[APBeta] Scope control problems with aPv2b35

[Paul Rodman]

On Apr 26, 2009, at 06:48 AM, Bruce Pipes wrote:

> Last night I tried to give APv2b35 running in Mac OS 10.5.6 a  
> workout with my LX200R and had two problems. The first was caused by  
> me, but AP responded in an odd way. I had set one of my slew limits  
> wrong (I set the dec limit to less than 50°, rather than greater  
> than 50°) so that the scope was over the limit upon startup. When I  
> connected to the scope, I got a scope communications window that was  
> printing over and over again what the scope was trying to do. I  
> could not close the window and I could not force quit AP, so I had  
> to shut down the computer. When I restarted the computer, I found a  
> text file on the desktop that contained the following, which is what  
> was appearing over and over in the window that popped up:
>
> Logging started at: 4/25/09  8:30 PM
> Version=2.0b35
> Platform: Mac OS X
> 0.000	Get R.A. (T)	#:GR#	09:37:54#	09:37:54
> 0.405	Get Declination (T)	#:GD#	-00*01:02#	-00°01'02"
> 1.552	Get R.A. (T)	#:GR#	09:37:54#	09:37:54

That functionality is for debugging what's happening, and appears if  
you set the "Show data flow to and from telescope" option in the mount  
definition for the scope. Currently I default the setting to save to  
contents to a file on the desktop to ON, but once the telescope stuff  
is debugged, if will be defaulted to OFF (perhaps). The information in  
that file is very useful to me if you're having problems.

> I then restarted AP, set the dec limit to the proper value, and  
> connected. Things seemed to go fine (I did a high precision slew to  
> a couple of objects) until I clicked Slew to Home (and disconnect),  
> at which point AP froze up. It was totally unresponsive and would  
> not let me force quit. Also, it did not slew the scope to home; I  
> had to do that with the handbox. I then restarted the computer and  
> used APv1.6.1 the remainder of the evening. It worked fine, as usual.

Darn. I thought I'd resolved that.

Paul R.