From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: September 23, 2007 11:22:32 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: autoguiding primer?

Hi Tim;

On 23-Sep-07, at 10:47 PM, centurion40tim wrote:

Right. Sorry about that. OK. Got all set up. Got a bright star on the monitor, made

adjustments like 4x4 binning and black point. Focused pretty well. All seemed fine until I

tried to calibrate. The message I get is something like: "No motion detected. Problem with

USB, GPUSB or motors not working."

Then it's not seeing any motion when it tries to calibrate on the horizontal axis, so it tries it a few times until it exceeds 30 seconds of time and then gives up. That's consistent with your observation that only 2 buttons work. If Astro IID detects any USB hardware issues, error messages will also show up in the console.log window.

The sticky buttons work, or a least two of them - Up and Left (or was it Right?) So I am

confused by the message. I mean the sticky buttons wouldn't work if there were a

connection problem, right? But then, all four should work instead of just two. hmm

Yep - hmm. Next time can you confirm which buttons do move the mount and which directions it does move it. For example, if the left button works, does it move left or right? You can test this in the daytime and just need a distant object.

If only two buttons work then it will never work for guiding and there is either a problem with the GPUSB, the plugs / connectors or the cabling. That's why I recommend people make sure all 4 buttons (or left/ right if you are only doing RA correction) work before guiding.

Three questions and comments:

1)  Where does your GPUSB to Mount cable come from? You can't use say an Ethernet cables as they are twisted pairs and the cable has to be straight through. By straight through I means the wires are connected to the same pins on both male plugs (pin 0 to pin 0, pin 1 to pin etc. etc.).

2) Did you try wiggling the cable plugs on both ends to make sure they are seated properly? This has happened to me in the past.

3) You may want to try bending the GPUSB connector pins down a bit so they make better contact with the male plug on the cable. The unit i received had a similar issue and I bent the pins a bit down to make better contact. After that i had no more issues ever since.

My setup:

ASGT 9.25/ Firewire webcam/ AstroIIDC 3.0/ iMac 500mhz/OS10.3/GPUSB using USB port

on the mac to Autoguide port on the mount.

Two questions.

1) What mount is this on?

2) You are using Astro IIDC 3.02.01, right? There was a hardware change made with GPUSB (there is an old 16 button HID version and new 2 button HID version)  and we had to make some pretty gnarly changes in Astro IIDC 3.02.x to accommodate it.

Thanks in advance..

Milton Aupperle..