Software/hardware troubleshooting and workarounds

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Meade DSI

  • We were having problems with getting the Meade DSI to talk to Maxim DL - it kept giving errors saying that it got an error trying to link to the camera. I eventually found the answer here. I had to invoke a slightly different version of that command, but what worked for me was just typing C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\RegAsm.exe "\Program Files\Diffraction Limited\MaxIm DL V5\dsiio.dll" all as one command, with a direct path to the RegAsm executable. After I did this, then MaximDL was able to talk to the DSI.
  • Note that MaximDL requires you to set particular gain values for the DSI in its setup, so it's not the easiest to adjust on the fly.
  • We still need to figure out if there's a good way to get a more-or-less continuous readout from the DSI, like Autostar Envisage does.


TheSky and CCDSoft

In general, the best place to find useful information for troubleshooting these programs (both sold by Software Bisque) is the documentation and support forums on the Software Bisque website. There is also a download area with some documentation there. Both of these require a username and password to log in. See Eric for the password if you don't have it (though it should be saved to log in automatically on the telescope control computers).


MaximDL

MaximDL will sometimes hang if it and another program are both trying to control a camera. The solution: don't do it! Or if you do, quit both programs, and restart.


Guiding

There a couple of useful plugins that may help with guiding through MaximDL. There is one to use multiple stars, and another to set the guiding parameters based on a plate-solved guider image. Both are on John Winfield's plugin page.