[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Good news.

Back last Spring, the Apogee camera died. Repair under warranty took a punitive and cynical 3 months door to door for an afternoon's work.

A couple weeks after it came back, the camera died permanently. We ordered another one and paid a 100% deposit. Three weeks later, they said they couldn't build it. Can I have my money back, please, sir? Never have anything to do with Andor Scientific.

Bought an FLI 16803. It arrived in March.

Meanwhile, I'd completely redesigned all our electronics to use 4 Arduino Due microcontrollers (for Ra, Dec, dome rotation, and focus), and one Arduino Mega to work the roof shutters. Learned how to program the Arduinos to do the motor servo-control. All worked on the bench.

Also, I rewrote all the tired old Borland C++ code (star maps and catalogues, pointing model, sidereal time, go to, camera control, guiding, synch, the lot) in Visual Studio C#, with a view to future proofing.

Bought a Hewlett Packard industrial computer - a small "brick" with an I7 processor that ran Windows 10 on 50 watts. A thing of beauty. Feeling good, But now the Gotcha's started to arrive. My Visual Studio 2017 was no longer available, not even for ready money, let alone cucumber sandwiches, and I had to learn to use VS 2019 which is painfully different. Then the big one: the drivers for the Apogee guide cameras and filter wheel would not load onto the "brick". Never figured out why, as Andor no longer supports them, and I've had a gutful of their smug and nasty unhelpfulness.

So learrned to talk in C# to ASCOM level 6, and will buy all-new filter wheel and guide cameras in due course, that use ASCOM.

For the time being, my desktop computer is up in the observatory.

In testing out the new hardware, I plugged something into the wrong hole on the focuser H-bridge, and in a tenth of a second, did US$1000 worth of damage. A new one is on the way. ETA 6 weeks. Meanwhile, manual focusing. All very character building.

Last night, we fired up the Grand Catastrophe (new hardware, new electronics, new firmware, new software, new cabling, all designed and built by me), with the new FLI camera, new computer, new operating system, new computing language).

The dome had a tendency to spin round continuously at about one revolution per minute, but otherwise, IT ALL WORKED.

We took a 10 minute shot of the Hamburger. No darks, no flats, manually focused, so it is a secret, but it looked wonderful. Cool clear water to one lost in the desert.

Still a lot of work to do between now and when the new focuser arrives: periodic error, scripting, fixing the gyro-dome, but we're on firm ground now.

I have promised myself that I'll never, ever attempt a project as big as this again. Next time, it's rent-a-scope somewhere high and dry.


Back home, it was champagne time.