A Parody of Errors

Back on June 21, 2024, I setup the telescope and powered everything up ready to do some visual astronomy for a change. The sky was quite clear for a summer evening and the temperature was bearable. Astrophotography is my love, but every now and then looking through the Edge11 with an eyepiece at double stars and the planets is very satisfying. I was set - so, you know where this is going, right?

I was unable to remotely connect to my NUC on the pier. And without the connection, I can't move the scope (I don't own a handset). Then, the clouds showed up, so I decided to pack up and check out the NUC later in the week. 

It wasn't until returning from our trip to Iceland in late June-early July that I got the NUC communicating remotely on my network again. It was a setting, of course, that somehow got changed. Ok, great, now it was time to wait yet again for a clear night. Got one on July 27.

First, I updated my imaging software since the new version was released and I wanted to check it out. Then, powerup the system and ... "Hello mount - why are you connecting to the NUC?" Spent all night trying to diagnose what was wrong. The USB port appeared to be dead. Not a problem, connect via ethernet - no go. Try WiFI - no go. Argh - shut everything down; diagnose the issue the next day.

Spend the next day re-installing windows and rebuilding my NUC thinking the problem was a corrupt operating system environment. But that wasn't it.

After many email exchanges with Astro-Physics, the manufacturer/vendor of my mount and control box, we determined the USB port was probably bad, but I was able to get the ethernet and WiFi connection working. Had to buy a LAN splitter to send the network connection to both NUC and mount control box, but that arrived the very next day from Amazon (love Amazon). Tested everything in my workshop before re-installing everything at the pier. Lookin' good.

Yesterday I setup the telescope ready to complete the installation of the new software on the rebuilt NUC and test out the telescope. The control box refused to connect! Not by ethernet or WiFi. Ah, a broken power supply connection. Fixed that and tried again. Nope! No connection.

Bring everything into the cool workshop and try to determine what's going on - it was working a few days ago. After 3 hours, I gave up. It seems that possibly whatever caused the USB port to die has now infected the remaining connection paths.

Next step - return the control box to Astro-Physics and have them take a look at it. Want a bet we have the longest string of clear nights while my control box is being repaired? Ha.