AstroMC dome connected/slaved but not responding to mount slews

Having a problem getting my dome (Foster – AstroMC) to be slaved to my mount via SGP (3.0.2.91). Perhaps (hoping!) I am missing something obvious. AstroMC is connected via ASCOM. From SGP, I can ‘connect’ to the dome without error. I have SGP set to do the dome calculations and slave to the dome.

However, when I kick off a sequence, the dome does not respond when the mount slews. Sometimes it will start responding after “a while”. Other times, like last night, it just does not respond at all (stays in the dome’s “parked” position).

Perhaps it is just the dome drivers fault, but was hoping there might be clues in the log file (attached) or perhaps someone has a suggestion I could look into.

image
image
image

sg_logfile_20181015233831.txt (147.9 KB)

DaveNL

Do you need to unhome or unpark the observatory? SGP should attempt to do this if things are slaved and you unpark the mount.

SGP is asking the dome to move but it’s not. Also I don’t see any exceptions so it seems that, to SGP, the move happened successfully.

Thanks,
Jared

@Jared - thanks for the reply. To answer your first question - as far as I can tell in the AstroMC interface, the dome is “live” and should be accepting commands. I don’t see anything else obvious to click to “unpark” or similar.

Based on testing for the past month, what I have noticed is that everything works great if I do a complete computer reboot before starting a session. In fact after a PC power cycle, I can open SGP, establish a sequence including “start at a later time” and it will properly open the dome and slave the dome before unparking the Telescope/Mount and slewing. This has not failed after 10+ test/iterations.

Unfortunately, if the sequence ends (say because of some intermittent clouds and the recovery runs through its process without success). If I try reopening up the dome and restarting the sequence, the dome is not slaved. And I cannot seem to make it slave.

So I guess my next question is this: If I find myself in the situation where dome is not slaving, is there anything else I could consider trying (in SGP) short of a complete power cycle/reboot of the observatory PC.

DaveNL

PS. I wish my dome controls system vendor (Foster Systems) was more supportive. Or any bit supportive.

Maybe connecting/disconnecting the dome from SGP. You can attach a log where this has happened and I can take a look.

Thanks,
Jared