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Old 02-12-2021, 12:50 PM
Startrek (Martin)
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Startrek is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Sydney and South Coast NSW
Posts: 6,094
ZWO EAF Focuser intermittent connection

The last 2 nights of imaging ( back in early September by the way ) my relatively new EAF focuser had intermittent connection problems but eventually connected after 15 minutes
I just use it with a hand controller
So did the usual checks , replace cables , replace USB 5V power etc...
When I held the handcontroller away from my laptop workstation it worked fine and when I sat it next to my Laptop , it played up
Now coming from an electrical engineering background , I just put it down to some extra low voltage interference induced in the unshielded cables or it’s picking up some spurious signal coming from the laptop.
Tried the same thing again , sat hand controller next to the laptop , again intermittent connection ( it emits an audible tone to tell you it’s connected) tone kept emitting off and on.
Moved hand controller away 1 metre and connects perfectly fine
All I can put in down to is some induced electrical interference as there are mixed voltages in and around the laptop ( 230V mains , 12V DC and probably other voltages )
I may have to buy shielded cables which really should be grounded to be affective against electromagnetic induction of voltage. This seems extreme though
Anyone else experience similar issues with the ZWO EAF with hand controller set up
By the way my cable ( 4 x TRRS 3.5mm audio ) is 5m long ( might be part of the problem a well ?? )
Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated
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