Array Virtual Mount and Data Send Time Parameter Settings

General
#1

My array setup included a setting of one second for the Array Virtual Mount Data Send Interval and General Data Send Interval. However, when I toggled the APCC - 3D Scope view before I executed a critical slew with weights up so I could see the mount, the array indicated that the mount was disconnected and I was forced to shut everything down and reconnect.

I experimented and changed these to three seconds to see if I could toggling the APCC - 3D Scope View and not send an error to the array which would indicated that I was disconnected from the mount. It seems that these settings worked. I believe I can now toggle the 3D view in APCC and still stay connected to the array.

Are there any additional unforeseen adverse impacts to setting these parameters to 3 seconds? What are the typical settings and tolerances for these two parameters?

#2

No problem on use at 3s, is just the time for refresh the data of dashboard, tipical is 1s, tollerance doesn’t exists. You should not only experiment with the times but above all investigate with the developer of your mount drivers / applications on why the mount when you use 3D stops responding to Voyager or responds with difficulty. In theory, there is no minimum request time from ASCOM clients.

#3

Thank you. Astro-Physics and Ray was the person who gave me the clue that maybe the polling time was an issue. I changed it to 3 seconds and I think it is solved. It takes a second or two to bring up the 3D view on APCC and that seems to me to indicate that it is talking to the mount to obtain information and this may be conflicting with Voyager’s need to distribute information every second if it is set to that value. Total speculation since I don’t know the internal working of the code. My limited experience with coding was with cards and Fortran as a requirement of my engineering degree years ago when the computer technicians wore blue doctors overalls and if you dropped a stack of cards, you were in serious trouble. Anyways, everything running pretty well. I have been pretty much tweaking focus and collimation on equipment and am going to replace the third scope on the array with a new scope and camera shortly.

#4

Support is what is needed to solve problem. Not needed to be engineer to do AP. But this doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.