[Bassnut (Fred)]

Well, this all very awkward, Ive got a STXL and its worked well for 3 years. I had a problem recently which took a long time to solve, but it appeared to be my fault basically (loose connector in the filter wheel). I sent the cam (only) in for repair, that went well and wasnt expensive, but a small problem was discovered during the service that was easy to fix but an interesting one I wasnt aware of. The shutter wheel was sluggish and caused constant shutter faults in testing with CCDops but not with DL5 on my rig. I think I did see heasitation in guiding exposures sometimes, but no errors. This tells me error capture/reporting is not the same in every app, not something I had considered before. The reason for the shutter sluggishness fault on my cam is interesting, the main chip shutter and guide shutter operate together, so during say a 40min exposure, the guide exposures are "electronically" shuttered. But if imaging is not active, and guiding is, both shutters operate on every guide exposure. I have my scope operated manually, so if imaging stops at say 3am, guiding attempts continue till 8am or so until I stop it. Between 3am and 8am the main and guide shutters operate every 3 seconds, thats 6000 actuations!. Do that for a few 100 days and I suppose things wear out. I would say having the main and guide shutter always operate together when not imaging is not smart design.

I have seen Steves fast disappearing post and with Pauls post now it doesnt look good for SBIG I must say. But, the kind of problems Steve was having, and others have complained about, which appear to be design faults, I havent had at all, so im thinking changes in hardware in production or more likely firmware have caused problems. Also, I think the capture application used makes a difference, not that that is a good excuse.

Paul has bought up a serious design fault IMO, the PCBs should not be exposed to the outside and in the fan airflow, FLI only has the cooling heatsinks exposed to the fan. I see some corrosion on my cams PCBs and the last cleanup showed much dust on the PCBs. I have the cam on 24/7 so some may say this is why, but remote operation with everything on 24/7 is common, it appears SBIG only considers power up for each imaging session, which is not always the case.

I dont think SBIG breakdown service is at fault generally, the one guy that does this trys hard, charges reasonably and is usually fairly prompt and helpfull. I think he is hamstrung by design issues he has no control over (although it shouldnt take 7 trys to fix something). Its "after sales support" feedback leading to proactive efforts to fix design issues thats the problem IMO.