are not
correct, then you have an error in your time or location entry. If they are correct,
then link to TheSky6 and do GoTos to objects on either side of the meridian,
and you will find that it works perfectly (it has no choice but to work
perfectly if the 3 park positions are correct).

After you have proven that your mount to works with TheSky6, resist the
temptation to complicate things by intitializing the mount with this planetarium
program. Use the keypad for startup until you become very familiar with how the
system works. After that, you may want to explore how to operate the mount
externally (I recommend Pulse Guide for intialization because this software is
essentially bulletproof).

Rolando


**************************************
Get a sneak peek of the all-new
AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

In a message dated 8/7/2007 2:30:20 PM Central Daylight Time,
Christian.Wallasch@... writes:

If I work with the keypad installed (no EXT), everything is fine - no
problem with pier flips and pointing - therefore the information for
initialization seems to be ok.

You are right, the problem seems to be the "EXT" setting - the software
seems not to send the right data to the mount, if any...

There is really no reason to use EXT. TheSky6 works fine with the keypad
being in control of initialization (i.e. keypad set to Autostart Yes or No). It is
only in situations where control of the mount is desired from properly
configured software on a computer that you might want to use the EXT settings.
TheSky6 is not one of them, however you can use Pulse Guide for initialization from
your computer if you wish to do this type of thing in the future.

Rolando


**************************************
Get a sneak peek of the all-new
AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour

Dear Rolando,

First of all thank you very much for your fast and detailed response.

If I work with the keypad installed (no EXT), everything is fine - no
problem with pier flips and pointing - therefore the information for
initialization seems to be ok.

You are right, the problem seems to be the "EXT" setting - the software
seems not to send the right data to the mount, if any...

Therefore I will follow your advice and resist the temptation to
complicate things with the soft...

Thanks again!
All the best,
Christian